Trek aftermath for the ward organist

When I got to church today I was told they'd added an intermediate hymn--"Come, Come Ye Saints." So I quickly ran through it before the meeting.

We had quite an emotional sacrament meeting. First two of the youth, a boy and a girl, told about their experiences at the Trek. They just got home from it yesterday. They described the feelings of uniting as a family, of praying for help to pull the handcart up the hill, about the angel of death who came for some members of the family, and about the Mormon Battalion conscripting all the boys and men leaving the women and girls to pull alone. The young man who told about that said it was really hard for him to leave them knowing how it would be hard for them.

Then the high council speaker, Brother Jennison, who had been one of the Pa's on the trek gave an amazing talk. He cried through most of it. First he told about finding out he had some ancestors who came in the second company to Utah. Which is amazing since he's a convert of only 16 years. Then he told about the physical and spiritual preparation he and his wife went through to prepare for the trip. He told about his family of 4 girls and 4 boys were very special to him and how they immediately bonded and helped each other with pushing and pulling. He told about being taken out by death and how bad he felt about that and how glad he was to be reunited that evening.

These speakers all went on so long the Bishopric signaled to me that they would skip the intermediate hymn, so instead we sang "Come, Come Ye Saints" for the closing song. Our chorister asked the audience to stand while singing it to honor our pioneers. I saw the Bishop start to cry during the song. He was so overcome he couldn't sing. His counselor patted him on the back. I suspect there were several with tears in their eyes. I know I was playing through tears.

I think it was a case of the spirit guiding so that it became a very spiritual meeting.  See Moroni 6:9, the last verse of the chapter.