Caught a bus, made it to church on time, super proud of myself. Also forgot it was May 1st and, therefore, Fast Sunday, and had yogurt before leaving the house (but not the candy bar - Bounty! - in my bag). Slightly less proud of myself, but not cranky. So.
The meeting was a little bit crazy. The accompanist is highly talented and overdramatic; it’s not a BAD thing to play the hymns as written! People can sing the parts to the music when you do! (FYI, floppy-haired drama piano dude.) One of the first testimonies was from an older gentleman (my age? Urgh) with a fantastic beard who talked like a preacher from the early 1900’s. I’m fairly certain that one is not meant to preach to or ‘exhort’ the congregation while bearing testimony. Love the British accent, though. A slightly more confusing accent was up next; he looked like a Spaniard and greeted us in Spanish but his English bore traces of Scottish (verified when he talked about dedicating the ground to bury his father’s ashes in the garden of his mother’s house in Scotland). Great story: he talked about how this experience showed him his family is afraid of inspiration, and testified that following the Spirit is actually a revolutionary concept. The things we take for granted are definitely strange and new, sometimes!
Then an elderly man in a motorized wheelchair came up the aisle, shoved a stroller out of the way that was (literally) in the spot he wanted to ‘park’ in next to a bench, and proceeded to run over a little girl’s foot (twice) while trying to navigate the chair to where he wanted it. He had no idea - at least not until she started wailing. He caught on at that point.
An earnest young man said, as part of his testimony: “I believe in righteousness.” I haven’t thought all the way through that yet, but I love it.
It seemed like almost everyone who got up mentioned when they had been baptized, and a few counted down the anniversary. Justin was visiting from Arizona (he invited everyone to come visit him in the States) talked about a time he was having “a discouraging, but not disheartening, experience”, and I thought that was so profound. Adds some perspective, and a measure of control, even when we’re having some of our hardest times, yeah? He went on to talk about how the Lord is always mindful of us and the things we’re going through. Then a young dad got up, and mentioned how, during an episode of sadness he had the (very normal) thought: “This too shall pass.” However, he was then edited by the Spirit, which revised the thought to: “This too is a gift.” He said that every moment of this life is a gift; it has literally been given to us. Then he bore testimony of the gifts of the Lord and the Spirit and I thought: what about giving all the moments of our own lives as a gift to our Heavenly Father? Give Him the happy moments to share, and give Him the sad/difficult moments as a display of trust that He will know what to do and will help us get through them.
It was cool that nobody was blasé about their testimonies. They were sometimes slightly inappropriate, but what they were saying was always heartfelt and important to them.
Somebody quoted Sister White from the April 2022 General Conference, on how waiting on the Lord is and should be a sacred place. (I need to go read/listen to that talk. Well, all of them - I was a little out of it this last Conference - and that would be a good one to start with.)
So when I looked back at my notes - I took notes! - I realized that I have a complete Sacrament Meeting talk here, made up of concepts and connections from things people talked about in their testimonies. It was fascinating, and quite lovely. I’ll have to report back (I will probably not report back) if I ever get the chance to give that talk.
Oh, and in this ward the sacrament was at the end. I suppose that might be tricky for some, but after a meeting of testimonies and wonderful moments (even with children shrieking - and not just the one who’d had her foot rolled over!) I felt well-prepped to take the Sacrament.
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