The trail into Sophias bedroom

Last night dh and I went out to a Church meeting.  When I went to go check on the sleeping girls, I found these notes taped to the wall going down the hall to her bedroom.

What on earth had happened while we were away?

Had someone been invading her space? (she is the only girl who doesn't share a bedroom)

I wondered if Sophia had had a very hard evening being the youngest child.

In the morning I asked Sophia how her evening had gone and she delightedly told me she had been pretending to be an ogre and had made lots of signs!  Whew.  I was relieved to hear that.  It means Bill and I can go out alone again soon.

I was the music conductor in Church today!

In LDS Church sacrament meetings in the United States we typically sing in four-part harmony, accompanied by an organ and led by a music conductor.  Our usual conductor is out of town for a couple of weeks and he asked me to be his substitute.

I used to have this calling--to lead the music every Sunday in church and I shouldn't have been nervous, but I was.

source

The opening song went fine, then came the sacrament song.  It was in 2/2 (not my favorite meter) and slow.  In addition it had a bunch of fermatas, which were awkward.  I got through it and was grateful the priests finished breaking the sacrament bread quickly so I didn't have to into the extra verses.  The closing song was short and zippy, so things closed well.

Next week:  I get to lead my favorite sacrament hymn.  Come visit my ward meeting next Sunday to see what it is. :-)

Cinco de Mayo dinner

The three wards meeting in our church building had a joint Cinco de Mayo potluck dinner tonight.  There were a lot of people there and a lot of food!  During dinner there were question and answer games and music, then after everyone had eaten, there was a piñata for the children.

Obviously the invitation writer had a great sense of humor.  It was just my kind of party.

Marriage advice from an Elder in the LDS Church

This excellent advice was given by Elder L. Whitney Clayton during the Sunday morning session of General Conference:

With the directive to "watch and learn," Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Seventy shared five principles he has learned from examples of faithful marriages.

1. Treasure. "I have observed that in the happiest marriages both the husband and wife consider their relationship to be a pearl beyond price, a treasure of infinite worth. … They know that no other relationship of any kind can bring as much joy, generate as much good or produce as much personal refinement," he said. "Watch and learn: the best marriage partners regard their marriages as priceless. 

2. Faith. He said successful eternal marriages are built on a foundation of faith in Jesus Christ and His teachings. Husbands and wives share a "mutual quest" to be obedient and good. "They do not consider the commandments to be a buffet from which they can pick and choose only the most appealing offerings," he said.
Explaining that faith strengthens marriage and faith grows as individuals keep the commandments, Elder Clayton declared, "Thus keeping the commandments is fundamental to establishing strong eternal marriages. Watch and learn: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation of happy eternal marriages.

Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Elder L. Whitney Clayton

 

 3. Repentance. Elder Clayton said repentance is tied to humility. "Repentance helps restore and maintain harmony and peace" while humility "means that both husbands and wives seek to bless, help and lift each other, putting the other first in every decision. Watch and learn: repentance and humility build happy marriages."

4. Respect. He said this comes as husbands and wives "treat each other as equal partners" and "make decisions unanimously." Elder Clayton said husbands and wives "never do or say anything that approaches the appearance of impropriety, either virtually or physically. Watch and learn: terrific marriages are completely respectful, transparent and loyal."

5. Love. "The happiest marriages I have seen radiate obedience to one of the happiest commandments — that we 'live together in love,' (Doctrine and Covenants 42:45). … Watch and learn: successful couples love each other with complete devotion."

Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Elder L. Whitney Clayton

To those who are single, divorced, single parents or for various reasons are not in a position to marry, Elder Clayton counseled, "Seek after the ideal of forming an eternal marriage, including by striving or preparing to be a worthy spouse. … One day every promised blessing concerning marriage will be yours."

In conclusion, Elder Clayton said, "Marriage is a gift from God to us; the quality of our marriages is a gift from us to Him."
 

