Primary Program '08

As part of our church services on Sunday, Sarah attends two hours of "Primary". One of the hours is spent with her in a class with other kids her age where they have a lesson from their volunteer teacher. During the other hour they are in what's called "Sharing Time" where they learn and sing songs, give talks, read scriptures, do little presentations, etc. Anyway, each year the primary organization (kids ages 3-12) in each congregation puts on their annual "Primary Program" presentation during the "Sacrament Meeting" portion of our worship services. Anyway, during this presentation the kids typically sing songs on a certain topic and most of the kids have very brief speaking parts where they answer a question or share a brief thought on the topic. This year's program title was "I Am a Child of God". About a month ago we were asked to ask Sarah the question "How are you being a missionary now?" and get her response and then let them know what it is. Even though we'd like to help her come up with the answer to such questions and guide her in what she says, we also like to just let her say what she feels, as she probably has something better to say than us anyway. Such was the case here. This is what she said in the program today:

"I am being a missionary now by sharing the Gospel with other people. I tell the stories of the Book of Mormon to Elizabeth. She is my friend from school. I told her if we don't interrupt we can follow heavenly Father's commandments, and get blessed. Mrs. Murphy is my teacher at school. She knows that I read the Book of Mormon every night. She doesn't have a Book of Mormon. If it's her next brithday, and I am still here, I could share new scriptures with her.
I could call Kylie and her family and say 'can I please tell you about the Gospel?' I think she would say "yes" and then I would get ready and go. I am not big enough so I might need a map."

We were of course supposed to help her practice this so she could present it. The funny thing is that she would resist whenever Mary wanted to sit down with her to go over it. Mary would sometimes just recite it to her over lunch or dinner, but Sarah didn't really want to practice it. Then yesterday during dinner she basically recited it (almost word-for-word) by memory, we were fairly floored by this. She did a spectacular job in the program reciting this. It looked like she was getting help on two occasions by looking down at the person that was there to help if she struggled, but that lady informed us afterwards that Sarah would just look at her and say something like "Mrs. Murphy now, right?" or "Kylie?" to confirm that she was saying what she had planned to say. Pretty cute. She seems to have an uncanny memory (albeit sometimes selective!) about things at times. Great Job Sarah!