At our first session we heard a letter read from the First Presidency – I only heard it once so I must paraphrase: children are to bear their testimonies in an appropriate place like Family Home Evening.
Mary moved in the pew, got up to come over and sit by me and whisper, “Again we have a Utah problem going church-wide. In our ward if 7 children bear their testimonies in twelve months, it would be a miracle. I have heard that in Utah the whole meeting may be taken up with the little ones.”
Suffer the little children to come unto me. That is the phrase that flashed through my mind. I am working to find a better one.
Arta
Management of a large group - not in my skill set. LOL. I can't stop laughing. Probably stress relief from recalling that internal struggle between my social anxiety and my "must bear my testimony to be a 'good' person".
ReplyDeleteDid children get defined by age? I hear adolescence doen't end until early 20s ...
I got up this morning to delete this post, thinking no one would be interested in this information. Since you replied, Bonnie, I continue. When Mary slipped over to talk to me on the other side of the pew at church, I asked her if she couldn't arrange to have her three kids go right up and bear their testimonies. She just rolled her eyes at me and said she couldn't get them to do it even before the letter was read.
ReplyDeleteShe didn't need to do that job for me. An 11 year old a few pews behind us was the second person up to the pulpit. Apparently he hadn't heard the letter. He bore his testimony about how his brother had saved his life when he developed hypothermia at a winter cub camp in January.
"Please tell me that is not true," I said to Mary.
She said -- it was a community cub camp, not a church one, to allay your fear on that account, but yes, it could have been a church one and the temperature dropped 30 degrees over night from freezing rain at first and then the drop. His brother saved his life.
Now that was a heart stopper for me.
To answer your question, did children get defined by age? The answer is, in the letter, no. Apparently they can get baptized at 8 but who knows what age they should be to bear their testimonies.
Good to hear that adolescence doesn't end until the early 20's. I could have used more information like that when I was a teen-ager.