Latter-Day Hymns And Institute

I love teaching (and preparing) the lessons for the Latter-day Hymns.  For one thing, our Ft. Smith YSA includes a number of very talented singers and the rest are good.  They love to sing and they engage in the lessons when we do activities.

Preparing the lessons is just a gift.  The Institute Lesson outlines just includes the authors and hymns for each lesson. I can spend a day just reading about the authors and trying to discover the stories behind the hymns.  I know more random stuff about this current hymnbook than ever will be needed in my lifetime, but I love knowing random things!

A couple of weeks ago--we invited Jason Johnson to come to share with our class about his experiences with music.  He was a professional musician before returning back to school and becoming an audiologist.  He lives in Ft. Smith ward and also serves as the high councilor over Institute.  He teared up when I asked him to share his experiences with sacred music and immediately began telling me about an experience he had leading a youth choir singing Parley P, Pratt hymns--so he came on the day we were talking about Parley P. Pratt and his hymns.  

He also taught us how to use the Meters pages at the back of the book to sing hymns to different tunes so we did that for about 30 minutes while he played.  So fun!!!  The last thing was he took the whole class to the chapel to learn a bit about the organ.

One of the hymns he had us sing was "Lean On My Ample Arm."  This actually has some very sweet words, but I had to start giggling as soon as he announced it.  This is forever tied to Tiffany Dickson when we were serving in Relief Society together.  It was the opening hymn in Relief Society one Sunday, but she had not read the agenda ahead of time when she stood up to conduct the meeting. As she began to read the title and got to "ample" the image that came to her mind made her start laughing and laughing and she couldn't get it out.  Her laughter made all of us laugh--it took a couple of minutes for us to calm down and sing the hymn--which led to some more laughter.  I took a picture and sent it to Tiffany who "loved" being reminded of that funny moment.

On other lessons, we have talked about hymns written by General Authorities like Charles Penrose....

My overall goal is to help the students love the hymns of the Church and use them in their lives to face disappointments, hard times, sin, and even happy times, whenever.

We use quotes from Church leaders to talk about the great power of music.

We studied hymns written by women like Naomi Randall-- I Am A Child of God.

I share stories about the hymns in my life--Like this one---

I grew up in Richland, Washington, and attend Church most of the first sixteen years of my life in the Jadwin Chapel.  It was a beautiful church and I love it.

In the Chapel, when I was little, there was a painting of the First Vision which hung over the Choir seats....a big picture!

When I was little, it seemed like it covered the whole front wall although in reality, it was just a very large framed piece of art.  Around 1960, a decision was made to place curtains over the painting because they didn't want people to think that we worshiped Joseph Smith and in general, our chapels do not have art work. (In my research to find this picture, I discovered that in a remodel sometime after we left, the painting was removed from the chapel.  When they were building the Columbia River Temple, someone thought to track it down and found it under the large stage in the building all rolled up.  They are said to have hung it somewhere in the temple, but I can't confirm that yet. That would be cool though.)

Back to my story---It seemed to me that as a child, many Sacrament talks seemed to focus on the First Vision--so many!! and I did not like the hymn "Oh, How Lovely Was The Morning" (now called Joseph Smith's First Prayer in the 1985 hymnal.)  I didn't care for the words, the tune, or how often it seemed like we sang that song, too.  I am sure there are hymns that you don't prefer as well.  For me, it was clearly Joseph Smith's First Prayer.

Fast forward to 2005 and our stake in Syracuse was preparing a program to celebrate the 200 anniversary of Joseph Smith's birth.  Kaye Volk, my dear friend and neighbor, had written the program and she was leading the music.  Back then, my singing was passable in a choir situation if I sat next to someone with a good voice so I decided to join the choir.

One of the hymns we were to sing was Joseph Smith's First Prayer, but we were singing an arrangement of those words with the tune of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (which for the record is one of my favorite hymns though not in the 1985 hymnal.)  There is something powerful about singing a hymn to a different tune.  It brings the words in focus in a different way and I grew to love the words as we sang it to this different tune.

One day as we were practicing after Church in the Chapel--I was overwhelmed in a brief moment with the joy that we must have all felt when we realized that our Heavenly Father and Jesus were appearing to Joseph Smith that very hour.  I am not sure how pre-mortal life is, but in that moment I felt a great feeling of joy because that meant that the restoration was beginning and I think we knew that we were going to be part of that grand time on earth.  I started to cry as I was singing and I happened to make eye contact with Kaye at the same moment and she had tears in her eyes as well.  I knew that the Holy Ghost was also testifying to her the truthfulness of this important moment in the history of the earth.

I was not praying about the First Vision nor did I have doubts about its reality.  But through singing these holy words, the Holy Ghost could bear testimony once again of this event.  That is the power of the hymns--to allow the Holy Ghost to proclaim truth to our souls.

End of story.

Last week--this happened---We had ended class singing "I Believe In Christ" with Sally playing at the piano.  Some of the students then gathered around the piano and they sang some hymns and songs together.

That is what it is all about!!!!