A Song is a Wonderful Kind of Thing...Make Note of it!

Uncle Bob's brother married an amazing lady.  I think this is her seventh Spanish speaking mission and she is very gifted in the language.

Upon our arrival, I learned about her ward calling (on top of being assistant temple matron and handling most of affairs dealing with the sisters and others every third shift of our little temple) she has been invited on Sundays to teach a music directing


and accompanying course after church.  Many of the timid and tired have a willing spirit but find the rest of their body weak after a full morning of meetings.  Not Virginia.  With a scholarship aimed to help underprivileged families, she has secured a score of keyboards and portioned them out. And after finishing the course on directing, one by one, children, teens, single adults,

and families

have been pounding out notes one by one, to learn melodies and eventually chords.  Primary songs and hymns are being propagated household by household, and sometimes Beverly (our own talented Idaho female version of Jon Schmidt) and others get invited to assist. 

Beverly and I were asked to perform 3 four handed duets--super fun, and even the simplest one (that Amber and I played when she was maybe in middle school) Ding Dong Merrily on High, brought down the house.  "Your music sounded professional!"  Well, there is at least one of us willing to deny this--professionals are paid and I have heard it is a lay ministry here.

Petersons

I would, however, like to describe a remarkable pay day.  For months and weeks,  Hermana Cazier primed her students and others to prepare for a music recital to be held in the chapel near the temple on the 14th of December.  The podium was decorated. 

Announcements were delivered.  A host of fingers practiced and practiced.  People who had never soloed toned their voices.  After two full-fledged preliminary rehearsals, the night at last arrived.  I counted once  44 participants on the program.
But the number could not have included the large group of Primary children that came to sing first.


One by one, Primary children, teens, and adults announced their numbers, and walked to the bench (or pulpit microphone.)  And we each had an opportunity to get a sense of what Christ in the Americas must have meant when he came to a group of hundreds of people and touched them individually, one by one.

Our president's daughter Gina, accompanied a good share of those who played just  the melody.  Caziers scoured our city's hardware stores to find pipes to create bells, which Carma can attest offer a wonderful learning tool to any interested ear willing to count and mark time.  Maraca's and other instruments were summoned.


for video coverage try President Cazier's blog, which is fun (scroll partway down, look for play arrows!)

Black bow ties

Val sang with a quartet "Ye Elders of Israel"

were consigned and curved into creation by willing fingers of our nearly eighty year old neighbor who is serving her 5th Spanish speaking mission with her Wyoming husband.

Boutonnières were bought.

     

 Dress codes were outlined, and the chapel filled with family members, friends, ward members and neighbors.

Even Brother Cazier, practiced and played to help us envision another town, miles away--a deep and dreamless sleep with cloudless stars going by.

Again, for video coverage try President Cazier's blog,  (scroll partway down, look for play arrows!)

 "An inspiring time was had by all, and Sister Virginia served!" (following the style of Great Grandma Mary Ellen Kerr Gee's Relief Society notes from years ago.) 

Since then, I have had the blessing of playing in church at least once--and Beverly played with me "Come Follow Me" in the four handed duet that Maria and I had prepared for a recital past.  I have also enjoyed a couple of nice sessions passing on the blessing of "counting, of marking fingers and playing hands separately."  I have attempted a few strikes at trying the temple organ during the Christmas season, and a couple more, afterwards, trying to tame the less than reverent stops.  One of the most fulfilling times was getting ready to practice for Sacrament meeting and finding a family of four children walking up the temple hill, sharing their experience with me of being sealed to their parents the day before.

They were from Monimbó, the ward of our Nicaragua friends, and they agreed to come to the church to help me practice.  I love drawing the children in when I play prelude, so I looked up songs from the 2014 Primary Presentation.  Inside I found a favorite number, "The Family is of God--"

(click here to listen) 

(and click here to see a music score--to READ it...great words--like the Family Proclamation in a song)

 a lovely song Sister Sherika Thomas taught the Junior Primary in Spencer Ward, maybe 4 years ago.  Together with voices not perfectly in tune, but with enthusiasm to cover over lack of experience, we sang and sang.  It reminds me of what happens to me whenever there comes a new person in the temple.  Something happens, and the song that I love becomes new, seen through new eyes. 

Another thing I need to exult about and want to give credit to Hermana Cazier:  When the Ruiz family came to the temple from Nicaragua in July, I got to spend maybe five hours with them in the temple "guardaria," the place where children wait for their parents prior to being sealed.  It does take time, and our hours were spent well.  I learned their story, we practiced hymns.  We pasted missionaries together on toilet paper rolls.  When they returned to change clothing and wait again, I wanted to help them remember moments they had in a special place they would not likely visit for awhile.  I wanted them to remember the feelings they had so they would have the courage to live true, to work and prepare for a mission or marriage when they might have more reasons to follow the ways around them.  I rummaged through drawers to find an unused journal and composition book, which they agreed to write in, to pen the special feelings of their day, and others ahead.

I did not have and could not afford to share such a thing with every visitor to the nursery.  

But when I told Sister Cazier, she went to work and has created scores and scores of homemade libretos, notebooks with a picture of our temple, and lines to scribe feelings. 

Isaiah 30: 8 "Now go, ^awrite it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:"

Each of these children (minus the ones that can not talk) has

received and penned thoughts, feelings, and hopes.  Early in January a family of several children, were sealed.  A few days afterward, Sister Ocampo, who knew the mother, told me that the oldest son, age 18, had not been planning to go on a mission right away.  But after his family's sealing, as he sat to write the things that were in his mind and his heart, he felt impressed that he needed to go, and soon.  I believe as we make time to write things of our heart, things that matter, a spirit of goodness can impress us in ways that we would otherwise not know.  Thank you for being a recipient of these things, for me.  I learn things I would not know or capture, without taking the time to write home.  Thanks for being "home," and helping us to not miss home so much--reading, and sometimes sending a quick note.  And answering if we surprise you with a weekend or other call. We appreciate you! 

Laurene and Val

P.S. So, it is Sunday, and I wanted to hear the Tabernacle Choir.  Tell me why it took us 8 + months to figure this out.  Anyway.  A great link...and a good way to start the year.  Anyone not a morning person might want to review the message.  Note: Kim Gee's husband is the second male (professional!) bell ringer from the left.  Tabernacle Choir

And here are the friends we get to follow--examples in work and in play 

 Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be ^aagreed?