Warsztaty Gospel w Gdańsku

All my new gospel music singing friends!

Last weekend, a missions team from Houston (where it's 70 degrees!) traveled to Poland (where it was 0ish degrees and snowy) to spend their spring break teaching Polish people plus me gospel music.

My missionary friends in Gdansk (three awesome Americans who run a nondenominational ENGLISH speaking church here) invited me to it one weekend and since I love to sing, I obviously said yes!  I attend Gospel Church's services every Sunday on top of going to Polish mass (more on Gospel Church another day).  So I was pretty familiar with the music that they sing...very similar to what you'd find in a university church's adoration hour.

Thus it didn't dawn on me that the title "Gospel Music Workshop" literally meant GOSPEL music.

It didn't dawn on me when I saw the title.
It didn't dawn on me when I learned the group was from a Baptist Church.
It didn't dawn on me when I went to their concert on Thursday night.
It didn't dawn on me when one of the soloists asked if I was sure I could sing soprano in gospel music.

So you can imagine my surprise when we start right into some soul-searching Baptist-style Gospel music!

Final concert photo

The weekend was exhausting, we sang for eightish hours on Saturday and another four on Sunday plus the concert.  Exhausting, but fan-flipping-tastic!  The Texan team even lead worship at Gospel Church on Sunday morning.  For as tired as MY voice was after all of this, I had mad respect for our fearless leader Mac Gervais.  He didn't just sing my part, but the other two vocal section's part too.  One, his range was incredible (soprano to tenor and probably lower).  Two, he sang THREE times as much as me.  I would die.

Even more awesome than all the Gospel music was the opportunity to befriend the 12 Texans that came to teach the workshop.  I walked away from the weekend feeling refreshed in my faith.  Although it wasn't an official retreat, with all the talking we did about God and the Bible and the evangelization outreach to the Polish people, I felt like I had been on one.

Praising the Lord with our songs

Over the weekend, God blessed me with a few heart to hearts with the team that opened my eyes to new ways to look at some of life's situations.  I was fully reminded that love is a Christian's best weapon in evangelizing.  It even inspired a blog post for The Apostolate, a Catholic blog I write for occasionally, that will be published sometime after Easter.

 Not only was I able to check off a bucket list moment, but I've got one of those weird, "You'll never guess what I did in Poland" stories.  Because who would really believe me that I sang in a Gospel Choir in Poland...not many people.

A birds eye view of the awesomeness that was the final concert of the Gospel Music Workshop