Speaking in Sacrament Meeting

Our family spoke in Sacrament meeting a couple of weeks ago.  The bishop asked our whole family to speak and assigned us the topic of "The Power Of God."  Wow!  We decided that the boys were still a little bit young to give talks.  Josh probably could have done it, but he's super shy. I didn't want to traumatize him, so he got to sit with Grandma and Grandpa Smith instead.

It was the first time we'd ever had the girls speak with us.  They did such an amazing job!  Alison went first.  She wrote her own talk about the power of God - how she learned what it meant and times when she's seen it in action.  She did a great job.  We really practiced hard at getting her to speak slowly so that everyone would be able to understand her and it worked! 

Nicki went second.  I helped her a little bit with the content of her talk, but the wording was all hers.  She loves speaking and bares her testimony nearly every chance she gets, so she wasn't nervous at all.  She was kind of antsy sitting on the stand for the whole meeting, but she made it through.

After the girls, I spoke.  I introduced the family a little bit before speaking.  Then, I basically shared a lot of personal expereinces when I'd felt the power of God in my life.  I think my talk went pretty well, except that I cried through the whole thing, and I went a little longer than I wanted to. 

Dave was the concluding speaker.  I'd heard him practice it several times, so I know that he had to cut a couple of things out.  Sorry, Dave!  He did a good job, but I guess he didn't feel very good about it.  When he sat back down after he was finished, he leaned into me and whispered, "Tough crowd."  It made me laugh.  (Seriously - I KNOW!  You should have seen them during my Gospel Doctrine lesson last week.  They're brutal sometimes!  By the way, Dave is the Ward Mission Leader and I teach Gospel Doctrine.)

Anyway...it was a good experience for us all to work on our talks together and to sit up there on the stand as a family.  Now, we're officially initiated as members of the Rosewood Ward.