A new calling

So a couple of weeks ago I was assigned at church to be the primary chorister (I teach kids how to sing! Finally, my dream calling has come true...). So have I had fun practicing all the songs and learning all the words and using my skills to fulfill a purpose at church? Yes. But what I've also rediscovered is my dormant artistic skills.
A little known fact about Mrs. Ellingson is that she loves to draw. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm not particularly bad at it when I put my mind to it either. I haven't done anything too detailed lately, but this new job has kept me particularly busy. Music time in primary always has fun little games where kids come up and choose a picture (leaves on a tree, petals on a flower, etc...)on the board and read what's on the back to dictate what they will sing. Or have the creatively made pictures to help kids remember what the words are. I don't know who started that tradition back in the eons of time when singing time in primary evolved, but I don't think music time would be music time at church without those games. Anyway, this has been a perfect opportunity to start my music game/words collection. Not only that, but I've been meaning to make some things like this for family night lessons for the kids, but have never gotten around to it. Now I have a reason to do it!
Anyway, so far I've made two games: one is to help review songs (for different songs I'll have to make different dice). The second is another one I'm starting for wiggle songs for the little kids- they are zoo animals- the zoo animals have "been in their cages too long" and kids can come pick an animal that has a particular wiggle song on the back. I'll test it out this Sunday if I can make enough animals.
PS- I have fallen in love with Sarah Jane. When I was in high school, I had two choices for my creative outlets, basically. One was choir/music, the other was art. To begin with, I took an art class and choir classes. Then I had a really bad art teacher, and also figured out that art meant work, and let's be honest. I was a teenager. Choir wasn't as much work. Someday I will go back and take some painting/watercolor classes I think, because I never made it that far in art before I dropped the class. Sarah Jane makes me want to drop everything I'm doing and start drawing for kids' books. Like majorly. I can't look through her stuff too long without feeling like I'm wasting my life not creating something as DARLLINGLY cute as her stuff is.



I borrowed the elephant from Sarah Jane. It's not exactly the same, but it was too cute not to try to imitate!

Mormon Blogging

I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately. I recently read an article a friend of mine posted on facebook (that I later reposted on my own page) about this self-proclaimed feminist atheist woman who was addicted to reading mormon womens' blogs. She loved their sense of thrift, creativity, motherhood, simpleness, etc, but couldn't accurately figure out why because of her own beliefs, which she thought were opposite to theirs. It was a pretty good article if anyone is interested in reading it here.
So, then I started looking at the bloggers of the women she was reading constantly, and then reading the blogs that they followed, and the blogs that they followed and so on. A lot of things sort of rubbed me the wrong way and I had a hard time pinpointing what it was. Some, not all, of the mormon women seemed to, in my opinion, almost pride themselves in the fact that yes, they were mormon, but not a so called "main-stream" mormons. It was their beliefs in things that were different than what every other mormon believed that made them unique, stand out, more intelligent, more independent. One particular woman was in the process of applying to graduate school at BYU and was now questioning whether or not she should delete some of her previous entries for fear that if an administrator read her blog, some of her opinions could disqualify her from acceptance. Her friends than encouraged her to stand by what she wrote and don't be afraid of what anyone else thinks.
I think back on when I was in high school and the word "fake" became very prevelant. "He's so fake, I would never date him." "I can't believe she said that, she's so fake," implying that there are people out there who exist, with morals, standards, likes and dislikes, but who ignore them for the sake of popularity. It was an extension of the insecurity that ALL teenagers have about popularity. No one knows if they are popular or not, not even the popular ones. However, if I can identify others who are doing things just because they want to be popular, than I can separate myself from that and prove that I don't really care about popularity. I certainly wouldn't have said this at the time, but years later while interacting with some teenagers, I heard that same word crop up, fake. And I immediately thought, "Oh, they are just children still, and can't see that putting themselves above others in that way only brings pain."
But don't we still do that a lot? Especially as women, and especially, unfortunately, sometimes as mormon women. I think when it comes to what the world thinks, sometimes we are insecure about looking like the zombie barbie-looking housewife who's greatest concern in life is what kind of Jell-O her husband wants with dinner that night and who loves and thanks every member of the ward at testimony meeting each month and who has no intelligence, integrity, or reality in herself at all. Even to each other we tend to do it. So we dip a little bit into what the world thinks about issues and butter it on our bread a little bit to show everyone that hey, I'm mormon, but I'm real too.
Personally, I realized this is sort of like having a home in Zion and a summer house in Babylon, and it doesn't really work. It caused me to reflect back on the things I do, even in relief society or at church, and try to put myself out there as "different", when I should be putting myself out there as someone who can help and lift and serve and who doesn't care if you eat Jell-O or if you breastfeed your children until they are twenty or if you proclaim yourself and tell everyone that you crochet AND do photography AND blog AND teach music (....ahem....)...
Anyway, point of all this being, I just feel like God made people different. But in faith, we should all be one. We celebrate our differences, not criticize them, but we proclaim the same faith and the same standards and the same God, because we love God, and the only reason we should do anything in life is because we love Him. If we carry His name upon us, and proclaim ourselves as members of his church, than we should represent him in all that we do, be we zombie-house wives or crocheting, blogging, singing, photographers. :-)
And....going on day TWO of sever-weather school cancellation. There's probably a good reason I'm not at home all the time...