Today was Ethan’s big BIG day! The day of his baptism, and his first step back to our Heavenly Father’s presence. Ethan has been going back and forth about whether he wanted to be baptized or not. His main fear being that he didn’t want to go all the way under water. But he finally made up his mind to do it.
The day was super crazy. We spent all morning getting ready, and we got to the stake center about 30-40 minutes early. Ethan’s baptism was scheduled to be the last one of the day, and we were to be in the chapel. There was another group in there when we got there so we just hung out for a bit in the foyer trying to keep the kids reverent (which wasn’t happening) so we were trying to keep them at least quiet enough that they wouldn’t bug the other groups in the church, and Liesl took tons of pictures.
Ethan with his two grandma’s.
Dinah and Kyle making funny faces.
And here’s our family, minus Chloe (who happened to be napping in auntie Tiffany’s arms).
Despite most people being there so early, we ended up starting rather late. Liesl and Laurel went off to another room to practice playing and leading the music together. Liesl ended up saying that she didn’t even know the “Baptism” song let alone know how to play it, and Karen didn’t have her glasses that she needs for reading music with her so she didn’t feel confident enough to take over for that song. So we ended up asking Sister Graham to play that one for us. We were waiting for Debby and Jeff to arrive, and when we called to find out where they were, they were barely in American Fork, so we decided to get started without them.
We started out by singing “America the Beautiful”, which was Ethan’s pick. I showed him all the other songs that seemed to relate to baptism and he was still set on having “America the Beautiful” as the opening song. 🙂 Then Auntie Tiffany said the opening prayer. Then mom gave the talk on baptism, which was her first talk ever! And her eye sight must be going on her, because the notes that she had typed up for her talk she had in rather large font and she was still having difficulty seeing them. Then we went down the hall to the room with the font in it. The little kids all got down in the front. There was pretty much just our kids, and their cousins and Ethan’s best friend Jacob, so they were able to all sit in one straight line next to the glass. When Kyle took Ethan down into the font, I remember Dinah and some of the other kids just getting the giggles. It made me giggle too, which I know doesn’t seem very reverent. But it made me think of the day that my family was sealed in the temple, and the ladies in the temple nursery told us that we must not laugh when we saw our parents all dressed up in their temple clothes. But when we all got into the sealing room, and they arranged each one of us into our positions around the altar, when it was David’s turn he plopped his arm down on the altar like he was getting ready to arm wrestle the person on the other side. Ha! That sounds really bad, but he had a broken arm and it was in a cast and that was just the way his arm happened to go down, so I remember at that point a couple of us started laughing. Then everybody was laughing. So when the kids were giggling with the excitement of Ethan being in the water, that’s what I had thought of.
Kyle had to lower Ethan into the water twice. The first time, Ethan hadn’t bent his knees enough so his feet started going up and his top half didn’t go all the way under. The second time he went all the way under but it appeared that his bangs were floating a bit, although when he came up his bangs were all wet. So they must have gone under, if just barely.
While Kyle and Ethan dried off and dressed, everyone moved back into the chapel and Liesl played some hymns. And when Kyle and Ethan came back Roine gave a talk on the Holy Ghost, and then Kyle confirmed Ethan a member of the church and gave him the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Then Bishop Hunt got up to say a few things, and when he was done he invited Sister Graham to say a few things (since she was there representing the primary presidency), and then he asked that I come up and bear my testimony. My eyes must have nearly popped out of my head judging by looks on Laurel’s and Liesl’s faces up on the stand, when they heard that and looked at me. But I got up there and said a few things, and I was terrified, so I didn’t say a lot. 🙂
Finally we sang “Baptism” from the Children’s songbook, and Granny gave the closing prayer.