Bread, bread, who's got the bread?

This may be news to some of you, but I play the organ. Have since I was about 16 - really upped my cool factor in high school. 

At 17 I was called to serve as our ward organist for a few years and since getting married, have served as such in each ward we've lived in. Until now. My good friend's husband plays each week and on very rare occasions asks me to sub when he's out of town. One such Sunday popped up two weeks ago and I agreed to play. Had I known the situation that was about to unfold, I may not have agreed so quickly.

There was a lot of whispering as I was playing the prelude music, waiting for the meeting to start. On this particular Sunday, the men responsible for preparing the bread for the Sacrament discovered that there wasn't any bread to prepare. I overheard (which I usually make it a point NOT to do) a panicked conversation surrounding the lack of bread and took a deep breath, logging the information away in case it wasn't resolved later. As I began the intro for the sacrament hymn, Brother Hollings, responsible for breaking and blessing the bread, came over and whispered to me that the bread still hadn't arrived and that I'd probably need to stall. People saw him talk to me, but couldn't imagine why or what he might have said.

Of course this wasn't one of the weeks where we sang a two-page hymn with 6 verses. One page. Three verses. Which meant that by the time we'd finished singing the third verse, the bread still hadn't arrived. So I continued to play the song another time through and switched to two different songs after that to give them sufficient time to prepare the bread. 

After the fact, friends told me they wondered what I was doing and why I just kept going, until they looked over at the sacrament table and realized that they still didn't have any bread. Steve Roeth told me my solo was the highlight of the meeting - he really enjoyed the reverence and few extra minutes to think about the Saviour. So some good came out of my incredibly uncomfortable situation.

Of course it happened on a random week when I'm playing. I subbed again on Sunday and thought about bringing a loaf of my own, but instead checked with the bishop beforehand and he confirmed all was well. Never a dull moment.