Grand Christmas Celebration in Vijayawada

Prabhudas was scheduled to speak at the Grand Christmas Celebration in Vijayawada last night. We were just there on Monday and saw the posters up all over the city for it. When we arrived, Prabhudas was announced and went to sit on stage with a bunch of other people that were there. Ruth and I got comfortable on the front row with a great view. After a few minutes, I heard Prabhudas' name again and looked to Ruth to see what was being said. Her face fell as she gathered her stuff and headed up onto the stage to sit next to Prabhudas. The empty seat beside her should have been a clue, but I was still laughing at the look on her face when she was called up that it didn't register. Until I heard my name followed by, "We would now like to invite our beloved sister Carol onto the dais."   Suddenly, it wasn't so funny! 









I had a tad bit of panic that I would be asked to say something, so leaned over to check on that possibility with Ruth.  Her response was a nervous sounding "I don't know" which was not very helpful.  We sat as various people spoke, stood a few times for prayer, and sat some more. 

At one point, they passed out candles to everyone on stage as candles were distributed to the people in the auditorium and they also brought a huge cake out onto the platform.  A guy from the other end of the row we were sitting on started making his way down the row.  He talked to Prabhudas for a second before greeting Ruth and coming to me.  He asked me if I knew the words to "Silent Night" and would I sing it.  Prabhudas explained that they wanted to have that song sung in English but no one else knew the words.  I agreed and then struggled to make it through with the attempted musical accompaniment, a sore throat and an extreme case of nerves that made me forget everything but the first verse of the song!  The one thing in my favor while I sang was that the lights were down since they lit everyone's candles before having me sing.  

**Added note:  A day or so after this event, Prabhudas informed me that the whole service, including my singing, was scheduled to be broadcast on one of the Christian stations that goes to 40 different countries!!!