Surprise!

 Remember when my C was trained to serve at Mass? And we scheduled him for an easy daily Mass during spring break for his first go around? 

Well... that didn't happen. His class was leading school Mass yesterday. And he and one other gal were the only two kids in class who are fully trained. 

That is a whole other saga. The man at our parish who has trained servers for as long as anyone can remember passed away in June from a brief illness. So while there was some warning it wasn't enough to actually train someone new or find a replacement. 

At our parish, you have to be in 4th grade to serve. I don't know why. Seems arbitrary to me. But whatever. So they found someone to train the servers and he likes to do it in pairs, 2 kids at a time. And he didn't get started until November. You probably remember there are a lot of holidays between November and now. He's not very far into the list of 4th graders who have signed up to be trained is what I am saying. 

Anyway...Tuesday night we got the Mass kit out and did a practice session going through all the steps. Our friend who is in 5th grade was going to be the cross bearer and I suggested he perhaps do the candle lighting since that is something C isn't great at yet. (And I thought we had weeks more to practice.) 

Yesterday Husband and I attended a funeral for our friend's dad about an hour away and then drove like the wind in order to be back in time for school Mass. 

I am so thankful we did. He was so cute! He did SUCH a good job. And I only teared up at the beginning. 

We had a lot of people praying for us that we would make it back in time to see C serve. Because what if he becomes a priest and in his very first homily he talked about how his mom missed his first time serving on the altar?! 

Luckily that didn't happen. 

So it was a fun surprise to have him serve yesterday and we were all so thankful to be there.