A Funny Thing Happened at Church...

Church has been increasingly amusing the past few weeks. As arm-waver extraordinaire in both Sacrament meeting and Primary I get a pretty good view of things. Except the speakers' faces. The first to address us yesterday was Greg, a 14-year-old youth speaker. The counselor in the bishopric introduced the talk by saying he had given Greg a For the Strength of Youth pamphlet and told him to choose a topic. Greg then stood up and began reading his talk. It began, in true youth speaker style, with, "The topic I was given to speak on is the family." I first thought it was funny that he said he had been assigned a specific topic. Then I racked my brain trying to remember what For the Strength of Youth says about families. It says to be honest with parents and look for opportunities to serve your family. That's all. We were, instead, treated to Greg reading us the Proclamation in its entirety. I guess I can't blame the ward for zoning out at this point, but it made them miss the best part of the whole talk. It was when he read, "...we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the 'calamites' foretold by ancient and modern prophets," that I was glad I was still listening. I asked Eric what, precisely, a calamite could be. After discussing it with family we decided it must be something akin to a Philistine. Hopefully we'll never know. The talk got even better when, immediately after reading the Proclamation, he read a quote from Elder Maxwell. In the quote Elder Maxwell refers to a couple paragraphs of the Proclamation, which Greg read. Again.

The other fun thing happened during Primary. We are practicing for the Primary Program, scheduled for next week. I'm sure that will be worthy of a post. It's always interesting to watch a room full of 3-11 year olds keep themselves entertained when it's not their turn for a speaking part. As the music leader, I get to direct the kids to stand up for each of the 15 songs we will be singing and then have them sit down again. It was a little too much for the 3 year olds. Every time we stood up two would start playing Ring Around the Rosie, two would chase each other, and the other two would just run. Six little bundles of energy vs. two frazzled teachers. Four hands against six children. You do the math. Church should be amusing next week, too.