When LOL went to Vermont over Memorial Day weekend this year, we were hosted by Community Bible Church of South Burlington. We had very comfortable accommodations as we slept in Sunday school rooms and had access to a full kitchen. There was ample yard space for the kids to play and practice juggling in when the weather allowed, which wasn't often.
On Friday, the second day of our four day trip, we had our busiest day of the year. We had three shows between the hours of 10:00 AM and 3:30 PM. Our first show was at Champlain Valley Christian School in Vergennes, known as the smallest city in America. The school has an enrollment of about 60 kids K through 8th grade. They were very excited to have us back as we performed a chapel service there when we were in Vermont two years ago. We set up quickly for the show only to find out that the I-pod dock was not working properly; it was stuck on radio mode; not only that, it was running through the stations and not staying on any one.
Remarkably no one on the team got frazzled by this, including me. We had a small amplifier that helped with the volume of the I-pod a bit, but, if it had not been a small all-purpose room we were in, it would not have worked at all.
Technical difficulties aside, the show was, again, excellent. The audience loved every routine, and LOL was at the top of their game. Cutter did the 8th grade solo there, and introduced several tricks he had never performed before, including the knee bounce and double flips with clubs. Machete medley was without a single error, including Cutter juggling the knives while bouncing on a pogo stick, Rose juggling them on the balance board, and Amanda and Andrei juggling them together.
After a lunch back at our base church in South Burlington, we headed to the first of our two nursing home shows. This one was at a facility I had never been to before called Starr Farm Health Care. Although the ceilings were high - always a good thing for jugglers, the floor space was limited. This made for some confusion at times, and the audience was not particularly interactive, but LOL did well. Anna and Katie did their 8th grade performance -not exactly a solo - but they did great. Both girls spent most of the year as middle-of-the-pack jugglers, but they worked hard for this moment, and they nailed it. They did things they had only worked on for a week or two. Their parents testify that they worked for hours, and it showed.
Our final show of the day was a very familiar venue for me. We went right across the street to Birchwood Terrace, another nursing home. I have been doing shows there since the late 1980's, and it is the facility that my uncle lived in during his final years of his life. This audience was so much more engaged than the group across the street. Many of the staff came out to see the show, too, which is always a blessing. Heather was the 8th grader called on for a solo. As one of the few LOLers who never learned to juggle, she used a different gift. She sang "Oceans", a contemporary worship song by Hillsong United. Heather sang it better than she ever had in practice, complete with engaging smile and personal thoughts on the song during an instrumental portion.
Our kids prayed with the residents after this show, and will continue to share these prayer requests back at school next week. From there, we went to a local gym for showers, back to the base for dinner and chapel, and another 9:00 bedtime. No one complained about it being too early. We needed our rest to recupe for the Memorial Day parade we would be in on Saturday.