March 29th was also the date for the first ever General Women's broadcast from Salt Lake City. Normally, it's just for women ages 18 and older. But this year, the church leaders decided to have the younger women also join. I was thinking ages 12 and up. But no...it was for all women and girls age 8 and up! Wow! Karcyn would be attending the historic General Women's broadcast and on the day she was baptized, no less.
Because of the broadcast at 5pm, the stake decided to combine all the baptisms into one session instead of two. I was surprised when it was scheduled for the 1pm time slot instead of 11am (because of the broadcast being held at the same building just a few hours later, but what do I know? I'm not in charge.)
Just four days earlier we had put our home on the market. We already had four showings. Jared and I were at the temple the night before Karcyn's baptism and I forgot about my phone. Saturday morning, I checked my cell phone around 7:50am. There was a voicemail from a realtor who called Friday evening, wanting to show the house at 10am Saturday. Craziness! None of us were dressed yet nor had we eaten breakfast. So we all flew into cleaning mode after a quick bowl of cereal and threw on our church clothes. The baptism wasn't until 1pm, but it would just be easier that way in case someone else wanted to show the house again before the baptism.
It was a super rainy day...wrapping up an extremely soggy, very lame Spring Break for the kids. We left the house at 9:45am and went on a drive. We came back around 11, grabbed a snack and before heading out at noon together, I left the house show-ready...just in case someone wanted to see it while we were gone.
Not ten minutes after we arrived at the stake center, I got a call from a realtor who couldn't give us the notice requested and wondered if she could show the house in the next 20 minutes. I told her that as luck would have it we were out and it was ready to go. Too bad there was no offer that came from my being prepared. Dang it.
We snuck some pictures in real quick before everyone had to disperse.
Jared and Karcyn gathered for the prayer meeting around 12:45. President Garrett who would be conducting the meeting went through the outline. That's when Jared realized he had forgotten to get witnesses for the ordinance. We had no family attending, like Grandpas, who could assist with that. So when he heard our friend from the ward, Joe Gold (dad of Tiffany, Karcyn's friend) announce his dad and father-in-law as his witnesses, Jared leaned forward and asked, "Hey Joe, can I borrow your witnesses?" Joe laughed and of course said yes. Jared joked, "I'll have what you're having." When asked who his witnesses were, Jared told President Garrett, "Same as Joe." That had to be a first.
All those attending the baptisms gathered in the chapel to begin. Of the six children being baptized, three were from our ward. Karcyn would be baptized with her two other friends. (The three moms are all named Jenn, too!) True to form, I was getting ready to leave the chapel with a loud and ornery JJ before the meeting even started, when the DeGraws stopped me and offered to take JJ off my hands. Ohhh, I am SOOO grateful. He has more fun with them anyway and it was a beautiful thing to actually be able to sit and hear and watch the entire thing. (I missed Cooper's confirmation because I left the room to wrestle a loud and ornery Calvin and planned on popping back into the room when it was his turn. But unbeknownst to me, they went out of order and no one thought to come find the mom and by the time I went back in, Cooper had already been confirmed! :(
Our contribution to the program was to have Jake be the pianist and played some lovely prelude :) The baptism candidates were asked to sit on the stand in the beginning. After the opening prayer, the candidates were all asked to stand up front by the podium. Karcyn was at the far end and the smallest. President Garrett went right down the line announcing the name of each child starting closest to him and working his way out. When he got to Karcyn, he paused, like he couldn't recall her name (if you're not used to saying or hearing it, it does throw you off at first). She looked at him expectantly, smiled sweetly and waved at him as if that might jostle his memory. It was so cute. He did actually remember her name. After she waved, he said, "And yes, Karcyn."
There was a talk on baptism and then the group was divided into two. The Farmington ward girls went to the baptismal font first. Karcyn was baptized last. We were honored to have our friends the McCulloughs and Morgans, who came out from Forest Grove, come to show their support.
A couple weeks prior to the 29th, Karcyn had been saying she was afraid to get baptized because of the water. Which is silly because she's been doing great with her summer swimming lessons. As she tentatively walked into the font, she started squealing a little bit. I was relieved to realize she wasn't crying. Jared was also relieved that he caught her legs before they floated to the top after he submerged her. She passed the full immersion test!
For a split second after she was baptized, I forgot that I was up next! Up to this point, I've just baptized boys and Jared's taken care of all that after-baptism stuff. I jumped up and went through the women's side and did the best I could getting Karcyn out of her wet clothing and into her dress. Not a big deal, just funny that I was a little unsure of the whole process. But it's all behind me now because that was my one and only girl!
We went back in to the chapel and watched a church film while we waited for the other group to finish their baptisms, change their clothes and join us again. When they did, we had a lovely, albeit twenty minute talk on the Holy Ghost. Then all six children were confirmed individually. Usually, the children hug their family members and shake the hands of the others who joined in the circle to perform that ordinance. Jared was our only family member, but we had friends who helped and she hugged them all then skipped back to her seat on the bench.
After the closing prayer and as we were gathering our Houghlings and saying hi to friends, a nice man came up to Jake and told him how impressed he was that Jake played all the music that day. He said that takes guts and that Jake did a great job. It was so kind of the man to tell Jake that.
As we left the church building, it was STILL pouring buckets of rain. Seriously, we could have baptized the kids by immersion in the parking lot it was raining so hard. The rest of us also got soaked!
Secretly we prayed that no more realtors would call to show the house anymore that day. We invited our friends back to the house for some light refreshments and enjoyed their company. They came and left in shifts, but we were visiting until about 4:30 when Karcyn and I needed to get going to the General Women's broadcast. That's when I realized...oops! Karcyn has a few gifts to open.
Our sweet neighbors, Pam, Chris and Emma across the street couldn't attend, but they were SO generous and bought her a beautiful silver necklace with a "K" pendant for her special day.
My parents had sent a card before they left on their mission last year with a baptism bracelet and some money that we used to get her a scripture case to go with the brand new set of scriptures we got for her. Her full name is engraved on them. They are the new 2013 version of scriptures. Jake was jealous. Karcyn was excited to finally have her own set and has been diligent about reading them.
Then Karcyn and I were off to go right back to the stake center again for the General Women's broadcast. She did great. She took notes just like I did and was telling everyone she had just gotten baptized a few hours before :)
As a side note: Karcyn got strawberry juice on the white sheer fabric of her dress. I didn't want to wash it before she wore it again to church the next day. So I just spritzed it with the Branch Basics soap (1:1 solution). It vanished before my eyes. I hung up the dress to dry (after the broadcast) and still have no idea where the stain used to be. Awesome!
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