Primary: A day (or two hours) in the life...

Sunday was crazy this week! Here's a blow-by-blow. (I'm shamelessly looking for sympathy.)

For my non-Mormon friends, Primary is the organization for kids 3-12. It starts after Sacrament Meeting, which is the general meeting for everybody of all ages. In Primary, we start out meeting together for an hour, during which we have Opening Exercises (sing a song, pray, welcome newcomers, sing to the kids who are having birthdays, etc), then Singing Time (pretty self-explanatory: the kids sing for about 20 minutes) and then Sharing Time (the lesson portion which lasts about 20 minutes). Then the kids divide into age groups and go to another class for the next hour, more of a traditional Sunday School class. Nursery is for children who are 18 months to three years old. The main characters involved are the Nursery leaders, the Primary teachers, the music leader, the secretary, two counselors, and a president (that's me).

So Sacrament Meeting ends, and the Primary day begins. On the way to the Primary room, I notice a group of irritated-looking parents standing outside Nursery. Turns out they're irritated because there are no leaders in Nursery yet. I peek inside the door and yep, there are a million toddlers running around but no adults. I beg one of the parents to step inside the Nursery for a second while I try to find a Nursery leader. She still looks irritated but she agrees. Turns out that of the three Nursery leaders, one is home sick, one is inexplicably missing, and the third didn't realize she was the only one there today so she was taking her time getting down the hallway. I'm glad to see her, but one person can't handle Nursery by herself. (There were 24 toddlers in there last week.) I find the First Counselor, Julie, and ask her to go into Nursery temporarily, promising to send people in to relieve her shortly. Then I see a few members of the Young Women's presidency, whose organization won't be meeting for another hour, so I ask if they can go into Nursery for the first hour. They're nice enough to oblige. (It would be rude to say no in person.)

The Secretary's husband stops me in the hallway. They have a sick baby at home, so Tracy's home with the baby right now. However, she has Sharing Time today, so he's going to trade places with her. He needs to know what time she needs to be at the church for Sharing Time. He'd trade places with her now, except that he's the Sunday School President and this is the Sunday School hour, so he kind of needs to be at the church.

A Primary teacher's husband stops me in the hallway. His wife won't be here today. She's out of town. And she didn't get a substitute. "Sorry we didn't let you know earlier," he says as he walks away.

Luckily, Marilyn is standing right there and overhears he conversation. Marilyn is a lifesaver, always willing to substitute in any Primary class at a moment's notice. Consequently, she hasn't attended any adult meetings for about six months. Marilyn offers to teach the Primary class. I love Marilyn. (She doesn't actually end up teaching the class. Another teacher only had one child show up, so this other teacher offered to take the missing teacher's class. It's easier to teach a class with more than one kid.)

A parent stops me in the hallway. He wants to have a long, in-depth conversion about his child's ADD problem. Should the child be taking medication before church? Is the child being disruptive in Primary? Does it seem to me like the ADD is getting worse? I tell him I'd like to discuss it and ask if we can meet after church. Then I worry that I offended him by not paying enough attention when he wanted to talk.

Finally I enter the Primary room. Part of my brain registers the fact that the music leader isn't there yet, but the kids swarm around me, wanting to show me their new clothes, lunch boxes, notebooks, and pencils. (Usually kids don't bring lunch boxes and notebooks to church, but they start school this week so they had lots of new stuff they wanted to show off.) Ashley just got back in town after spending the summer with her dad, so she needed a big hug. Stephanie wanted to show me her new (fake) tattoo. Ryan had a hard time sleeping last night because he kept having bad dreams.

We have three children who are visiting this week. They stand in the doorway with their parents, looking intimidated. I welcome them, find out which classes they belong in, and assign each of the visitors a special friend who will show them around today. All of the "special friends" are happy to cooperate this week (which is never a foregone conclusion).

We just got a brand new Primary teacher last week, and she's standing in the back of the room looking a little bit lost. I introduce her to her class, which is small this week. (Every class is small this week for some reason. Well, we're always small, but this Sunday we're smaller than usual.) She only has two boys in the class, both 11 years old, who are sweet kids when they're alone but are sometimes not as sweet when they're together. I shamelessly bribe them. When the teacher steps away, I whisper to the boys that if their teacher is still smiling after Primary today and if she tells me how cooperative they were, I'll bring them treats next week. (They ended up earning their treats. Way to go, boys!)

That nagging part of my mind notices that the music leader still isn't there, which is unusual since she's always early. Meanwhile, the pianist has been playing prelude for about ten minutes. I ask the pianist if the music leader isn't going to be here today. She tells me the music leader will be gone for the next three weeks, and reminds me that I had offered to do Singing Time for her. Oh. I have no recollection of this. I need to start writing things down.

Normally I'd have a team of people sitting in the front of the room with me: the music leader, the two counselors and the secretary. But the music leader is gone, one of the counselors is on vacation, Tracy is home with her sick baby and will hopefully arrive in time to do Sharing Time, and the other counselor, Julie, is still in Nursery. I realize I was supposed to check back in with Julie. But I can't; Primary needs to start and apparently I'm the only one present who can start our meeting today! Fortunately, Julie is awesome and I know she'll handle things fine.

So things are a bit rocky, since I didn't have any music stuff prepared, but we get through it okay. The pianist doesn't complain about not knowing which songs we were singing until the last minute (normally she gets a list a few days in advance). We sing Happy Happy Birthday to Ashley, but as we're singing I have to go dig the birthday pencils out of the Primary closet since nobody else is there to cover for me. Doesn't matter, the kids keep singing anyway.

And we wing it for Singing Time, playing games. My good friend, Katie, used to be the Primary music leader in the ward before she moved away, and I got lots of good singing games from her. We play the Standing Up And Sitting Down game and the Blindfold Game, we make up hand gestures to one of the songs, and we march in place while singing Called To Serve. The kids are entertained, and some of them are even out of breath.

Tracy arrives to do Sharing Time, so I go check on Nursery. There are only about ten kids there this week (relief!) and only one of them is screaming, so things must be going well. I go back into the Primary room because Tracy is relatively new and this is her first time doing Sharing Time, so I want to make sure the kids are behaving. They're all little angels and Tracy's Sharing Time is wonderful, so I go back into Nursery.

The Young Women's Presidency has to leave, which is fine because the Primary kids have gone to their classes and Tracy and I can help out in Nursery now. The next hour passes uneventfully: we have Nursery Singing Time, we have snacks, and then we play with balls until the parents arrive to pick up the kids. As usual, one little boy is the last to be picked up (by several minutes) and he's distraught, convinced he's been forgotten. I take him with me into the hallway and we find his dad.

Clean-up: we put away the Nursery toys, chairs, and table. Stack the chairs in the Primary room (Tracy has done most of the Primary room clean-up already). Put away the pictures, push the piano and podium against the wall.

Go home and take a nap. I love Primary.