15 Days: Primary Program

Today was the big day. For the children, it was hopefully a day of excitement and fun. For the audience, it was hopefully a day of spiritual cleansing and warmth. All I know is that for the teachers, it was the day of reckoning.

Will it work? Will it work? Will it work? Will it work? Will it work? Will it work?

After months of preparation, and then a week of hyper-preparation once we'd seen the first rehearsal, it was almost unbearable to sit quietly and hold still during the 20 minutes of sacrament meeting leading up to the program. Surely there was something we could be doing, something we should be doing. But no, everything was as ready as it was ever going to be. All that was left was the performance.

And the kids were great.

They sang beautifully! They gave adorable, pure, and meaningful talks. They had the audience awash in the spirit, and as their teachers, we just smiled and rode the wave.

It was a lot of work, mind you. My calling in church is to be a sort of special aide to a little five year-old autistic boy we have in our ward. He is wonderful, but he is difficult sometimes, and I was worried about how this performance would go. He doesn't like to sit still; he likes to have things to play with. He likes to sing, but he pays no attention to what the rest of us are doing, so he usually sings at all the wrong times and shouts out when he's supposed to be singing. He knows more than he's able to communicate to us, I'm sure of that. So approaching the Primary Program, I decided that we shouldn't try to distract him with toys and games, shoving him in a corner and hoping he's quiet while the rest of us do the program. I wanted him to be able to participate in the program, in whatever way he could.

I prayed about it for a few days. What could I do to help him understand what we were doing, to help him feel the spirit, to help him be a part of the primary? When inspiration hit me, and I felt that reassuring swelling within my heart, I set to work. I made him a Primary Program Activity Book.

It was basically an outline of the program. I had a little picture and a label for each song and each class's talks, and he was able to pull off the label for each thing as we finished it, so that he could keep track of how much time had passed and how much time was left. During the talks and the songs, he colored the pictures, and I made sure that each picture corresponded with the gospel topic we were singing about.

Despite my fears that my own failings may have ruined the project, it worked wonderfully. He was still and reverent through the whole program (40 minutes of reverence is a lot to ask from any five year-old!), busily coloring his pages and pulling off the labels every time we finished a song. Sometimes he'd stop coloring, but when I looked to see what he was doing I found him standing with the rest of the kids, or watching the class giving talks, or leaning against the piano to feel the music. He was amazing.

When we'd had our practice the week before, several of the other teachers had expressed their condolences that I was going to have such a hard time trying to keep this boy in line for the program. They lamented the fact that this boy could never be quiet, that he would always be on the outside looking in. I don't begrudge these teachers anything. I saw the situation the same way when I first came into this calling. But because I knew this calling would be hard for me, I've been particularly dependent on the Lord for guidance in what I should do, and this has allowed me to see this boy as the Savior sees him: not a problem to be solved, but a child who is beautiful and talented and loved. He just communicates in a way that requires a little more patience and a little more understanding.

And being with him so frequently and thinking of him so often has taught me another important lesson; one I've heard time and again but didn't fully understand until today, when the teachers who had bemoaned his disability came to me after the primary program - overwhelmed - and told me that the miracle of seeing this little boy standing quietly with the rest of the primary kids had brought them to tears. It's a lesson Jesus taught as he healed a man who had been blind from his birth:

"And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but 
 that the works of God should be made manifest in him." 

(John 9:1-3)