Katie here again:  this is a brief outline of his talk, and I look forward to reading the whole thing when it is published online in a couple of days.

Squidlets!

Alicia, my daughter-in-law has an etsy store called HappySquidMuffin and one of her enduring best sellers are little crocheted squids.  I had her bring her yarn over so she could teach me how to make them AND it would help me concentrate on General Conference which we watched at home together.

Here are a couple of my "rejects":

They are actually a lot smaller than they appear in this picture.  My crocheting ability is slipping--I think only 2 of the 5 or 6 I made are actually saleable.  LOL

My thoughts on the geographical realignment of my ward's boundaries

For those readers who are not LDS (Mormon), here is some information so you'll understand this post.  A Mormon congregation is called a "ward."  Mormons are divided into wards of about 400-600 church members based on geography.  They are expected to attend their assigned ward and not pick and choose what time they want to go to church based on convenience or other factors.

Sometimes a ward gets too many or too few members due to people moving in and out, new homes being built, conversions to the faith, and so forth.  After careful consideration, the leaders in the area may decide to redraw the ward boundaries, along with the boundaries of neighboring wards in order to rebalance the wards in the area.  This happened in my area two weeks ago.

My huge ward was cut in half.  Due to changes in other wards, my Sunday meeting location was moved about 5 miles in the opposite direction from my old church building, and the meeting time was changed from 9 am to 1 pm.  Most of the people I knew well happened to be in my half of the ward, but some of my dear friends are now in another ward, which means I don't see them every week at church and at other activities.

In addition, the new meeting time doesn't mesh well with my work schedule, which includes Sunday afternoons.  Because of that I had to be released from my calling to work in the children's program, although I am able to attend sacrament meeting which is the main worship.  In addition, I still serve the girls by leading their activity day every two weeks.

The other good things about the new changes are that although the church building is a mile farther from my house, there are fewer traffic signals and it doesn't take any longer to get to the new meeting place than the old one.  In addition, the new chapel is really big and there is plenty of room for everyone.  Our old chapel was small and the congregation large, so sometimes there was a bit of jockeying for a seat!  Another change is that the percentage of families who live in single family homes has increased, which means a more stable ward family, although we still have some apartments which mostly bring new and interesting young couples, to our ward.

The Catholics have a new pope

I'm not Catholic, but 1/4 of the world's population is, so the election of a new pope is very important.  Today we have a new pope, Pope Francis.  Congratulations to the Catholic church as I think they have chosen a fine man to lead them.

source

 

Wild and wacky stake conference!

Stake conference is held twice a year and all the members of our stake (like a diocese) are invited to come to the conference.  Typically there are hundreds of people in attendance and things run like clockwork.

Not so this time!

1.  Two people were asked to give a prayer but at least one of them was not told it was to be the closing prayer, not the opening, so two people walked up to offer an opening prayer.
2.  The business part of the meeting (5 minutes or less) was forgotten until midway through the meeting.  It's usually done at the beginning of the meeting.
3.  Our excellent choir director brought the choir in a measure early on a loud, exultant piece.  Oops!  I was paying attention to her and came in early, along with about half the choir.
4.  A girl was accompanying her singing sister on the piano and the air conditioner kept blowing the sheet music around.  The piano was right in front of the choir but the people closest to the piano didn't notice the problem until the pianist had to quickly push the music back with her hand while still playing.  Then someone sat with her to manage her music and it was fine.
5.  The meeting ran overtime by about 9 minutes.  It usually ends right on time.

Despite everything, it was a delightful meeting.  The speakers gave us practical advice for raising our children, nurturing our marriages, sharing the gospel, finding hope for blessings in the future, and news about the temple that will be built in our area (nothing firm yet, other than one *will* be built) and how the expansion of the missionary program is going (swimmingly).

Here is my favorite of the three choral numbers we performed today:
http://www.lds.org/music/library/hymns/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise?lang=eng
We used this sheet music from Sonos.

