JOPLIN - When disaster strikes, pastors are called into an extreme level of service to help meet the needs of their congregation and community. But it’s not just pastors and their staff, but also other areas, such as music ministries, that are presented with unexpected tasks.

When the tornado came to Joplin, Larry Sanborn and his wife Gloria took refuge in an interior room of the lower part of their split-level home. The tornado broke their windows, burst open their doors and took off part of their roof, but they personally made it through uninjured.

Sometime after that fateful night, he’s not quite sure what day it was, Larry Sanborn received a call. As music director of First United Methodist Church in Joplin, he was asked if he would be able to get his choir together to perform at a special service in a few days. The service would be a community-wide service, and President Barack Obama and Governor Jay Nixon would be speaking at the service, along with Rev. Aaron Brown from Saint Paul’s UMC.

As an uninjured survivor of the deadliest tornado in 60 years, with a severely damaged home, Sanborn already had a lot of emotions to deal with; now he had two more: honored and excited.

“I’ve been music director here 46 years,” Sanborn said. “We’ve sang at Annual Conference a couple of times, but we’ve never had an opportunity anything like this.”

Sanborn went to the church, and the church staff pitched in with helping him call all the choir members. Because they would be on stage with President Obama, all the choir members had to pass a security clearance, and Sanborn had to get all of the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers to the security team in Washington D.C.

Sanborn called in a few veteran members of the choir, to bring their number up from 28 to 35. The choir got in a practice that week, singing "Hymn of Promise" by Natalie Sleeth. When Sunday came, the U.S. Army sent a bus out to the church to pick them up, so they could get through traffic and past security.

Before the service Glenda Austin, Sanborn’s sister-in-law and pianist for First UMC, played a grand piano for fifteen minutes.

“It was wonderful. You could have heard a pin drop in there,” Sanborn said.

The memorial service wasn’t the only big task for the choir. Like most churches in Joplin, First UMC was packed the Sunday after the tornado.

“It was full – it looked like Easter,” Sanborn said. “It was similar to the crowds we saw after 9/11.”

The Sanborns are living with Gloria’s mother, about five blocks from their home. They are waiting on insurance adjusters and contractors to begin rebuilding. They were told that it might be several months before they will be able to move back into their home.