Follow the Prophet

Johnson Chapel at Christmas
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts

Today was our annual Ward Primary program. As I sat in the audience and looked up at Anna--now becoming quite a beautiful young woman--I couldn't help but think back a few years to Anna's first Primary program in Amherst, Massachusetts. Our chapel was being renovated to remove asbestos and we were forced to meet in a couple of locations in town throughout the Summer and early Fall. Our main "home away from home" was an old meeting hall on the Amherst College campus called Johnson Chapel. It was built in the early 1800s and has been the host of numerous famous speakers such as Robert Frost and John F. Kennedy. Our Amherst Ward met in the Chapel for Sacrament meeting and then dispersed to several classrooms in adjacent buildings for auxiliary meetings. Since Anna was just 6 months away from turning 3 years old (typically still in the nursery) and since there weren't any suitable rooms for a nursery, they decided to allow Anna to attend Sunbeams (and several other nursery kids that were much younger just had to go with parents to their classes). You might remember that Anna was not a shy toddler. She was very bold and loud. When they began to sing the opening song in the program, "Follow the Prophet", it became clear that one child was singing very loudly--almost overtaking all of the other kids combined. At first, we couldn't tell who it was, but then as people started turning around to look at us, we started looking more closely and realized it was our Anna who was the most boisterous. She has since grown a bit more timid in front of an audience (which makes me sad), but today we were able to get just a hint of a smile from her as she looked to us from the stand. (Long gone are the days when we actually get a wave.) In spite of its famous speakers over the years, Johnson Chapel has never had a more powerful statement shouted from its hall than Anna yelling "Follow the Prophet" in her first Primary Program! I will miss them after her last program next year.