Early Singing, Research and a Party! 16 May 2016

The Elijah Choir is enjoyable, and I like the music we are singing. One requirement that makes joining difficult for some is the 6:15 practice on Monday morning to prepare to sing in the 7:30 a.m. Mission Devotional. Blessedly I am a morning person, so this practice and performance is less of a challenge for me than the 4:15 p.m. Wednesday practice.  We sang a beautiful arrangement of "O, Thou Kind and Gracious Father".  The morning practice made a noticeable difference in the eventual performance of the piece.  In addition, I enjoyed listening to two of the young elders who each played beautiful, complicated classical pieces before and after the rehearsal.

I do not think I have mentioned the young elders before.  These young men have been excused from regular proselyting mission service because of serious health problems.  They provide a lot of technical support for the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission and most of the male voices for both the Elijah Choir and the branch choir.

There were numerous speakers at the Devotional, including one sister who spoke of having a question in her youth that I had also:  why doesn't God care enough about us in this day and age to
provide a prophet?  The sister said that when the missionaries taught her and mentioned latter-day prophets, she said, "Prove it!"  and, of course, they did so to her satisfaction. In my case, I was just overjoyed to learn that there was a prophet today, and that there had been since Joseph Smith's First Vision in 1820. I had already had several spiritual experiences that had prepared me to rejoice in the knowledge of a modern-day prophet. And 42 years later I am here serving a family history mission in Salt Lake City! I am so grateful for the way God's plan and purpose has unfolded in my life.

Training today was on adding Memories to Family Tree, and then on Research. I was surprised that I do have some cousin research to do, and I got started on that, attaching sources and documents whenever possible.

The Party this evening is a monthly branch congregation activity, welcoming a new set of missionaries and saying goodbye to those that are leaving. We had some entertainment tonight by a folk-song group called Blue Mountain. They were quite good.

In this mission we often talk about this being a bubble--probably the closest place on earth at present to the city of Enoch. I hope someday to serve here with my sweetheart!