SHOCCO SPRINGS, Ala. – When Karen Gosselin picked the music a year ago for the 2025 OneVoice honor choir, she did it thoughtfully and prayerfully.
But she had no idea how the perfect the lyrics would be when it came time to sing them, or that their first audience would be a cafeteria packed full of powerline workers.
“We had some incredible unexpected opportunities,” she said.
As Gosselin and the choir of seventh through 12th graders gathered at Shocco Springs on March 14, they all knew they were staring down the barrel of a stormy weekend.
“The first cool thing that happened was that I didn’t have one student pull out because of the storms,” she said, noting that past years have all had a 5 percent attrition rate for other reasons. “With this event, we knew storms were coming, we knew we could be in the middle of a mess, and still every parent allowed their kids to come.”
And as the choir and the storms began to gather, so did more than 780 power linemen from surrounding states, all staying at Shocco so they could be quickly deployed to areas affected by the storms.
“I got to thinking about that and thought, ‘OK, y’all, we can do our practice performance for these men who are here,’” Gosselin said. “On Saturday we were supposed to do our dress rehearsal at 7, and we decided instead that we would go a little early, eat and then surround the people in the cafeteria and sing while they’re eating.”
The cafeteria was packed as the students began singing to them the well-timed words chosen a year ago.
“Throughout the music, the common themes were that God is our shield and the lifter of our heads, through the raging storms and even where affliction is found, I will still sing alleluia,” Gosselin said.
She wasn’t sure how the crowd would respond.
“I told the group, ‘We don’t know anything about these men, we don’t know if they may or may not be Christians,’” she said.
But the response was positive, Gosselin said. “There were many comments of them coming up and saying, ‘This will go down in history; I’ve never been sung to as I was being deployed to go out to some dangerous places.’”
Hunkering down
As the evening went on, the storms got closer, and the choir went down to sit in a basement hallway.
“One of the reasons it was OK for us to be there was because Shocco had a safe area we could go to below ground,” Gosselin said.
Together they listened as meteorologist James Spann gave updates — and then things got close to home.
“He said if you are in Shocco Springs, you need to hunker, because the storm is coming your way,” Gosselin said. “A tornado had just touched down in Winterboro, not very far from us.”
She could hear the students praying and singing softly as they waited.
‘You are our shield’
“And then James Spann said, ‘It’s gone; it dissipated,’” she said.
The next morning, the songs the choir was singing meant even more, Gosselin said. “You could see them processing that they had just sung ‘You are our shield’ while we were watching that tornado come toward us.”
They gathered and prayed for the people who were affected by the storm, and they prayed for the linemen who were going out.
“It was an incredible weekend with incredible kids, but to watch them see the power of the Lord was just awesome,” Gosselin said. “This will be forever etched in their memory of the miraculous power of God witnessed right before their eyes.”
For more information about OneVoice honor choir, visit alabamaworship.org/one-voice-honor-choir.
This story originally appeared in The Alabama Baptist.
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