I woke up at 6am on Saturday after not getting to bed until almost 11pm on Friday.

I watched both National Treasure movies in the morning before I went to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to play their organ for about 2 hours. I love the organs at St. Joe’s, there are three there, you can play both of the organs separately or play both at once as if they were one. I also love the acoustics at that beautiful church, it almost reminds me of the Tabernacle on Temple Square because of the fact that you could hear a pin drop with out the aid of a microphone.

I came home and watched a documentary on the Statue of Liberty before I left for the Neenah building for a branch activity. I left with enough time to rehearse one the organ for sacrament meeting for Sunday. I chose the hymns for sacrament meeting as well as practiced some more of my Sousa marches, which I love so much.

Due to the potential for bad (not for me) weather, our branch activity was moved from High Cliff State park to the Neenah church building. We grilled out using a huge charcoal grill about 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep made out of an oil barrel. The wrapped up around 8pm to clean up other things. We all had a wonderful time playing volley ball and tossing water balloons at each other.

I got to bed around 9:30pm.

I woke up on Sunday at 5:30am, got ready for church and had a nice breakfast, a rarity for me.

I rehearsed on the organ for about 2 hours before I went to Branch presidency and Branch council meetings.

In priesthood, the entire Elder’s Quorum presidency taught us about baptism from the Joseph Fielding Smith manual. It was nice to see the topic of baptism and the sacrament intertwined, something that I feel a lot of people don’t realize go hand-in-hand. it was nice in the sense of being in a YSA branch that some day we will become fathers and will baptize our future children.

During Sunday School, we had a lesson on the book of Psalms in the Old Testament. We compared how the psalms are like our modern day hymns. We also discussed Doctrine and Covenants 25:12 and how our hymns are prayers unto God.

In sacrament meeting, our hymns were some of classics of the Church:

  • Opening 239 Choose the Right
  • Sacrament 175 O God, the Eternal Father
  • Intermediate 294 Love at Home
  • Closing 252 Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel

We had two beautifully prepared talks given in sacrament meeting. Our first speaker was Elaena Duffy who spoke on the importance of faith through messages shared in General Conference. Our second speaker was Brother Bound, a member of the high council who spoke on hope, a message that President Kindt was inspired to have us hear. The spirit today was so strong.

After the 3 hour block, we had a linger-longer so we could eat up all of our left over food from the activity on Saturday. There wasn’t a lot, but the chance to talk to everybody was wonderful.

I came home and tried another suggestion that the AppleCare support guy emailed me and the issue with not getting the drivers for my iPhone installed on my family computer persists.

I also watched Music and the Spoken Word today with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. The choir celebrated the beginning of their 86th year of broadcasting Music and the Spoken Word by singing “The Morning Breaks,” one of the songs performed on the first broadcast 86 years ago. The rest of the broadcast was about how we all have the potential to become great and to see others as they may become.

Life is a long walk on a long road, and we never know what the future may bring for those within our influence.