Time Has Flown By & So Have I!

We arrived in Hawaii five days ago!  Before I am current in this blog, I would like to tell a few more things about our time at the MTC.  I mentioned that I was going to play the piano for a couple who were singing for the newest senior missionaries.  I practiced and practiced and felt reasonably prepared.  It was difficult to get together since it was conference weekend and we didn't want to miss a minute of general conference and we had other things going on as well. 

Natalie's and our dear friend Paka (from her freshman year at BYU) invited us to dinner Sunday night.  It was so fun to get to spend time with her family (husband Mark, sons Levi (18)  & Deeren (7).  We hadn't seen her in over seven years.   They are very lovely  people and very multi cultural.  Paka is from Indonesia and Mark & Levi are from Haiti.  The boys were really great-so friendly & polite to us!  And especially exciting, Paka is expecting a baby girl in a few months.

Back to the piano-we finally practiced and......it was awful!!  I couldn't play at all.  I was horrified with how badly I played and, to be perfectly honest, my standards are not that high.

I think this was a brief practice on Saturday so I was wondering what to do when I realized that we hadn't prayed about it.  The next day, we had a little bit of time to practice and I suggested a prayer before we got started.  Then they did their whole program which began with the husband explaining in somewhat halting words why they were singing this song.  He had suffered from a debilitating stroke (in his mid-fifties) nearly 9 years earlier.  He had to re-learn talking and walking.  He was promised if he would read the Book of Mormon every day for an hour a day, he would learn to speak again.  He said that, for three years,  he couldn't understand what he was reading, but he kept doing it.  After a couple of years, someone suggested he try singing it as singing sometimes is easier than talking.  This was a song that they had sung before his stroke.  He still has to work hard at speaking and also has some problems with walking and such, but going on a mission is truly a miracle for them.  Now I realized that I didn't need to be perfect, I just had to play with the spirit of this amazing story.  

The song didn't turn out perfectly, but it was very beautiful.  I don't think there were any dry eyes in the room when we finished.   We even did it again the next morning for the group of us who were still there at the MTC.  It was very special to be part of their story for a short time.  And I worked up the courage to play the piano for several more hymns which the whole group sang later throughout the day (that was far easier, believe me).