Sunday, October 30, 2011

Church


We made it to church today. It takes us an hour and a half to get to church. I know, I've said this already like a million times and whatever it's not THAT long. And really spending $100+ reais (about $60 dollars) each time we go is not THAT much. But for some reason I like to be whinny about it, maybe it's because we have to leave the house at 7:00am to get there in time. I don't like leaving the house to go anywhere at 7:00am, heck I don't even like to be awake at 7:00am. Oh and no matter what we're always late. Today Maria had to pee so we had to pull over on the side of the road so she could pee. It was her first experience peeing on the side of the road and it took forever.

Then there's the whole other issue that church is just hard, even if you live next door to a chapel there's no way around the fact that Sacrament meeting with little kids is the opposite of spiritual.

Our ward has no nursery and our primary has a total of 8 kids and for some reason it feels like there are 100 kids. They're not the most behaved. So I stay with Enzo and Maria because they're kind of freaked out by the other kids. There's never toilet paper in the bathroom. The children's hymn books are falling apart, literally falling apart. It seems like our chapel has been forgotten and left to rot. It's in a really sad state. Maybe we should spend an extra $60 and go there on a Saturday and clean it up. I should definitely at least bring some toilet paper on Sunday.

But I did get to go to Sunday School today, Iris stayed with the kids in Primary, and the sister who taught the class did a really good job. And when we we walked in Maria clapped her hands and said "friends" and knew exactly where primary was.

So I decided I need to be better attitude. Seriously, what the heck?! If I can't be positive about the most important thing in my life then it's going to be hard to be positive about anything else.

The primary president/teacher/music person tries really hard. I appreciate her effort. Today I told her I could help. I was reluctant to offer any help because, well no good reason other than doing nothing is so much easier.  But Christian already reserved the car for every other Sunday until the end of the year so I told her we were coming to church every other Sunday and if she wanted me to I could teach a lesson or something like that. So after church she came to me and asked is I could teach the kids the songs for the primary program. I'm just as surprised as you are that we're having a primary program, but I guess we are. It's in December. She wants me to teach the kids the songs. She's a convert, mostly everyone in our ward is, and she only knows about 3 songs that are in the Children's hymn book, the same 3 songs that are in the church hymn book, so it's hard for her to teach them the songs.

So basically this whole long post is me asking you for help because I have no idea how to even approach this. Have you ever heard me sing? It's bad. How do I teach these kids the songs they need to learn for the primary program?

3 comments:

Kaity said...

Pammy was the primary chorister forever. She taught me all the primary songs. :) Do you have a piano/ pianist? If you do, you basically just have to practice them over and over and over. If not, you can download the MP3s on the church website and listen to them that way. Lots of visual aids to help them memorize the words. Luckily Enzo can sing so he'll be able to help you. My boys would be no help to me at all.

Karen said...

I would love to help with this gig! I like Kaity's ideas. You could even play the songs on cd in primary to sing along.

Mariko said...

Yes, definitely get the songs on CD. I will send you a copy. It's totally necessary I think. Just have everyone listen to the songs tons of times.