Today is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of the year! Last night, the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and our Episcopal neighbors at St. Clement’s had a joint service as has been our custom for a number of years. We alternate venues so last night was St. Clement’s turn to host. That means the clergy from the other church preaches–so Pastor Jeff Lilley did the homily.

However I bet everyone was surprised to see ME playing the St. Clement’s organ! I got an email from Deborah Zuercher, St. Clement’s organist (and briefly, the pianist/leader of LCH’s early service) about two weeks ago. Deborah is on the mainland, recovering from surgery, and wasn’t able to play the service. So I was asked to fill in. As I told Pastor Jeff, with him preaching and me playing the organ, wouldn’t it be easier to just have the service at LCH?

I did go over to St. Clement’s in the afternoon to familiarize myself with the instrument, which is a recently renovated 3 manual Austin. You can read the Star-Advertiser article about the instrument here. I also had to learn a new Gloria and an unfamiliar (to me, anyway) hymn for last night’s service.

Suffice it to say that I survived, and lived to tell it, and as I told everyone last night, my reward was indulging in the pie potluck afterwards. Yummy!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!