We finally have a child old enough to participate in the annual Primary Program! Yesterday was Raine’s debut performance and she did a fabulous job.

For the program this year, each child was given a topic and then wrote their own speaking part. Raine’s topic was the Word of Wisdom. I sat down with her to work on it and this is how the conversation went:
Me: “What is the Word of Wisdom, do you remember?”
Raine, with her best ‘why-mommy’ face: “Why did Jesus tell them to drink wine?”
— Where did that come from? I didn’t even expect her to remember that the Word of Wisdom was about food, let alone to have some deep theological questions. —
Me: “Um. Uh. Well. Um. How about you go ask your dad?”
— The look on her face told me that wasn’t going to work so I had to come up with something quick. Unfortunately, I had never heard an explanation that I really believed . . . so I made one up. —
Me: “Well, because back then they didn’t have refrigerators to keep their juice cold. So after they made the juice they turned it into wine so it wouldn’t go bad. But today we have fridges so we can just drink juice.”
— I thought it sounded pretty good, and Raine seemed to buy it. —

The part she came up with was: “I choose the right like Nephi by eating good food and not eating bad things. Heavenly Father blesses us to be healthy when we obey Him.”

During the program, we had the Junior primary kids stand along the banister, instead of at the pulpit, when they said their parts so parents could see them better (and so we could control the mic better). I was helping the Sunbeam class during the program and so held the mic as Raine recited her part . . . perfectly! . . . from memory! After that, the entire primary sang “Wise Man, Foolish Man” while the Sunbeams did the actions up front. Raine was a little more reserved than she had been in practice, but she still got those flood hands WAY up above her head. In practice, she and George looked like they were leading a Pentecostal revival during that song, it was hilarious. Raine is such a performer!

This was also my first Primary Program as a leader. Unfortunately, it was a “baptism by immersion”! I was asked to write the script, which was more just assigning topics and staying on top of parents to help their children, so it wasn’t too bad. But then, just as we were getting down to crunch-time, our president had a baby.

I haven’t been involved in a Primary Program since I was in the program as a child, so I had NO IDEA how things were supposed to run! Fortunately, the 2nd Counselor had been involved somewhat recently so we were able to wing-it pretty well. I think it all worked out OK in the end — I don’t know for sure, like I said, I was sitting with the Sunbeams so I really didn’t see much of it. DJ said it was the BEST performance he has ever seen . . . but he may be a little biased!