Memoirs of a Primary Chorister

Those of you who know me best know that for years I have dreamed of becoming a Primary chorister. 

Side note: For those of you who aren't members of the LDS Church, Primary is what we call the children's, ages 18 months to 11 years old, organization of the church. It's basically Sunday School for children (find out more here). 

I knew Robert was meant for me when he said that his dream calling is to be Primary pianist. He completes me ;) In all three wards we have lived in since we've been married we made it a point to right away introduce ourselves to the Primary President and Bishop in the ward and immediately tell them that it's our dream to serve as the Primary music people together. Nerdy, weird, or ridiculously awesome of us? You decide :)

Anyway, right at the start of the year we were both called to the Primary. Robert as a teacher and me as the chorister. So, no, it's not the full dream of both serving as the music people, but I got my calling so my part of the dream has finally come true! :)

I love it!!! It's exactly what I expected it to be and not at all what I expected to be all at the same time. There's some things that I feel I do really well, and some areas where I struggle and am learning and growing through this calling as I have with every calling that I've been given. As I prepare for Singing Time every week I go through a roller coaster of excitement, frustration, cluelessness, humility, gratitude, revelation, worry, and relief plus a hundred other feelings in a constant cycle, but when all is said and done I am indescribably grateful for the late night to early morning hours from Saturday night to Sunday morning as I listen to talks on CD and complete the final preparations for Primary. They are some of my most spiritually in tune and enlightening times of the week nearly every week. I love it!!!

Just a few of my highlights: 

(Mainly because I haven't thought to take a picture or video of most things. Maybe someday I'll be organized enough to be like those super cool choristers that blog everything they do)

The kids punch through the tissue to pick which song we are singing next.
Obviously this is post-punching, but it's easy to take off the used
tissue paper and put new sheets on.

For Mother's Day, I got as many moms of the Primary kids as I could to make a recording of them singing their favorite Primary song and send me a picture of themselves. I used the recordings and pictures to make a video that we used to play "Whose Mom Am I?" The kids got a point if they could guess their mom before the picture was shown, the moms got a point if they didn't, and then we'd sing whatever the mom's favorite song was. The prize at the end was a gift certificate for a Mother's Day hug. Here's the example video I emailed all of the moms to show them what I was doing. I actually didn't end up including the questions and answers from the moms as part of the video. I just read them off as part of a "lightning round" at the end.

One thing I have really enjoyed doing is making the visual aids for all of the songs for the program. Here are some of my favorites.

"When I Am Baptized" modeled by Robert. I got the umbrella idea from my sister
Christi and most of the visual aids from here, but substituted some of my own.

My sister Christi has served in this calling many times. She's my go-to person when I need to bounce ideas off someone or ask for suggestions. I told her about a few of my visual aids and she asked me to send them to her, so these are the videos I made for her of "Keep the Commandments," "Nephi's Courage," and "Stand for the Right" 

P.S. These definitely are all a lot easier to handle when I'm standing up and not worrying about keeping them within view of the camera :)

BEST CALLING EVER!!!!