More Church-inspired chitchat

I apologize for my obsession with talking about church experiences. I can’t help it. Sunday is my favorite day of the week by a long shot.

I’ve been happily engaged in teaching piano lessons, more coaching than anything, for a month or so. Joseph and Joseph make each lesson more entertaining than the last. This morning, Joseph Muteti and I prepared for him to play the simplified version of Choose the Right in Priesthood. After his lesson, I had an hour to play hymns or rather attempt to play while all the little kids pounded on either side of the piano.

This is when I first interacted with the MVP of the day. He came up, telling me the names of the notes and then insisting that I teach him how rhythm works. I counted out loud one of the songs I was playing and after I finished he stood there for an awkward minute or two and then sat down. I gave a talk today in church about pioneers. After Sacrament meeting, he said that I had talked about things he had never heard of before. Then he told me to give him my email address. I was going to rip off a piece of my talk but I didn’t need to because well he decided to keep my talk and he would email me with questions about the place I come from.

After church, I ran into this fella again. This time he told me to give him my scriptures. (after telling Sam about this, he said that this old bugger has been telling him to give him his scriptures too) I laughed and said uh no. I was told that I could just buy new ones when I got home. My mom would be so proud of me for giving up my scriptures to some old Kenyan guy. Maybe this is selfish, but there was no way in the world that motivated me to give him my scriptures. I just laughed and ditched the situation (which I’ve proven quite effective in a lot of predicaments). Our last interaction was captured in this picture. Andrew and I really enjoy our friend Steve and thought hey lets get a photo with him. Luckily, Brother MVP decided he was going to be a part of it too. Andrew looked the way I felt.

Sorry, so back to Joseph’s Choose the Right performance. It turned out that it was a combined lesson and Joseph flipped out because well he was basically playing for the entire congregation minus 20 or so people. I volunteered to lead and announced that we had to take it real slow and begged that they were as patient with him as they had been with me. I think Joseph did a real swell job. There were many times that we sang acapella while he found his place, but I think he is going to take over once I’m gone which is such great news. And out of the corner of my eye, I could see good ole MVP tapping out the counting with ridiculously exaggerated movements.

I realize that I’m writing a novel about church, but our YSA Sunday School class was hilarious today. The lesson was on the Lord’s Law of Health. Of course, we got into a discussion about which drinks are bad and good. All the members were saying that Coke is bad. We don’t drink Coke. Fanta is good. Andrew tried to explain that avoiding caffeine is not in church doctrine. It is a personal choice. He also stated that chocolate has caffeine in it and we all eat that. The guy next to me raised his hand and when our teacher called on him he thanked her ever so much for calling on him. This is a quick indication that he was going to say something entertaining and he did. He basically said that he eats chocolate and where he comes from his friends call him Chocolate and what is he supposed to do about that? I agree, what is he supposed to do about that? We all assured him that he could continue to eat chocolate and go by that nickname if he wanted to. One of the Josephs also had nice things to say. He raised his hand to say that before he joined the church and he was writing the lyrics for one of his group’s songs, he drank a cup of tea and felt so much better. Cheryl, the matter-of-fact teacher, basically said well that’s nice and moved on. I also enjoyed watching the guy next to me, “Chocolate,” mark each verse over and over again with alternating red and green.

We decided we might as well take a bunch of pictures with the branch and this is them, in all their glory.