Prayers

I need to share an experience that I had today. Back in January, I was called as the ward choir director. Choir was a huge part of my High School experience, but this calling has scared me to death. I cried every night for a week, absolutely terrified, when I was called. I started having choir practice with very few people coming, and then many of them began having meetings that prevented them from coming, and our numbers dwindled even more. We planned an entire Easter program that we never got to share because of meeting conflicts. We had to reschedule many performances because often, if one family was missing, we would be missing an entire part. Our piano player took vacations, and we ended up taking the entire summer off. I fasted and prayed about what to do. I felt like every which way I turned, I ran into walls. Our ward is very small, and we actually fasted as a ward that our ward would get some new families to move into our ward. Many people in our ward have 3 and 4 callings in order to cover everything. We found out as a ward that we were loosing at least 5 of our very strong families. Then one Sunday, we had a meeting. They dissolved one of the wards in our stake, and we got half of the ward added to ours. Our prayers were answered.

I decided to start choir practice the beginning of September. When the wards were combined, we also got a new Bishop. He was part of the new families coming into our ward, and we didn't know him at all. He had so much to do. I didn't want to bug him about Choir, but one Sunday, he called me in to talk to me. He gave me his opinion about how he felt about choir, and the direction he wanted me to go with it. I let him know that my pianist was expecting twins, and would not be able to play for much longer. I told him the day I would be starting choir practice again, and he told me he would find me someone to play the piano. I came up with a plan, and decided to move ahead. I announced practice in all the meetings, hoping things would work out. Our first practice, we had one person on most of the parts, and no one to play the piano. I tried to play and lead, and it became obvious very quickly that it wasn't going to work. One of our altos played, and it was a very unsuccessful practice.

That next week, I decided to do everything I could to try to make choir more successful. I started calling people asking them to play the piano for us. I had several people tell me no, and many who were not home. I finally called a woman I didn't know. Many people had told me that she is an amazing choir director, but no one knew if she played the piano. She does play the piano, and she was thrilled to help me out. Not only does she play the piano for the choir, but she also invited me over to share her music stash with me. She called all the people in the new part of the ward to come join us. She is amazing. Choir practice started actually being successful, but our numbers were still really small.

Today we were scheduled to sing. I have some problems with my heels, and I have to stretch them every morning before I can walk. For one of the stretches, I lean against the wall for several minutes. Unfortunately, my morning prayers are sporadic. This morning, as I was stretching, I thought it would be a great time to say my prayers. I prayed that all the music things I was stresses about would go okay. We have practice before church, and this morning, we had 6 people at practice. 3 are from the same family, and they all had very bad colds, and no voices. I was disappointed and stressed. As I was leaving, our pianist gave me the names of all the people in the new families who could help us out. I HATE calling people. I can't even call for pizza. I make my husband call, or I order online. When I got home today, I took a deep breath, and I called the people on the list plus everyone else I could think of. I explained our situation to them, and I asked them to come and help us out. I left many messages, but I also talked to several people. There was a link to the music online, and I sent people sheet music and the recording to the song so they could run through it a few times before church. We also met 20 minutes before church to run through it. We had many women, and two men at our before church practice. I ran around before the meeting passing out sheet music to the men I knew could sing. When we got up to sing today for sacrament meeting, we had a beautiful balance of women and men, and we had too many singers to fit on the two rows we had. The song was absolutely beautiful! It was truly amazing!!

This very long story has helped me to reemphasize something I have been learning for a while. There have been many experiences in my life where I have prayed for something. Often, I want whatever I want right now. I always want it in my time table. I can't think of a time when it has come exactly when I wanted it to. I usually have to wait for a while. I almost always get to the point where I wonder if the thing I am praying about will just not work out this time. There have actually been times when my faith slips significantly, and I wonder if I am being ridiculous believing that I have a Father in Heaven who cares about me. But I always keep living my life as if I do. I know that even when I am not sure, I hope he is there. I have had so many experiences in my life when months after my faith has been tried, I get the answers to my prayers in very real, very dramatic ways. I get that outpouring of the spirit that lets me know that the miracles I experience are a direct answer to my prayers, and I know that my Father in Heaven loves me. Loves me individually and personally, much in the same way that my Father here on earth loves me. I am so grateful for my testimony, and today, for my knowledge of my Father in Heaven.

Fall

I love this time of year. I love spring and fall. They are both so full change, and anticipation. I love seeing all the fresh fruits and vegetables coming out of everyone's garden. Growing up, fall was always full of food preparation. My Grandpa had a garden, and he was constantly bringing over peas to pod, or beans to snap, or corn to be cut off the cob and frozen. We bought peaches and pears every year to can, and it was always a family tradition for the whole family to gather to help out with the canning. My favorite days were when Dad was home to help us all out. When I moved away from home, I missed canning. I tried once to go to a wet pack cannery to can some peaches, but it was a horrible experience, and the peaches turned out awful! This year I have loved canning. Today, I canned by myself for the first time. We didn't get our yard put in this year, but I have been amazed at how many people have offered to share the bounty of their garden with us. I love making dinner with fresh fruits and vegetables.

I love the holiday season. For me, it starts in September. Going back to school is my first holiday, then the beginning of October, I get to decorate for Halloween. The end of October is Morgan's birthday, and Halloween, with the pumpkin carving, and picking out costumes. November is when I try to do all of my preparation for Christmas, and we usually have some kind of family get together, either with my family, or my husbands for Thanksgiving. And then the best of all, Christmas. I love the whole season. I love getting my Christmas decorations up, and I often want them up before Thanksgiving. My husband always gets frustrated, and gets after me for skipping over Thanksgiving, but I have been realizing more and more lately that I don't skip it. Thanksgiving is wound up in all of my holiday celebrations. I think one of the things that makes me think of Thanksgiving the most is when I see all the fresh produce from the gardens. I always think about the pilgrims, and how thankful they must have been for those crops. I think of the pioneers, and their first summer, and how thankful they must have been to have fresh food. What an amazing gift from God. I am so grateful that we can take a few little seeds, and with a little work, we can have enough zucchini to feed an army. I really love the Fall.