Last Friday--highlights and frights

Friday, September 11th, was a busy day!

Wade and some other Boy Scouts helped with a special flag ceremony at school that morning.  (Thanks to friends Chris and Tami for the picture!  Wade is in the red shorts.)

That night we went to the high school football game and enjoyed watching Rhiannon play in the band.  She's on the end of the mallets.  (Many thanks to the Murphree family for letting me post this!)  During a second performance, one of Rhiannon's sticks broke--she just kept right on playing with her other hand, haha!  What a trooper!

I personally didn't take any videos because I was distracted by these...  Those are seed bugs, folks, and they were at the game in abundance.  It was crazy!

Despite the bugs, we had a great time and enjoyed being there.  The 9/11 ceremony at halftime was nice, too.  

Two other special events occurred that weekend.  On Saturday, Rhiannon and I went to her friend Nik's baptism.  He is the drum major for the high school band and has a lot of Mormon friends.  A few weeks ago Nik had attended the missionary open house that Rhiannon helped with, and he sought out the missionaries after that.  Rhiannon played the piano at the well-attended baptism and did a great job!  My favorite thing was that the whole front row at Nik's baptism was taken by high school friends, there to support him. 

The next day we snuck out of church after Jason's Sunday School lesson and drove down to California City for a missionary open house/luncheon.  Our friends the Okerlunds (of New Year's Eve party fame) are sending their son Brighton off to the MTC today to serve in the Philippines.  After he got his mission call, he and his family had just 3 WEEKS to get him on his way, but they made it!  He will be a great missionary!

Missionary Open House

Over the past couple years our ward has done open houses at our church building, where we invite friends and neighbors in the community to come on by, tour the building, and find out more about what we believe.  Last weekend another one was carried out, but this time the teenagers in our congregation did much of the teaching and organization.

Rhiannon put a lot of time into this, easily 10 hours (enough for a Personal Progress project--yay!).  Her class was asked to do a presentation on the Book of Mormon, and she organized their portion and got help from the other girls in her church class.  Other rotations that the youth taught included the family, Christ's Atonement and the plan of salvation, Joseph Smith and the First Vision, priesthood ordinances, and modern-day prophets.  Jason and I helped the Beehive class and prepared presentations centered around the Family Proclamation.

After a summer of planning, we showed up at the church on Saturday, got our areas ready, and waited.  Our bishop, Bishop Washburn, and our full-time sister missionaries met with all the presenters in the chapel before it started for a short meeting, where they encouraged the youth to be courageous, let the Holy Ghost teach, and not fear.  It was cool!

So at 4:00 pm we began and didn't stop for almost 2 hours.  We had 8 groups come through!  It was a very positive experience, even though we felt a little silly saying much of the same things over and over again.  Initially, we'd been a little grumpy about how much time this activity was taking up, but I'm glad we had the chance to do it and got over our grumpiness quickly!

The gospel is true!  God loves His children!