Church Girl

We meet a frantic AMANI JACOBSON (14) on her first day as the youth leader of St. Alexander’s Episcopal Church. While her parents try to comfort her, her younger sister, KALEY, captures everything on camera. When Amani and her family arrive to church, many of the congregation members gossip about how they think Amani will do, not knowing Kaley is capturing all their conversations on-camera. MRS. DUBOIS (70s) has it out for her especially – thinking her grandson Lincoln was a better youth leader. She wants to get him his job back. Later, Amani arrives to the altar and the notes she prepared are not there at all. She begins to hyperventilate. Accepting defeat, she makes her way back to her family’s pew. But the nerves catch up and she throws up all over the altar. The relatively new Assistant Pastor, MOTHER CONNORS (late 20s), struggles to connect to the kids in church school. When one of the older women confronts Mother Connors about her boring lesson, Mother Connors comes up with the idea to see a production of “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat” at a local theater. She also notices Amani sulking about the earlier incident, recognizing her own anxieties in the teenager. Later that night, Mother Connors calls Amani’s mother, Raven, to see if Amani could come by the church the next night to help with the planning for the church school’s trip to the theater. The next day, Amani meets with Mother Connors and is first given a breathing exercise to help deal with public speaking. Then, she’s told about Mother Connor’s grand field trip. While Amani thinks it’s great, it’s going to take some time before the church will allow for such a thing to follow through. Amani also shares that she’s not so sure if she wants to continue being the youth leader. The next day, Kaley helps Amani film for an oral presentation to help get over her stage fright at the request of their mother. While practicing, Kaley realizes that she accidentally published the video of Amani throwing up at church on YouTube. Amani’s humiliated. Later, Kaley closely looks at the video and sees the evil church lady, Mrs. DuBois, and her friends stealing Amani’s notes before service. Meanwhile, Mother Connors is giving a presentation to the church vestry on why the church school students should be given the money to go see the production of “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Mrs. DuBois at first shoots the idea down, but when Kaley comes into the meeting and shows Mother Connors the video of Mrs. DuBois and her friends stealing Amani’s notes, she gives in. At school, everyone has seen the YouTube video and Amani is ridiculed by her peers. When she tries the breathing exercise Mother Connors showed her, she successfully gets through her class presentation. This blends into her gracefully speaking in front of the congregation the next Sunday.