Primary program 2019

Today was the children's primary sacrament meeting presentation, so our pew was abnormally quiet since only Rachel and Alexander were sitting with us. The other three were up on the stand ready to sing and say their lines.

We have such terrible memories these days that we couldn't quite remember who had participated in last year's primary program. We know that we went—it was the Sunday after Karen had died, so we were all pretty much a mess, which is probably why we couldn't remember much about it.

Rachel was sure that she had been sitting with us. I was almost positive that we only had Alexander with us. It took quite a bit of whispering for us to get it all figured out.

Last year Rachel, Miriam, and Benjamin participated in the primary program (leaving Zoë and Alexander to sit in the audience). Then in January, Rachel graduated from primary to the young women's program, so this is her first year not participating in the program. Also, Zoë graduated from nursery into Sunbeams so this was her first year participating in the program. I think Rachel cut some sort of wild deal with the primary last year and if she participated in a small singing group she wouldn't have to say a line (and it surprised me that she would pick singing over speaking, but there you have it).

So, that was last year.


This year we had Rachel and Alexander, our bookends, sitting with us and the three middle kids up on the stand. And they all did great.

Alexander was actually very engaged with what was going on. He did ask to colour for a little bit—"Need dubbo?"—but he didn't ask to nurse (which is, like, a miracle). He wanted to find each of the kids and kept watching for them to say their parts, which they all did very well.

Zoë's line was: "I can be like Jesus by helping sad people feel better." But, of course, she couldn't remember her line (even though she's the one who came up with it in the first place and even though she knows Benjamin's line by heart) and had to be prompted. But that's alright because Sunbeams are cute up there no matter what they do.

She was sitting kind of behind the pulpit, but I could see her and smile at her when I leaned waaaaay over on the bench to colour with Alexander.

Benjamin's line was: "Jesus was baptized. I can be baptized." He delivered it well, even if it was a little grammatically awkward (he couldn't have at least joined the two sentences together?!). He also sang all the songs! This was his first year not staring off into outer space for most of the program so we were very pleased.

Miriam's line was: "The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes it possible to live again and be with our families together." She's battling this silly cold we have at our house, so she wasn't pleased with how her voice sounded, but she did just fine. She also sang the song Gethsemane in a "small group" (which really was quite a large group). They did a great job!

It was quite an enjoyable primary program and the only time I teared up was when Zoë was saying her sweet little line about helping sad people feel better. She's not always the...happiest...of children but she has been obsessed with making sad people feel better for years (which means the bulk of her life). She's always reassuring people that "it's okay to make mistakes" and she is a very generous at sharing when she knows it will keep someone from feeling sad and when we once were taking some cookies to a funeral (about two years ago now, I suppose), she asked why and when I told her it was so that we could help cheer up some people who were feeling sad she asked if we could bring a cookie to every sad person in the world.

I don't know why her line took my by surprise like it did. But there you go.

Still, that's the only part I teared up at...instead of messily bawling through the entire program, like I did last year.