Primary Program

Today was our ward's Primary Program. I was so proud of the children! We have approximately 25 active children total and yet they knew and sang those songs so well.

In our very small ward, we use a lot of music to fill in the program. We taught the children all the verses on virtually every song and had 13 songs in the program.

I made it very difficult for them. They had to sing "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam" without all the jumping that they usually do. They did pretty well. I helped them along by making them hold out all the usual words that they jump at... "Jesus wants me for a sunbeeeeeeammmmmm. To shine for him each daaaaaaaaaaaaay." etc.

One of the songs was sung by my granddaughter. She is very young and when she saw everyone watching her, her courage almost escaped her. She turned red, stared down, and she said that her eyes were tearing, but she did it and I was very proud.

It suddenly dawned on me during the week that I needed to do something about singing time and so I called the counselor in charge of me. She told me that they had plans for the whole meeting, so I wouldn't need to prepare anything. I asked if I could go to Relief Society and was assured that I could. I even went so far as to tell the current Relief Society President that I would be there.

After the program and my singing time in Nursery, the counselor came to me and apologized and told me that the movie that they planned on watching was only 20 minutes long. I would need to fill the rest of the time. Thankfully the Spirit works full time and I was able to come up with a game that the children would enjoy and no singing would be necessary (my voice, at least, needed the reprieve).

I still went to Relief Society and 6 months after my release as Relief Society President, the Relief Society President got up and thanked my counselor and I for our service and gave us both framed quotes. Mine was the quote by Lucy Mack Smith, the first Relief Society President in the Church. "We must cherish one another, watch over one another, and comfort one another... that we may all sit down in heaven together" She also gave us cards signed by many of the sisters in the ward. It was very nice and I appreciated it a great deal.

I left Relief Society and went back in to Primary to play the game. It was very easy and very popular with the children. I had word/picture 8x 10 pages for all the songs that the children sang in the Primary Sacrament Program. I had used these pages to remind the children of the song they were about to sing and to help them with the words, as needed. After the program, these pages were a mess and I knew that I was going to have problems sorting them out. When we needed a game, it dawned on me that I could use those pages. I had a child come choose one of the pages. He/she had to tell me what song it was from. If they couldn't, they could choose one person from their team to help. If they guessed correctly then they threw a dice and got points for their team. (It has just dawned on me that this was a take-off of the papyrus game I highlighted earlier in my blog.) It was easy, fast to put together, and very popular.