Singing makes a difference

They trickle in every Sunday, one or two at a time, then in bursts of four or five, but the numbers don’t matter. That they have a place to come does.

It is what Linda Weaver hoped for when she began looking five years ago for a place where her daughter Elena could form friendships and praise God on her own terms.

Weaver found that in a Sunday school classroom at Briarlake Baptist Church in Decatur, where for years adults with developmental disabilities had been gathering to sing, study the Bible and, well, socialize.

Outside of the Special Olympics, there were few social outlets available to them. They often became disconnected and led solitary and sedentary lives.

This choir, Weaver said, makes the difference.

In the beginning, the Briarlake choir was known simply as a special-needs choir, but with a growing number of requests coming from churches and community groups for them to perform Weaver decided the group needed a more suitable name.

For years, “This Little Light of Mine” had been their favorite song so that was it —- Little Light of Mine.

Weaver, a paralegal, has been directing the choir for three years now.

She has no musical training, but the mother of two knew a little something about singing with her own children.

The point isn’t to get them to sing well, she said, it is to provide a way for them to form a community.

On this Sunday, Jeri Wilensky is the first member to arrive.

“What do you want to start with?” Weaver asks.

“The Whole World,” Wilensky says.

Because its members are adults with varying forms of developmental and physical disabilities, praise songs seem more suited to their learning style. They are simple and repetitive.

And because some can’t speak Weaver added sign language.

It’s taken three years but Jeri and the others are finally getting it. You see in their hand movements what some can’t say with their lips: “Lord, I lift your name on high.”

They run through half a dozen songs, pray and hear what’s next on their social calendar.

That settled, they divide into groups —- those who can read and those who can’t —- for the Sunday school lesson.

Weaver is pleased with what she has found there for her daughter Elena.

“It’s the right place,” she said.

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