We have now had three Sunday's with church at home. I feel incredibly blessed because while we miss the opportunity to worship together with our fellow saints, we have loved the opportunity to worship together as a family. It has been a unique experience. I wanted to share a few of the things we have learned and some of our experiences.
Our first week Shantel and Lydia built a stand and microphone with chairs for us to use. We've put this up every week.
Each week we have been able to begin by singing a song and then I have been able to bless and pass the sacrament to our family under the Bishops authorization. It has been spiritually uplifting to partake of the sacrament and for the kids to be so close to watch me break the bread and bless the bread and water. I have also felt the forgiveness of the Savior as I have repented and partaken of the sacrament. I am grateful for the Savior and the opportunity to repent and improve.
For the first week, Austin shared his talk from Primary a few months ago.
Shantel helped Caleb share his testimony.
Then Lydia also helped Caleb give a talk that they worked on together.
Week two and three have been similar (although week 2 we did it super late because I had a Zoom meeting for Self Reliance and a Zoom meeting for ward council). We have partaken of the sacrament and then had a few messages/testimonies for sacrament meeting and then sharing a primary lesson.
Shantel has also done a singing time with the kids (either on Sunday or working on the monthly song during the week). This was week two where she had a fantastic primary song singing time planned out.
Another cool thing that has come about is this: Come and See, a Home Centered-Podcast Supported Gospel Doctrine. We have been telling Wendy and Sam for quite some time that they should start a gospel podcast. Of course, they have not listened- but you could see in their eyes they were considering it. On Saturday night before the first church at home Sunday Josh Rencher texted and let us know he had convinced Sam, who is a gospel doctrine teacher right now, to finally make a podcast to send out to his ward members to listen to. He asked Shantel if she would make a logo. The first podcast was amazing, but was just missing Wendy. Starting week 2, Wendy has joined in and it is amazing. I am grateful for their righteous example. I loved week three learning about "Mighty Prayer."
On March 29th it was fast Sunday (with General Conference the next weekend). President Nelson invited all members, and the entire world to participate in a global fast for relief from the physical, emotional and economic hardships from the coronavirus. Shantel and I were grateful to join our fast and our faith with those throughout the world. We were also talking the kids about our fast and even though we did not ask them, both asked if they could fast too. They have never done anything like that, but it was so wonderful to see them grow spiritually. They are little, so they both fasted for breakfast and prayed with us for help. Lydia donated $0.37 of her own money for a fast offering. It has been interesting to see them through this time. They understand what is going on to some extent and have seen how the world has changed in the last few weeks.
With everything going on we also worked on making a temporary budget adjustment until the effects of COVID-19 are no longer so impactful/the budget impacts are no longer there. While we are fortunate right now to have all of our income, we still had to make some tough decisions. We had to increase the food budget to allow for increased costs and because we can no longer get things discounted that we typically would (bread for example). We adjusted that with a few other things and had to find things to sacrifice temporarily. One of the things that we felt strongly that we should do is to double our fast offering. With so many losing jobs or suffering, we felt it was important to try and double our effort, even if it is not so large.
Shantel is also a gospel doctrine teacher right now. Emphasis on right now because just this last week the Stake President asked to meet with Shantel and called her to be the stake primary president. I'm sure we'll have more to say on that later, she is working on calling counselors now. This last week she was asked to put together a video with a short Sunday School thought. She did an amazing job and shared a message from Omni about turning to Christ.
Lastly, on the 29th we wanted to go and give Bruce a "social distancing" birthday celebration since his birthday is the 30th. We got Amy, Kevin, and Wendy and Sam to join us. We all drove to my parents house and sang happy birthday from our cars while they sat on the lawn. We threw him his presents (after using disinfecting wipes on them first) and then he opened them. We sang happy birthday one more time and then headed off. It was odd for a birthday party, but hopefully Bruce knows how much we love him. We gave him a super fun game (Carcosonne), so it will be super fun when we can visit again and play it with him.
That is it for church at home for March. We are excited for general conference, which will bring some semblance of normalcy since you usually watch that from home anyway, although it will be a bit odd with only the speakers there.
