Interesting night

Last night was different and I'll tell you why. The girl that played the Baker's wife in Into the Woods is desperately trying to adopt a child from China. It is a very expensive project I am told so she is attempting to raise money. She has a beautiful voice and her idea was to do concerts in churches around the area. In the opening song of this concert she needs a "choir" or several voices for back up and since we can't all be there at each of her concerts she needed us to record our voices on a track. So, last night after one 20 minute rehearsal we met at the Sound of Birmingham recording studio to record it. We split up into the 4 parts around microphones and put on the headphones that you see them doing on music videos and such (We are the World) Anyway, it was really really neat. They were able to "stack" our sound so that although there were only 13 people singing, it multiplied us by 3 and sounded like 39 people.
One thing I realized while I was there was that I was the only one NOT extensively trained in music. Everyone was saying things like "Oh, you have to jump to the E natural on that bar" and "Thats a F sharp, but in quarter notes". When I say everyone, I mean everyone...but me. The part that shocks me is that I have been in church choirs and theatre pretty much my whole life and I still can't read music. I feel SO dumb. My extent of music reading is knowing this note is higher than that note b/c its higher up. Wow. What makes a note "natural" anyway? Does it come from nature? I just wish one day I could be like "oh yeah, crescendo there to enhance the dynamics" What?