Nathan's Primary Talk

It was a good thing I cleaned off the kitchen counter last Sunday when I got home from Utah or I would have never known that Nathan had been assigned a talk in primary for the following Sunday. With all my best intentions it was still Friday afternoon before the two of us sat down to come up with a talk. The assigned theme was "the scriptures teach us about Heavenly Father's plan". For family home evening a couple of weeks ago we had a picture lesson on Heavenly Father's plan so I asked what parts of the plan he remembered and this is what we came up with: (Notice the deep breath in the beginning and the A-men at the end - I'll explain in just a bit)



It was his idea to do it ten times (said emphatically with 10 jazzy hand fingers) and by the time we got to the 6th time I thought to record it. The previous video was his 8th time. I was so impressed with his ability to remember it so quickly but I think it was because he already knew the information he just needed to practice it in talk form. He loved seeing himself do it and even perfected a couple of things (which can be seen in the following video) like not smacking the Book of Mormon down when he was done with it, not burping (which you can't hear well in the video but is the cause of all the laughter) and by the end he was also saying "Jesus" instead of "geez".



After practicing I kept the camera rolling as he came over and sat on my legs and the following conversation came about. It's fun to see his understanding of what has been taught in family home evening, nightly scriptures and primary lessons.



After going over his talk the full 10 times that he had planned I said something to the effect that now it was stuck in his head and he would never forget it. He responded by covering his ears and with wide eyes, raised eyebrows and a deep voice of oh-my-goodness questioning asked if we could put tape on his ears so the words wouldn't escape from his brain.

When Sunday came he was up bright and early and exclaimed that he couldn't wait to do his talk. I was crossing my fingers that his enthusiasm could hold long enough to get through sacrament meeting and to the primary room without turning into complete fear. Knowing how socially shy my Nathan can be, I have taught him that when he starts to feel scared to take a deep breath, two if he needs to, and then to let the Holy Ghost help him. When we got to church early so that he could practice at the pulpit in the primary room there were some men there setting up the chairs. He immediately kicked into shy mode and did not want to do it. After sitting by me for a minute while I reminded him that when it is time to do his talk that the room would be full of people, he walked up to the microphone, took a deep breath and did it. YAY!! Even if he had not done his talk in primary that day I would have been completely satisfied with his bravery at that moment.

He made it through sacrament meeting. It was finally time. He sat up in the front without coercion. He stood when it was his turn. He took a quick breath which was probably only visible to me because I was watching so closely and could tell from his shoulders rising and falling. He spoke each sentence clearly, ending with a satisfied "A-men". When he was instructed to sit with his class he marched over to the piano where I was sitting and said with head held high, "The Holy Ghost helped me and I wasn't even scared!"