Sing! An Irish Christmas

On Wednesday evening, we drove back into Ocala (3rd time in 3 days!) to attend "Sing! An Irish Christmas", at First Baptist Church, Ocala. 

On our drive south from Virginia, Carl mentioned that he had seen several Christian concerts through the years (including Steven Curtis Chapman, Sara Groves, Casting Crowns), but that the only one he would still like to see would be Keith and Kristyn Getty. I got on my phone and looked up their concert schedule, and found that they would be performing in Ocala, Florida, while we were going to be in Wildwood - a 30-45 minute drive. We decided to get tickets and go to the concert!

The concert was scheduled for 7pm, doors were to open at 6pm, we got to the church at about 5:45pm and joined the line of folks waiting. We got into conversation with the couple in line in front of us, recently retired missionaries who live in The Villages now. We ended up sitting with them in the church and were able to hear about places they had served, what they had done on the field, and things that they are involved with at The Villages.

The concert booklet (quite a nice booklet!)

Picture of the stage before the concert started

First song...

... we had general admission tickets, so we picked seats when we got into the sanctuary. We had good seats, just a couple of rows back from the "preferred" rows - the only negative was that the violin / fiddle players were located in the area hidden behind the speakers, so we could not see them except for times when they came out to the front center of the stage (you can barely see one of them to the right of the speaker in front of the red-lit area on the far right).

"My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" (a poem by Robert Burns, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Red,_Red_Rose; a video with the words (performed by other artists): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK9WK0QhejA)

Two of Keith and Kristyn's girls, and 3 of the Klemme's children participated for a couple of songs (the smallest, Ingrid Klemme, is just 4 years old!).

"Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die..."

"O come let us adore Him!"

 We are grateful that we were able to be in the right place to attend and participate in this concert!