Adventures in choral conducting

I love the way that people kind of assume that they know what you can do, especially if you're pretty dang sure that you're not capable of doing it yourself. Take me, for example. I conduct the music during Sacrament meeting & Relief Society, so someone, (I'm actually not sure who), thinks that I would be great at conducting a special musical number that the Relief Society will sing on Christmas Day. Ahem. Methinks this will be a minor disaster, and I'm hoping not a major one! :^0

We had our first rehersal today, and three people showed up, which was ominous in itself. (Dun, dun, duunnnn...) I then spent the next 15 minutes really wishing that I'd spent more time practicing the piece on the piano. I haven't even gotten us an accompanist yet, so I'm hoping one will conveniently fall out of the ceiling at some point. *Imagines a puff of dust emerging from the ceiling, followed by a loud plop, after which a rather dirty pianist says, 'Er, hello. I suppose I'll just start playing this piano that I mysteriously appeared in front of...'*

Ah. So much for dreaming.

The truth is, while I've been in choirs since I was in middle school, (roughly three and a half eons ago), I really have no conducting experience to speak of. I mean, I stand up in front of the congregation on Sundays and lead the music, vaguely waving my arm around in the patterns indicated in the back of the hymnbook, hoping against hope that noone is really paying any attention to what I'm doing. (No one usually is, by the way. Everybody knows that it's the organist who controls the tempo, not the music leader. *Wishes in vain that she could play the organ.*)

So, I'm not sure how this whole musical number will go. I'm hoping I'll be able to fake it through the piece, that the choir won't fall apart wondering when on earth I'm going to cut them off, and that I will never, never be asked to conduct a piece of music again. (Well, I suppose if I were called to be the ward choir director, I would really need to accept the call...sigh.) I'll be willing to do it, I just won't like it. And neither will the choir, probably.

*Slinks away in shame to her bed.*