We did it!

We managed to pull off giving talks while not needing to remove any kids during Sacrament! I wasn't so sure it would happen that way, but it worked out. Tyler gave his talk first & then I gave mine while Dave sat in the congregation with the little kids. After the Young Women did a beautiful musical number (I'm not sure who their leader was, but she sat up in the front row facing them & sort of singing along with them, all the while tears welling up in her eyes with pride...she made me tear up, too, with the pride that you could see brimming out of her! What a great leader!!), Dave & I switched off & I sat with the little kids.

The talk Tyler chose to do was on personal revelation. I didn't have anything to do with choosing this at all, so it kind of surprised me that he chose this. It was the topic I was first going to speak about, but wound up changing my mind when I just wasn't feeling it. This morning he decided to change his topic & wound up speaking about Youth Conference instead. He told everyone about his experience with it & the things they did. He even got a good chuckle from the congregation when he mentioned Bishop Ashton (our current bishop) & Bishop Burt (the bishop in our last ward) & Pres. Grant (from the stake presidency) all dressed up as Book of Mormon characters & preached to them along the hiking trail. He got the laugh when he told the congregation he "even saw Bishop Ashton there, dressed up in a skirt". :) He talked about his own hero, my brother Grant, whom he thinks the world of.

I wound up speaking about family history & generational curses & change. Yeah, you had to be there to see how it all tied in together. I got a lot of good feedback though, which I didn't expect after my flubs & turning all mushy at one point. I really tried to avoid talking about anything that would make me cry, but still my tear ducts managed to betray me yet again!

Dave amazes me with his ability to shoot from the hip! He had his talk all planned out & ready to go, but after hearing the songbirds up at the pulpit & being inspired by the words of the song, he only touched on what he had originally intended to talk about & the rest he spoke from the heart about. He wound up talking about his conversion story, telling a few funnies about the things a new convert might go through & the things he went through himself. He said something about how a Stake Center sounds more like a place to eat than a place to meet & that he learned that his bishop was not, in fact, named Rick , after calling him Bishop Rick for a week before finally being corrected. His point to all of it was for the members to be aware of the fact that they might not know if a new convert might be struggling with this new, unfamiliar world of being a member of our Church. And to be considerate of them because being a convert in a group of people who mostly grew up in the Church isn't always easy.

Dave later told me that afterwards the bishop came up to him & said there were a few people in the congregation that really needed to hear what he said. That's the best kind of feedback, if you ask me! He knows the needs & struggles of his ward family more than anyone.

Overall, it went really well. I was proud of my guys & that was really nice. :)