Devotional

Today I felt a little like Esther, "For this cause came I to Nauvoo." To play the organ for the closing devotional in the assembly hall of the temple.

You can see the organ in the far right corner.

It was the culmination of hours of practice. The choir sang two numbers--"Turn Your Hearts" and  a great arrangement of "Each Life That Touches Ours For Good." It had a challenging organ accompaniment. Since the choir and director were at the other end of the room and the acoustics were incredible, we couldn't stay together until I got someone to sit on the organ bench and mimic the director just for my benefit. It went very well. Plus we sang "The Spirit of God" with the whole congregation and that was stirring. I played over an hour's worth of prelude. President Condie said he wanted me to play for his funeral!

There were two seventies there--Craig C. Christensen and Ronald A. Rasband. One thing I remember. Elder Christensen said lots of people say as they leave the temple, "Now to go back into the real world." But he said that wasn't right--the real world is in the temple.

In just two weeks we'll be saying goodbye. I played "God Be With You Til We Meet Again" for postlude. We've made some good friends here and it will be hard to say goodbye. But we're also really looking forward to seeing our family and friends back home again.