Ordinary Sundays

Waking up before the alarm seems to be normal for me lately. In the past few years I have gotten a bad habit of going to sleep really late at night. I usually go to bed at around 2 or 3am on a regular basis, but I never sleep past 11am, this is my rule. On occasion I will fall asleep earlier than I meant to and end up waking up at 4:30am, or 5am. I usually just stay up if i have had more than 5 hours of sleep when this happens. I love to stay up in the middle of the night whenever I can, I think it's kind of fun. Lately I have been falling asleep earlier more and I have been waking up around 5am. I usually just stay awake when this happens. This has caused the internal clock in my body to want to wake up really early lately, so I have been a little more careful when I sleep. I don't think I will be staying up until 3am anymore, that is my feeling anyway. I really like going to bed earlier, and waking up early when it's still dark. I have always loved the night time.

Today I woke up an hour before my alarm. I am not really surprised about this. I have been waking up really early lately. In fact the day before yesterday I woke up at 5am, I did not bother trying to go back to sleep. 

I dragged myself out of bed, and got onto the computer after just lying there for a half an hour. I checked Xanga, twitter, Gmail, and some other sites I regularly visit, and then turned on Pandora and listed to music for about a half an hour while reading some blogs on Xanga. I usually start my day with Xanga it always gets me in a cheerful mood.

At a little past 9am I ate breakfast (yogurt and cheerios, both seprate of course), and then went to wash my hair. After this I went onto youtube and watched some funny videos. I also checked a few things on FB, and cleaned up my room a bit. I am pretty laid back on Sundays, I don't do much in the mornings.  After about an hour or so I did my hair and got my sunday clothes on. I decided to wear my new white shirt with the pretty sequins on it today with my white skirt. After I got dressed I just did stuff on Xanga while listening to quiet music until church.

My church starts around half past noon here. Being the total absent minded person I am I was late again today. I quickly put on my shoes, bot my bag, and walked to the nearby church. I am LDS, and I live in Utah, so they are all over the place here. The church I go to is just a half a block away from my house it's quite nice.

The wind messed up my hair so I briefly went int the church bathroom and fixed my bangs so they no longer looked like I had just come back from sky diving.

We have Relief Society first at my particular ward. If you are not familiar with some of the mormon vocabulary I suggest you look up the following phrases before you read any further.

Relief Society

Priesthood meeting

sacrament meeting

Stake

Ward

Stake Conference

Anyway, the way my ward works in my Stake is the men go to priesthood meeting the first hour, the women go to Relief Society the first hour. We have Sunday school the 2nd hour and talk about gospel related subjects both men and women combined. There are usually 2 or 3 different classes, mission prep, gospel doctrine, and sometimes Temple Prep. The Gospel doctrine class is usually held in 2 different classrooms because it's kind of popular and people come to it a lot more than the other 2 classes.  In our 3rd hour we have Sacrament Meeting. Sacrament meeting is the main meeting of our church.

Anyway, like I was saying... We meet in the church gym first when we start. We usually start with a hymn, and then tell news and announcements. We have to start in the gym because there is another ward that uses the Relief Society room before us, they get  out a little before we do, and their meetings are arranged differently. After we do announcements, and sing then we can usually move into the relief society room. We have a good news moment for anyone with good news, for some reason we did not do this today. The Bishop of our ward had news for us today. It turns out that all the single adults in our city are forming a single Stake of our own. We are going to be meeting in a new building, at 9:30am now and our meeting schedule is going to be reversed.  I was kind of worried, but now i'm really excited, our ward will get bigger now. We had a lesson after this. Today's lesson was about the importance of visiting teaching. Visiting teaching is where a member or 2 from your ward comes and visits you and they often teach lessons out of one of the church magazines (usually the Ensign from my experience). After the lesson we usually hear a few remarks from one of the Bishop Brick members, after this we either sing another hymn, or go straight to the closing prayer. 

After this the 2nd hour starts. I go to the Gospel Doctrine class. We have a gospel Doctrine class in our Relief Society room so most of us just stay, some go to the other rooms for other classes though. The men join us at this point, and then we start. We usually just go to another lesson from here. Today's lesson was about the priesthood keys. I was a little bit distracted by Darik and Dylan 2 tows behind me I must admit, part of this was because Amber (one of my friends) kept on drawing attention to them ha ha.  I heard most of the lesson despite this anyway.  Anyway, after we have the lesson we usually have another closing prayer and then head off to Sacrament Meeting after this for our 3rd hour. Usually lessons in the 2nd hour are very interactive and a lot of questions are asked and answered, it makes it a lot of fun sometimes. More often than not actually. Sometimes people share various life experiences as well this can make it even more interesting.

Anyway the 3rd hour is Sacrament Meeting like I was saying. I talked to Darik a bit in between while we were going into the chapel. I just kind of walked around the chapel for a minute trying to figure out where I was going to sit. I saw where Darik and Dylan were sitting and decided to sit by them. Apparently Amber also caught onto this. I was sitting next to her, but then I realized that no one was sitting by Darik (besides Dylan), and so I moved next to him on the other side.

Sacrament meeting starts with one of the bishop brick members welcoming everyone, then we might take care of some little announcments and ward business. We usually sing a hymn after this, then we have a prayer after and then another hymn.  We then have the Sacrament after this. I will put a video explaining this part of the church service below somewhere, because I feel like it can explain it better. Anyway, after the sacrament we usually have a few talks, and sometimes musical numbers. When the talks are concluded we sing another hymn, and then say a closing prayer and that is the end.

I am really glad I sat with Darik today, I have always liked sitting with him whenever I can.  After church him and Dylan gave me a ride home. I got on Xanga again and checked to see what new stuff was out. I have been just listening to music, and reading ever since I got home.

My home teachers did come while I was typing this actually.  Home teachers are a little different than visiting teachers. Visiting teachers are usually people from the relief society, and to the best of my knowledge only the women in the ward get visiting teachers. Home teachers are usually guys (i'm pretty sure), they give a lesson, and sometimes we talk about casual stuff. Today I met my new home teachers (actually they just left only 10 minutes ago). We just got acquainted, I told them a lot about my family and some funny stories.

They brought me brownies too.

Anyway, if anything else happens I'll update this. :)

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjX5437dYf4]