Suicide on Easter? Give me a break!

Easter is always a busy time of year for me. I am actively involved in my church, which is a fairly large church that has two services every Sunday. My area of ministry at church is to be part of the tech team and more specifically to operate the projection at least once a month and for almost all of the productions. Obviously, the Easter production at our church is one of the biggest of the year. After a lot of practice, the drama production team was ready for the biggest weekend of the year for our church. We had one performance on Saturday night and two on Sunday and the church was absolutely full for each one.

Obviously, as part of the tech team, I sit in a control booth at the rear of the church. I keep my cell phone on vibrate and sometimes the choir director will text me with an issue or change (like feedback in a speaker or a change to the invitation song). So, as usual, I had my cell phone on vibrate as we started the second production Sunday morning. A few minutes into the production, my cellphone began to vibrate for a call, as opposed to a text, so I simply touched the button that sends the call to voicemail (without even checking to see who the call was from). Immediately, I received a second call, and then a voicemail. In my experience, when I receive a rapid series of calls relatively early in the morning, that is a cause for concern. Many tenants and potential tenants are sleeping in the morning, especially on a weekend morning, meaning a sudden flurry of calls may indicate trouble. So, when the team started into a song, I quickly listened to the voicemail. Here is the essence of the message I received: 'This is Officer Smith with the Police Department and we have reason to believe that one of your tenants may have committed suicide in one of your apartments. The tenant's son called us from Nevada and hasn't been able to get in touch with his father for 5 days and the other tenants also haven't seen the tenant for several days. The lights and tv are on in the apartment and we understand that this tenant has had previous problems. I understand that you have a key for the apartment and we need to get in. Please call the police department to arrange to meet me at the apartment as soon as possible.'

Well, obviously, I couldn't simply walk out in the middle of the Easter production with hundreds of people in the audience. The projection is a key part of the production and the lack of the projection would severely disrupt the production. If the police believed that there was an immediate situation, they would simple break the door to get in.

So, I began reviewing the script to see where there would be a long enough section of the production, without projection changes, to allow for a phone call. About 15 minute later, we were at that spot and I quickly called the police department. I explained who I was and that I was involved in an Easter production and that I wouldn't be able to get away for another hour. After all, if the guy had killed himself 5 days ago, another hour wouldn't matter one little bit. At about that point in our conversation, the officer on the phone interrupted me and said that they had already found the tenant - alive and well and admitted to the veteran's hospital. Good news!

The other big thing that happened to me over the weekend was that my laptop finally bit the dust. It was 3 years old, which was pretty good considering the amount of use my laptop gets. Since I use my laptop every day, I bought another a new one on Saturday. This one is a 17 inch, HP. I'm still trying to get accustomed to Windows Vista and my initial impression is YUK!

If you're wondering what happened to my Section 8 inspection on Friday morning - I PASSED! That was a nice end to the week, especially after working hard to get the house ready for the inspection.