Rough Day on the Job at Church

I've been in training for two weeks to run the projections during church services. For my big debut I thought I had the songs in the software correctly but I had to make changes that morning. It turned out that they had forgotten to email me the actual lyrics for the day so I knew which verses to omit. It was a bit nervewracking since the choir reads what I have on the display and they stop rehearsing when I have the wrong stuff while I fix it and then have to start over. Next, the pastor had slides he needed on a memory stick that he hadn't emailed out.

Finally I'm ready for service with a minute to go when I notice that the background video of a rising sun has reached the end and isn't looping back to the start. The music director starts the piano for the first song and I try to advance to the first slide with song lyrics when the laptop screen goes white. I panicked and wasn't sure if I should tell her to stop the music or just hope that the choir had enough of the song in their memory they could muddle their way through it. I closed the program and restarted, recovering somewhere in the first stanza. I was laughing inside at this point thinking that everyone in the audience probably thinks I'm not on the ball. Shortly thereafter an elder opened the service and said "Let's all say..." and looked at me to put something up on the screen but I gave him a shrug and he countered with "OK, you all get to hear me say it". Communion followed and the pastor asked if I had the Apostle's Creed to which I shook my head and he quickly pointed people to the correct page number in the hymn books.

All in all I'm not sure anything else could have gone wrong. The good news is that it pretty much made me feel like I could handle anything the next time.