Lots of tidbits about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons)

Some quick statistics about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Kindle is getting full!

This is my picture for the day.  Elizabeth's Kindle has been a huge hit.  And my email account is taking a big hit too.  Every time she downloads another free game or app, I get an email.  I have probably deleted 35 such emails.  I hope she slows down because she can only play so many games!

Being the good mother that I am, I downloaded the Bible, Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the words to the LDS hymns and children's songs.  In addition, I got all of the Friend magazine articles from 2012 for her.  I also downloaded the Primary teacher's manual so she can follow along with the lessons and tap to read the scriptures as they go.  I hope the teacher appreciates that. ;-)

Christmas Eve

Today the girls had a cookie baking party hosted by . . . me.  I invited a couple families of school-aged children to bring their favorite cookie recipe and come over.  Luckily I thought to make a batch of cookie dough for spritz cookies so they would have some cookies to shape and decorate as soon as they got here.  Those are the green ones in the picture.

We also made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (the guests were amazed at the huge container of chocolate chips I have--it's about 5 pounds) and some lemon cookies (minus the lemon because I didn't have any, but plus lime juice and orange zest).

I made a pot of hot chocolate and piled a plate with cookies.  We ate those, then the kids played outside, then took plates of cookies home with them.  My girls thought it was very fun.  You can see the cookies on the plate Caroline made for Santa.

Dh took ds to the airport in the big city.  He's going to spend Christmas with his mother and sisters.

I took the girls and went to Costco.  I know, I know.  But it wasn't as crazy as I thought it was going to be.  The main thing I needed was some tamales for dinner tonight.  I picked up a few other things as well (huh--just try not to).  The girls tried some fun food samples and had a good time.

When dh got home, he took the girls to Best Buy.  Elizabeth has been saving money for a number of months and has enough to buy an iTouch or a Kindle Fire or something like that.  She's leaning toward the Kindle, and today is the day for the purchase.

Tonight we'll enjoy a delicious tamale dinner (I know it'll be delicious because the tamales were being sampled at Costco ;-) ), then dh and I will negotiate about going to the late night church service at the Catholic church in our neighborhood.  Last year a man sitting near us fainted and the paramedics worked on him in the aisle during most of the service.  Maybe it would be a little less "interesting" this year.

Merry Christmas!

Stake BBQ

No, I didn't misspell "steak."  In Mormonspeak, a "stake" is the umbrella organization above a local congregation, or "ward."  There are usually about 7-11 wards in a stake.  Today was the annual stake BBQ and it is always a big event.

For the past few years dinner has been delicious, succulent pulled pork with BBQ sauce, ranch beans, coleslaw, and a wonderful thin flour tortilla.  In addition there is a big dessert table with cookies and cupcakes.  This year was no different and I was glad.  There was also a free snow cone booth, jumping castles for the kids, along with a fishing pond (prizes), face painting, and a football game.

Here are two of my girls with their pretty face art:

 Elizabeth got this one first and it is a vine of roses.

This came second and it's dead roses.  Her idea.  Funny!

Elder Oaks's talk at General Conference

This is Elder Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  On Saturday afternoon he gave a very interesting talk about protecting our children.

His talk is summarized as follows:

Children are highly vulnerable. They have little or no power to protect or provide for themselves and little influence on so much that is vital to their well-being. Children need others to speak for them, and they need decision makers who put their well-being ahead of selfish adult interests.

We are all under the Savior’s command to love and care for each other and especially for the weak and defenseless.
 

 

This is a 0:46 excerpt from a longer talk and I wish everyone would take his words to heart.

Church cleaning . . . again

With more than 200 families and only about 4-5 needed for each church cleaning AND being responsible for cleaning the church only every other month, one would think the A family (that's us) should sign up to clean about once a year.  Uh uh. 

Only two people signed up to clean the church when the sign up lists went around last Sunday, so the coordinator had to start making calls.  I'm not sure why, but it looks like she grabbed the list from two weeks ago and used that as her calling list.  Most of the same people were there today who were there the last time I cleaned.  It's probably because we did such a bang-up job, right?

