It rained all night Saturday night, and was still raining when I left for the church.
I felt like I had a lot of getting ready to do for primary. The lesson was about Jeremiah, but I also wanted to cover scriptures and help the kids get a little idea of the various scriptures that we study from. So I brought quite a few of the scriptures that are in my bookshelf, plus some kids' picture books and that meant I had a lot of heavy bags to carry, but I got everything gathered up plus some fortune cookies for treats.
I was sitting on the stand in the conductor's seat when Lucinda walked in at about one minute before the meeting started. I was glad she made it.
I'm going to have to figure out how to gently suggest that when she is leading the music, she should invite her face to the party. She looked like she was quite bored as she directed, and even yawned once. We were singing Softly and Tenderly and I was having a spiritual moment when I glanced up to see her her bored face.
We had a good testimony meeting. I particularly enjoyed hearing Brother Priest bear his testimony about a very difficult memory from his childhood and the way as he was reliving it recently, feeling a lot of pain and anger, when he prayed about it, the pain and anger went away.
Our primary music director was released and a new person put in the calling. So this was her last time leading the music. She did a Mr. potato Head with a huge paper potato and lots of arms and shoes and eyes and mustaches, and the kids had a wonderful time taking turns putting arms and eyes in strange places on the potato.
My class went pretty well. I showed a video of Jeremiah and talked about what a hard mission he had but even when he wanted to quit, he couldn't because he felt a fire in his bones. I talked about testimonies and the fact that even though they didn't think they had ever born their testimony, when they said their little part in the primary program last week, that was a way of bearing their testimony.
I introduced the scriptures and laid out the kids' picture books and the scriptures on the floor and had them choose which books were scriptures. One of the scriptures I had brought was in Spanish, and one was in Chinese, which Chinese pages kind of freaked them out a little.
Then I explained that the Bible and the Old and New Testament and the other scriptures and then we played the matching game which kept them entertained. We played it two or three times.
Then Vandy wanted me to read one of the children's picture books to them and I chose There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I sang it for them as I turned the pages and one of the girls sort of sang it along with me because she was familiar with it. But they were very entertained and then we had a closing prayer and it was time to go.
It was still raining on the way home, so I pulled all the way into the garage. I didn't change clothes because I had the stake choir practice in the evening, so I didn't change into my jeans.
We had a pretty good practice. We are rehearsing three numbers for Christmas, and we had time to run through all three of them. Our tenor section is a little iffy right now because the Peterson twins haven't come for a couple of weeks. That leaves Bryan, who does a pretty good job, and his younger brother Shon, who isn't always paying attention. I think he has ADD. Then we have a brand new boy, Sam, Hayley's son, who is 12. And Hayley brought her next younger son too, Ira, who's probably 10. He looked totally confused the whole time.
In church, I asked Dustin to sing Oh Holy Night in sacrament meeting the week before Christmas. He has a wonderful voice and I think he will do a great job.
And Anne Anderson said that she and her family will sing a medley of Christmas songs during the Christmas program. They always do a wonderful job, so I'm very excited. So for the Christmas program, we have three choir songs and a young men/young women song, and a primary song and the Anderson family. That will be a wonderful program.
I'm certainly skipping around in time sequence, but I'm too lazy to go back and cut and paste things into the proper chronological order.
After choir, I ate some food and relaxed for a little while. The family had been debating about dinner and where to hold it, and I thought they had chosen to go to Fae's house, so when they said we're starting now I went to her house. It was raining and I was carrying a heavy bag of food, and I couldn't remember which apartment was hers so I walked back-and-forth in the rain several times. Finally she texted me and said that they were at Hagberg's house. So I drove there and it was still raining and I was glad to get inside.
I had brought my somewhat soggy no bake cookies, and cream soda and caramel whipped cream for butter beer.
They were all waiting for me when I arrived and we blessed the food and ate. Pozos were there and Fae and Sydney came. After dinner, we played games for a few minutes. Actually, they were getting the games out when I decided it was time for me to go. I left my cookies and butter beer stuff and didn't have much I needed to carry on the way to the car.
I got to the rehearsal in Salem in time to find my place and get my music. The rehearsal went pretty well. I would've done a few things differently. What a surprise! But we have some nice music to sing for stake conference in December.
It finally quit raining and when I got home, I was glad to be done for the day. I watched Dedicate and the Tabernacle Choir.
