Our New Stake Center Got All Dressed Up

Okay...I reeeeeeaaaaaally didn't manage to blog every day this month! By my best guess, I'll be batting about .333 by the end of this month. Well, there's always next November!! (or heck...another month of the year. Another goal to ponder!)

Well, a lot of stuff has been happening this month, most of which was caused by two big events:
1. My sister and her family coming to visit; and
2. The new stake center for the LDS Sahuarita Stake being completed.

I've already written a bit about our stake center's "grand opening," when we attended the first-ever stake conference in the new building. A week later, however, the church held an official Open House, in which the building is opened to the public. As a part of the open house, a guided tour takes visitors through various rooms in the building, describing both their function and their meaning in a larger spiritual context.

An open house is a fairly common thing for most LDS buildings nowadays...our family attended an open house for the newest Arizona temple in Gila Valley a couple of years ago, and we plan on going to open houses for both the newest Phoenix-area temple (sometime next spring or summer) and the long-awaited Tucson temple, when it finally arrives.In a way, though, a stake center's open house is just as important, since these are the "workhorse" buildings of the church. They hold regular Sunday meetings for the whole family, and the entire community is welcome to attend. Sahuarita's new stake center was therefore a pretty significant event (by LDS church standards) for our little corner of Arizona.

Luckily, our stake is full of many motivated, energetic people who worked very hard to put the open house together. A good friend of mine was charged with making all the permanent flower arrangements for the building, plus a large assortment of live floral decoration for the open house. As is Elizabeth's way, she went above and beyond in creating a beautiful assortment of flowers to greet the guests. Most of them were used in the gym area (church members often refer to the gym as a "cultural hall"). It looked lovely, when all was said and done:

Besides a corner of the room set aside for light refreshments, there were several stations throughout the cultural hall devoted to various things...family, church statistics, the Christ child, etc. In the very center of the gym was a piano and several music stands. Throughout the day, many musically talented people sat there and played soft spiritual music to soothe the spirits of volunteers and visitors alike.

Yours truly also took a turn at the piano for an hour...not that I'm any more talented than most of the people who came before and after me *ahem*. I played from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock in the morning, so not a whole lot of visitors were there at first. By the time I was finishing up, though, there was a steady trickle of visitors headed throughout the building. It felt really good to play whatever I wanted for an hour...not only did it fill my soul with peace and comfort, it was such a refreshing feeling to get real playing time on a piano for once, instead of merely teaching lessons most days. Sometimes playing is just as nice!

I had double duty on open house day...as president of the Primary (children's organization) in our home congregation, I was asked to serve as a Primary representative during the tour. My role was pretty simple; I was to greet people as they came into the Primary room, and then take a few minutes to explain what Primary is and its role in our faith. I was to provide a few logistical details of Primary as well. Here I am in the Primary room:

I'd come in earlier that week to help set up the Primary room chairs and add a few small decorations (however, I can't take credit for the lovely table display...my friend and stake Primary counselor Lexi set all that up!). I thought the room looked very beautiful and I was really excited to lead a tour...but I never got the chance!! That's what happens when I sign up for the 9 am time slot; nobody wants to get up and go to church that early on a Saturday morning! However, many other wonderful Primary workers had the chance to share the joy of Primary with visitors later in the day.

Many other rooms throughout the building were decorated, each by a different auxiliary organization of the church (Relief Society, Young Men & Young Women, Scouts, Seminary, Employment Services, and so forth). Each room had a distinct look, and it was neat to see the "personality" of each auxiliary emerge as it shared its message with visitors.

Speaking of visitors...we decided to take a tour as a family after my Primary and music shifts were finished. It was about as wiggly and distracting tour as you can imagine, with our nutty little girls. However, they asked lots of questions and got so excited to see everything. The Young Women's room was especially fun...Celeste "oohed" and "aahed" endlessly over all the jewelry. She wants to be in Young Women's already, because of the bling! Too funny.

Posing next to this lovely nativity scene was a nice way to end our morning at the new stake center, as well as get excited about the upcoming holiday season. We weren't able to visit the open house in the afternoon, because Nathan and I were invited to a lovely dinner at his boss's home (their annual "pre-Thanksgiving" Thanksgiving feast, with only adults! We were honored to be invited and had lots of fun, while the girls went wild with their babysitter). I can only assume the crowds continued to grow throughout the day, and I hope everyone who went felt the same lovely spirit we did. It was a good reminder for us to remember the many blessings that are ours due to the birth of the Christ child.

Next up...Thanksgiving with the Carlins!