Before I leave this series, I want to tell you how God is so good to me; how He blesses me and sustains me in this calling. When I first saw the new outline for 2011, I eagerly looked for the songs. I have to confess that my heart slumped a bit. I looked at the new song and I thought “Oh great. Three verses, long phrasing, abstract principle, involved music. Look at those eighth notes! This is going to be hard to teach.” I recognized right away how beautiful it would sound - with a children’s choir! Unfortunately, I don’t have one of those. So I’ve been just a bit discouraged about teaching this song and I didn’t look forward to plowing through a study of it.
But God is as good as He always is! Studying the message of the song brought His spirit to me. Listening to the beautiful intervals and harmonies in the music again and again, as I tried to discover what was going on, stirred the familiar feelings of love and commitment in my heart. Sure enough, ideas began to come to me. Now that I have a plan in place, I am excited and confident that I can teach this song. There is still time to refine the plan when other ideas come, but I’m looking forward to it now and anxious to get started.
“And if I listen with my heart I hear the Savior’s voice.” Thank you Sister DeFord, for such a lovely song. What a wondrous God we all serve!
3 comments:
All of these posts have been excellent. Thank you for sharing in depth your valuable knowledge, extensive preparation and effective methods of teaching children the gospel through music. I hope to continue being inspired by your advice and encouragement.
And I think what God said to ME through your blog post is "You really should stop considering having a violin play Sister DeFord's new complicated song so you don't have to teach it. The message is something you need to be teaching those kids."
Thanks for encouraging me to embrace the song, do a little better, and stand a little taller.
Janet and Paula, thank you both for leaving your comments. Comments really do encourage me.
Paula, I laughed at your violin idea. I am really glad to know that I'm not the only one who is daunted by this lovely song.
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