We had to wake up early again before breakfast started at 8am sharp, and we needed to be on the bus by 8:20. So, we begrudgingly went to breakfast at the dorms, filled up on the cereal that was there and a bit of coffee before hurrying out to the bus with our bags.

We were dropped off in front of the University again, and we all trekked towards St. Peter's church. We were there plenty early, so we had a warmup outside the church. We were all pretty tired, and sounded a little worse for wear because it was still early in the morning. But the stretches seemed to give us enough energy for our soundcheck.

It didn't take long for the organizers to shuffle us through church for our quick soundcheck. We were all pretty excited one inside because although it wasn't the most ornate church, it had such a loud, beautiful reverb.

We were all pretty nervous about the performance. I think it was because although our previous performance had been in a youth choir category where all the choirs had younger members, this Spiritual category had no restrictions. You could be a barbershop quartet, a full mature gospel choir, or like us, a very young youth choir. So, everyone in the choir opted for a bit of extra rehearsal time instead of free time. The soundcheck only made us a more excited about getting ready to sing.

I'm not sure, exactly, where we finally ended up for a practice, but it was in a building a decent ways away, but a nice big hall with a piano, so we weren't going to complain. We ran through our pieces and worked at the little stuff, and when we were all finally ready to leave after a couple hours to go get some lunch, we were all feeling just a bit better about the upcoming performance.

We were given a bit of free time to find some lunch in, so Emily, Johanna, Cosette, and I found a cute little sushi restaurant. We were glad to have a bit of down time and some wifi. After eating, we met up with a couple other people and went to look at a couple stores. They really wanted to go into a store called 'Random' that Taylor and I had been in the day before.

After free time, we met up in the park again across from the university building with all our bags to sit together before going as a group over to St. Peters. They gave us a room in a building right next to the church. We did a bit of a warmup and were all dressed in our uniforms. We did quick run-through's of our songs and were going to have a bit of time to talk about the set and drink some water and have a bit of 'quiet' like before our previous concert. But, one of the organizers came in and told us we'd be going on right away - almost a half hour early because the choir before us had just not shown up.

We rushed to get to the church and line up just inside the hall on the wings. And then, of course, we all just had a moment of panic because the choir before us were singing Jericho. The same version we were about to sing. So everyone's just staring at each other thinking 'oh crap', but then, as they're finishing the song, we realize that we sing it SO much better than they do. And this little ripple of 'we got this', 'we're going to be awesome' went through the choir and suddenly we were all grinning at each other, ready to sing our hearts out.

Our set was: Let Us Cheer the Weary Traveller, Like a Child, Soon I will Be Done, and Jericho. We were amazing on all of them. Amy, especially, with her solo for Like A Child. It was just gorgeous. We'd talked as a choir a couple times about keeping our emotions in check because we'd cried several times during that song (most memorably in our recording session) and you can feel emotions for and about the song, but crying doesn't translate well into singing. So, as a choir, we managed to keep it in check during the song, which was fantastic, but singing Soon I Will Be Done right after was really hard. I could definitely see a couple people crying (including a couple adjudicators). We ended with a bang for Jericho.

And then, once we left the building, that's when the tears started. Everyone was standing outside, crying because it had been such a beautiful performance and we'd shared such a good choir connection. Even John was crying, which was something in itself. And then, when we were walking away, someone came up to Amy and told her how wonderful her solo was. What Amy didn't realise until we told her was that it was one of our adjudicators. What a way to top the day!