The Dreaded Talks...

So Tanner and I throughout our 2 1/2 years of being married, have never been asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting. We always counted ourselves lucky and thought, "Well maybe we are being so righteous that we don't need to!" HAHAHA funny I know. So I don't know if that means we haven't been being righteous lately...? Haha juuuuust kidding. 

So we moved into a new ward in August, and summers are always crazy with reunions, and summer, and family, and everything.  So we didn't meet a lot of people the first while we were there.  However, we noticed right from the get-go that this ward was very friendly. We really liked that, but knew that that would probably mean we would be speaking in this ward...AND didn't know how we felt about that one.  JK> So anyway during December we got pretty close to the bishopric as they connected the dots to who my family was. When I told one of our counselors who my mom was he was like, "Oh. Jill Anderson is your mom? Hmm." And that was it.  Didn't really know what to think of that haha! Come to find out later that he hadn't agreed with something my mom had said in a meeting for Madison Education Foundation... so there was a litle tiff there. HAHAHAHA! so funny. 

Also in December Tanner and I wanted to do something nice for a family in our ward that maybe needed a little help at Christmas time- so that got us close to the Bishop. BAD IDEA...hahaha.  Then the dreaded day came when we met with the bishop to renew our temple recommends. AND..after that he asked us the question.  "So we have really enjoyed getting to know you two and think the ward should get to know you a little bit more too. How would you feel about speaking in sacrament meeting next week?" We both looked at each other, smiled, and said, "We'd love to!" Now, it gets worse.  The topic.  He said, the topic for January is the Godhead, so we would like you guys to focus on this: "What is Heavenly Father's role in the Godhead?" Oh dear right?  We both looked at each other again and smiled.  Now mind you, I was really nervous because 1. This was the first "real adult" talk I had given since I was like 12. and 2. Because what the topic? I knew I would have to dig deeeeep, because in my opinion they all have the same role and work towards the same goal. BUT I could've been wrong. To make this all worse....my brother Jaxon and his family were in town, and my brother Tanner also. My parents live here also so...well...THEY ALL DECIDED THEY WERE GOING TO COME AND LISTEN. That scared us even more...hahaha.

So....throughout the week Tan and I prayed about it, thought about it lots, and finally Wednesday I began searching and picking my brain for what I could possibly talk about. I decided to focus my talk on this: "Heavenly Father's role in the Godhead is to help us grow forever in light, truth, and happiness. I came upon that sentence during my research and I fell in love. I knew that was what I was supposed to talk on. I figured that I could go so many ways with that. SO...I decided to take the ward through my journey of how I, with  God's help, grew forever in light, truth, and happiness.  I shared many personal experiences of how I was in a pretty deep pit and had stopped all spiritual progression in my life until one day I just decided it was time to change. I took about a year and just truly dedicated myself to the Lord, and to the Gospel. It truly was life-changing. I know now that God prompted me to talk about that, because i hadn't really shared my personal testimony of how  I came to be where I am today. SO...even though my entire family was there, sweat was coming from every pore, my hands were sweaty and clammy like the Grinch, and I told the whole congregation my husband gave me a concussion when we were dating and I just " knew he'd take good care of me...," it went pretty smoothly ;)

Tanner did really good too, he was shaking like a banshee! hahahaha. He shared a really touching story of a down-syndrome boy who's dad's testimony was strengthened by what his baseball team did. I'll have to post it on here soon because it's a tear jerker!  I've only seen Tanner cry a total of 3 times in 3 years.  This was the third- and yes I am counting because he is a softy even though he doesn't believe it.

So in conclusion: What did I learn about sacrament talks?
1. They really aren't that bad if you don't freak out. haha.
2. Never chew gum while on the stand.
3. Never be friendly in a ward. hahaha.

In second conclusion:Our talks went just splendid, and we got way too nervous for nothing. Now hopefully this means we won't have to talk for 3 more years! WOOHOO!!  :)