Just call me Mary Poppins

At church I have officially been called to the job of my worst nightmare. Primary Chorister. This means that each and every week I get to spend a total of about an hour and 15 minutes teaching the children in our church how to sing songs from our Children's Songbook. Now, for a lot of you, this may not seem like a big deal. Obviously you haven't heard me sing or tried to watch me learn anything having to do with music. The Lord has blessed me with many talents, but music is not on the list.

They asked me if I would take this calling last week, and since then I have been a nervous wreck. I literally could not read music to save my life. Music terms? Forget it. I have no idea how to conduct (for the longest time I didn't even know that was an official procedure - I thought you just waved your arm around during the song and then when it was over you stopped). Being a convert to the church, I know a total of about 2 Primary songs. Admittedly, I am not the worst singer in the world, but don't ask me to sing a solo. All this boils down to me having no idea what I am doing as I stand up there trying to mold and develop these children and help them gain an appreciation for these gospel songs.

Thank God for the internet and the fabulous organization of our church. Turns out there is a whole church website devoted to music. You can download any song from our Hymnbook or the Children's Songbook, and you can either listen to just the music, or the music and the words, and it has the sheet music there so if you are learning to play the song on piano or organ it can help with that too. I guess I can be thankful they didn't call me to play the piano, because that would be a total disaster waiting to happen. Anyway, they also have other resources on this site, including instruction on conducting, with videos and everything.

I also found several other websites that people have put together with ideas for games to play and creative ways to teach the songs and help the children memorize the words. This was such a relief to me. Needless to say, I have spent hours online this past week searching for ideas and playing songs over and over trying to learn them.

The Primary Presidency has been of great assistance too, and they gave me 2 CDs with the songs for this year's program on them - 1 for home, 1 for the car. This CD has practically been playing non-stop, especially in the car.

The good news is, today was my first attempt at it, and I think it went fairly well. I even got a few compliments (although everyone knew I was going crazy so maybe they were pity compliments, but I prefer to think they were sincere).

The way I look at it, I do enjoy a good challenge. And they are only kids; I know they don't care if I screw up conducting or if my voice is not the best. The best part is that I will learn all these children's songs so I can sing them with my kids at home. I always want to sing the Primary songs with Madeline, and she loves singing, so we literally sing the same 2 songs, every single day.

All in all, now that I have one round under my belt, I guess it's not so bad. I'll be Julie Andrews in no time.