First Sunday

Today we had church at home. It worked out better than I thought it might. Derrill conducted and I lead the music. Princess slept through all of it. Prince did well for the first part and we survived the rest. [Derrill – Oh, did we? I’m relieved.]

We had an hour of Sacrament meeting, the sacrament, two talks and singing. We did not get to nursery today, but Derrill and I did do some scripture study of the New Testament for our Sunday school class. We had a great discussion and it went well. We are planning on reading the lesson ahead of time for next week.

Our mission president said that Sacrament would be most important and that Sunday school would be more like scripture study and that worked out well. We are having some “excitement” planning together some things together.  Some things we think need planning and some things we don’t and getting those mixed up between us.
-- Joy

As far as we know, this is the first meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Yola, Nigeria ever. We spoke about the Atonement. Joy focused on how Jesus overcame sin and death and what that means for each of us. I addressed God’s love in forgiving us, our love for Him, and how loving God leads us to repentance and forgiveness.

It took a little bit to convince Prince that this really was church, as opposed to Jesus time, family home evening, or any of the other times we talk about the gospel at home. When we took the sacrament, though, he was pretty convinced this was real. It is much harder to be in charge of a meeting AND keep your children reverent, particularly when there are only two of you so one of you has to be up and doing something at every point.

We also took the occasion to dedicate our home – a special blessing or prayer asking for His Spirit to be in our home as we strive to serve Him. Despite the challenges, I felt the Spirit attending our meeting. [Joy – I did too, off and on, particularly at the beginning.]

And so we have now been in Yola for one week.
-- Derrill