Sacrament Meeting

One night this week I was just relaxing over at K.C.'s apartment with a couple of his friends and roommates when my phone started ringing. I checked the number and I had no idea who was calling me (it was a 435 number) but I figured I would answer it anyway. The man on the other end turned out to be Brother Kirkman, the 1st counselor in my bishopric. He greeted me warmly and I returned the salutation, mentioning his name so the guys I was with would know who I was speaking with. The moment I said his name though, all their heads turned and stared at me with looks of horror. I just laughed at them completely expecting he was calling about the next upcoming blood drive for the stake. After less than a minute on the phone with him, I understood their looks of horror. I had just been asked to speak in sacrament meeting on Sunday. In past circumstances this had never been a problem for me as they were only youth talks expected to last less than five minutes. I realized then that I was an adult and am expected to give adult length talks. My topic: repentance. My time: ten to thirteen minutes. Can you even imagine how excited I was? If you can't, that is good, because I wasn't excited. In fact, I was simply dreading it.

Well I kept the topic on my mind all week, pondering what I could say, scriptures I could read, and stories I could tell from conference talks. Each night I always had something better I could be doing rather than writing my talk despite knowing the Lord of the Rings marathon was going to occupy my entire Saturday. Friday I finally decided to start on something and looked up different talks and ideas listed on the "Prepare a Talk" feature on www.lds.org. (FYI: this option worked great! I highly suggest it!) The talks were insightful, but I was still not sure what I was going to say for ten whole minutes! Sunday morning rolled around and I still had not written anything concrete down. The night before I had pulled together some scriptures, but did not have any real organization to what I was going to say. Needless to say I did not get very much sleep Saturday night/Sunday morning.

K.C. was great to me this morning and made me breakfast so I could keep writing my talk instead of coming up with something to eat. It was delicious comprising pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, and orange juice. Man, he is an amazing cook! Sacrament meeting came around and I delayed for so long going up and sitting on the stand. Luckily, K.C.'s roommate Dave was also speaking so I had a friend up there to sit with. Abby, Megan, Tessa, Rachel, and K.C. all sat near the back as we always do so I wasn't concerned. Halfway through the prelude music though, they all stood up and moved to the second row. Yah, that isn't intimidating at all. Surprisingly, I was not very nervous as the meeting started, but did not expect that feeling to last. Brother Kirkman was conducting and with it being the beginning of the semester, took up much more time than normal doing various announcements and ward business, which was awesome.

The songs were long, and with the passing of the sacrament, my nervousness did not increase at all. Emily first spoke on faith, and then it was my turn. I got up in front of the microphone and began. The words seemed to just flow from me and I hardly felt scared at all! It was wonderful!! Oddly enough now, I think I would rather give a normal talk instead of a youth one anytime! By the time we sang the intermediate hymn, Dave only had about 5 minutes left to speak which he was perfectly fine with. Anyways.....overall, this was not as bad of an experience as I was expecting. I think the best part of it is the fact that it is OVER!! Woohoo! I'm so excited to be done with that for the year! Woot Woot! And if you care, I just had an outline of my talk and I would be willing to send it to you if you would like. The Church is true!