It’s Adam’s theme, and he does it well. But I hope you all will indulge me in a little sweetness of my own.      

The choir was scheduled to sing today, so I chose to sit on the stand, where I hoped not to be too distracting.* This afforded the opportunity to sit close to the speakers and observe the audience.

Sacrament is prepared by the priests. One of the priests is in in his sixties. It is his first time. He was recently tracted out by the missionaries, an uncommon occurrence any more, and his whole family has embraced the Gospel. He baptized his daughter last week.

The speakers are an older couple and their daughter. All are about to depart on missions. The daughter is leaving for a regular proselyting mission and the parents are leaving for a family history mission in a third world country. The daughter is a close friend of Leia.

The daughter talks about why she is going on a mission. She knows it is not required of her. She has wanted to go since she was eight. When she was eighteen, she felt impressed to begin intensive preparation, even though she had another three years to go before she was old enough. Four months later the minimum age was lowered to nineteen.

Her mother was eight when the missionaries tracted out her family. The whole family joined. The mother tells us she has was an extremely shy girl. She was thrilled at her first youth dance to be asked to dance three times by one of the boys. She is sure he was handsome. She cannot describe him, because she was too shy to look higher than his shoes. (They were handsome shoes.)

There are many visitors in the audience. Part of it is the farewell and part is the upcoming holiday. I notice a couple making very happy faces at a visiting infant. Their own youngest is three and they aren’t planning any more. They are beginning to make the dread transition to middle age. I think it will wear well on them.

Sunday School includes a discussion of the 1978 revelation. The instructor talks about how joyful it was for the Church, though of course he was not himself born yet. I feel old as dirt.

The Priesthood lesson in High Priests Group (naturally, Jedi meet with the High Priests) is on missionary work. It is based on the talk by Elder Gifford Nielsen from the last conference, and our crusty old instructor insists that those reading the excerpts pronounce the exclamation points clearly. He observes that the work is hastening.

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*Of course I sing with the choir. I have a fine bass voice. Or, at the flick of a switch, I can sing a respectable second tenor. The flexibility is appreciated by our choir director, though she notes that I could work a little more on my breath control.