Church back at home

If there is one thing I was not looking forward to back at home, it was my parent's home ward. Something happened my last few years of high school where it got full of strange people, and hasn't really gotten a whole lot better since.

I remember my friend Alysia who was forced to move from Indy said she had a really hard time adjusting to the Utah ward her in-laws were in. She said it wasn't Carmel. Well, I kept thinking to myself this past Sunday, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Let's start out with Mom and I picking up a woman called Martha. She is a special needs sort of person. We're not sure what sort of mental illness she has, but she definitely has one. Mom, being the kind person she is, will give her rides places, but I wonder sometimes why she does. I guess for a few months she lived in a trailer at the bottom of my mom's property and absolutely drove her crazy.

We picked Martha up who was easily walking distance from the church building. She has to be easily in her 40's and 50's. She was wearing a bright blue shirt, hot pink tight legging pants, bright orange sneakers, and a helmet. Yes, you read that last part right. I guess she has epilepsy and wears the helmet in case she has an attack. Like, she went to Sacrament meeting wearing that outfit.

Sacrament meeting started out with the blessing of several children. I'm used to baby blessings, but these were not babies. I guess there was a single mom who had been inactive for awhile and recently started coming back with her mother. They wanted their children blessed. They did it just as a baby blessing would have been done, except the kids were about 4, 6, and 7 years old. Kind of different.

Second, right before the passing of the Sacrament, the bishopric got up to remind everyone the Sacrament was a time to reflect on Christ and his sacrifice and could all members of the ward refrain from using any mobile devices during that time?

Gospel Doctrine was taught by a former Bishop of mine. In fact, it was the guy who baptized me when I was eight. There was a woman I saw in Sacrament who came into Gospel Doctrine. She fascinated me. She was older and was wearing a dark pink skirt, half red/half white sweater vest, black hat with a zebra print ribbon that had red/white/blue flowers off to the side, and was also carrying a black umbrella. Mom said she is crazy. I guess when she's not at church, the rest of the week she walks around town carrying a suitcase. Odd as she may be, she is a beautiful piano player. She played a pretty arrangement for Gospel Doctrine.

In a way, I wasn't shocked at seeing this type of stuff in Mom's ward. But it did make me a little homesick for the normalcy and vibrancy of Carmel back in Indiana. Oh well, at least I could sit back, and enjoy because I had no calling right now and was not worried about having to do anything for the next month!

Then Mom ran into the Primary President as we were leaving church and mentioned to her I would happy to sub for the next month.

I should have known it wasn't going to last very long. Sigh.