Primary Overload

For the past few weeks I've been the Primary Prescounsechorister. That means that I have been filling the shoes of the president, counselors, secretary, and chorister. This has been fine since our branch basically dissolved at the beginning of the summer and the only children left in primary were the House children, Keji & Farayella, and Rachel for a grand total of 8 children (when they all show up). And church is only 2 hours long because we are so few in number so I only had a half hour with the kids each week, anyway.

So while I'm technically only the secretary (and I use that in the most respectable way possible...meaning I don't usually act in so many capacities so am "only the secretary" not that I'm "just a secretary, that's all"), it hasn't been a terrible burden to run the entire primary while everyone else has been gone.

I was very happy that Michele came back from the States this week, though. We had 8 new children in primary, which doubles our numbers. It was a little bit crazy and I was happy to not have to deal with the craziness alone.

The Cummings family came for the first week. They have seven kids, but only 4 are in primary. Their youngest is Rachel's age, so Rachel went to nursery today so that she could play with her new friend. She is very excited to have someone more on her level. The Perrys also moved in, and they have 4 children in primary, as well. I knew they would be moving here but I didn't know when. They kind of surprised me (I was expecting the Cummings, so wasn't quite as shocked when they walked in).

The Perrys sat in front of us during Sacrament Meeting and Rachel was quite fascinated with their little baby for a while. I guessed the baby's age right on. She's 9 months old--which means she was born in October last year. I was pretty sure she was an October baby judging by her size and skills. Andrew was impressed with my baby-age-guessing skills.

Primary went well, though. I spent last night making visuals and choosing pictures from the Gospel Art Picture Kit to help the kids learn My Eternal Family. We are so far behind in music. Our chorister disappeared somewhat suddenly. We were expecting her to leave in May, but she ended up leaving sooner than we thought. It's completely understandable because she learned she had cancer so went back to the States for treatment; still, it left us a little understaffed and we never quite recovered. We kind of scrambled for a few months, trying to decide what to do and just never ended up deciding.

Today, though, we learned the first verse and chorus of the song and I think the kids have it down fairly well. It helped that the Cummings came in already knowing the song and they sang out loudly and bravely. Three cheers for the Amman, Jordan Branch!

I know we have a few kids that still have yet to return from the States, but most of those kids have already turned 12...so I wonder if this will be our primary for the next year or if we're due to have a few more families join us...it will be interesting to see. And I'll certainly be glad when our presidency will be reunited and acting in full-force once again!