We set up chairs at the back of the chapel because our congregation is so big we don't fit in the chapel proper.

 Sophia and I tidied up the hymn books and dusted the chapel.

 And last of all we took out some of the trash that was left in the building.

Other people cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, cleaned windows, emptied other trash, tidied the classrooms, and put furniture in its proper place (there was a funeral there earlier today).  We'll look forward to a neat, clean, and tidy church building tomorrow morning. :-)

Cleaning the church

Since we have two wards (congregations) who share our church building, each ward is responsible for cleaning the building every other month at 8 am on Saturday morning.

Here is my daughters' idea of cleaning:

Yes, playing in the gym.  I let them play, but I probably should have had them help me.  Next time I will.

Here is my idea of cleaning:

Yes, a nice, clean kitchen.  Luckily it was pretty clean already and my friend Amber worked on it with me so it was pleasant and easy.

An important bit of Mormon history

In 1844 the Mormons were living in the area in and around Nauvoo, Illinois.  Joseph Smith, the prophet and leader of the Church had been arrested on some trumped-up charges, and was being held in this jail in Carthage, Illinois, which is about 20 miles from Nauvoo.  

He and some friends were moved to the jailer's own bedroom since he could see these guys obviously weren't a danger to anyone.  The bedroom window is the upper window.

A mob of local men came to "take care of" Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith, thinking that if the leaders were dead, the Church would go away or wither and die.

The mob did shoot and kill Joseph and Hyrum Smith that day.  Joseph was shot as he looked out the window and lore has it that he fell to the ground near the well, mortally wounded.

The local people expected backlash from the Mormons, but none came.  However, within two years the Mormons were under such pressure to leave, that they headed west under the direction of the new Church president, Brigham Young.  He's the one who led them to the Salt Lake valley in Utah.

Here are the girls with a statue of the brothers:

Mormon church meeting in Mexico

There is a local ward (congregation) in San Carlos, so that is where we went to church on Sunday.  The girls were really curious about it, what the church would look like, how they would understand everything spoken in Spanish, and so forth.

The church building turned out to be a small, new building that looked fresh and clean AND had awesome air conditioning.  The chapel was tiled and had nice stackable chairs instead of low carpet and pews.  Very comfortable.

Because there are a lot of English-speaking vacationers, there was a bit of translation available.  A bilingual man had a laptop with a projector and a Word document up, then typed the main points of what was being said on the document and it was projected on the wall behind the speakers.  It worked just fine, although I did miss a lot of the details.  I was able to understand enough Spanish to get the gist of what the speakers were saying anyway.

Here we are with our wonderful friends and hosts.  They made it tons of fun for us and made us feel very comfortable.

Dh was in daddy heaven!

And not for the reason you might think. Twice a year our church has a worldwide conference that is televised on Saturday and Sunday in early April and early October. In addition, there is a 2 hour session Saturday night for the males 12 years old and older. For a number of years dh has lamented that he has no son to go to that session with him. This year since ds is living here, he did! Here they were headed off to their meeting last night:

Stake Choir

We have a great conductor and an enthusiastic choir of about 75 voices assembled for stake conference next weekend. Stake conference is when 8-12 LDS wards (congregations) meet. It's twice a year and always has excellent music. Our next stake conference is next weekend and I'm in the choir again. It's by invitation and there aren't enough invitations for everyone who wants to sing, so I'm always glad when I'm asked.

The three pieces focus on testimony and missionary work, two important themes in the LDS Church. In addition, the first is what I call a "Zion" piece and it's fast and upbeat and my favorite:

Next is another upbeat piece with a Zion feel to it and a focus on missionary work:

This the front page of the last which is a sweet hymn expressing the elements of a testimony of God and Jesus Christ:

In addition there will be two congregational hymns. Five hymns in two hours--I'll be in heaven!