Monday, October 26, 2020

Understanding the Sacrament

 We started "normal" church again this week. Not really normal, but we have in-person Sacrament meeting every week now! It's so crazy! It seems like so long ago that we woke up and drove to church...

Our new schedule has Sacrament meeting in the (gasp) morning! Ok, 10:30 isn't THAT early...but it does cause a showering crisis in our family. Years and years ago, we quit doing showers and baths on Saturday, because the kids always managed to get dirty again by the time we went to church. So, we do our cleanin' up for church Sunday morning. And getting 8 showers done in time for 12:00 church is just about right. 10:30 church is where we need to be pretty focused to get it done on time. Sigh :)

As we were taking the sacrament this week, a thought entered my head which I presume was the whisperings of the Holy Ghost. I realized that the little kids probably didn't understand the sacrament prayer very well, and it might be more meaningful if we translated it together. So for our Primary lesson, we got the videos of the sacrament prayers and went through it one sign at a time, one phrase at a time. The kids and I signed along with the video, over and over again until we knew it all.

Some of the signs were tough even in English. None of the younger kids knew what "benefit" means. (This is the sign used in "bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all who partake of it".) They totally struggled with the opening, "O God, the Eternal Father." What does "O" mean? Yeah, it's not a word we use a lot in every day language any more. 

After we were done with all the practice, which frankly was longer and more tedious than I would normally ask from a Primary lesson, I congratulated the kids on their hard work and told them how great it would be to be able to understand what they are saying next week. Martha laughed and said, "Or, I can just read the captions, like I do every week..."

Touche, little girl.

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