Choir was my attempt to make up for no longer being able to fit Band classes into my school schedule. I've always loved music and love to sing, but don't always hit the notes quite on pitch. My family can attest to that after sitting with me here at home and listening to me singing along with the Tabernacle Choir and congregation during this past weekend's General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Hopefully I learned a few things during the year I participated in Choir, singing the Alto Harmony part. I was a bit too shy or unconfident or reluctant to join the choir at church while I was in high school, but have since found that in spite of my singing deficiencies, no one is going to banish me from these voluntary choirs, so I have participated in church choirs most of my married life too. At least until the Covid years. I'm still not quite comfortable with singing unmasked in a group situation, even though numbers have been declining these past several weeks. Maybe soon. We will see.
Chores are a given part of life when you grow up on a dairy farm. Of course there were the household chores that come along with being part of a functioning family, keeping your room clean and bed made and taking your turn washing dishes, washing, drying and folding laundry, setting the table, feeding the pets etc. I also had the chore for many years of bringing the cows home from their summer pasture every afternoon before milking, and then feeding the young calves their milk and hay and grain, washing up the feeding buckets, and sometimes feeding all of the cows their evening feeding of hay. Many summer mornings also found me working with my siblings to hose and scrub down the concrete floors of milk barn after the morning milking, and of course, taking my turn to weed the family vegetable garden.
Church was also a given part of all of my high school years, and all of my life. Each Sunday morning my Dad and my older brothers would attend 9 am Priesthood Meeting, and the rest of the family would join with them for 10 am Sunday School. After dinner and a fairly quiet afternoon of reading, writing letters or playing quiet games, or visiting with Grandparents and cousins next door and doing the evening milking and chores, we would return to Church at 7:30 pm for the Sacrament Meeting. Then on another day of the week (Tuesday for the Ward or congregation where we lived) we would return for our weekly auxiliary meetings -- Primary was held at the church on Tuesday afternoons after school for children in the elementary school grades, and Mutual lessons and activities for teenagers, Young Men and Young Women, were held on Tuesday evenings. Relief Society lessons and activity or work days for adult women were held on Tuesday mornings. In addition to the Sunday and week-day auxiliary meetings, we would often have sports practices and games for basketball, volleyball, and softball, a yearly "Road Show" theater type production, yearly preparation meetings for a week long camp activity for the Young Women, (the boys participated in scouting troops) and other occasional dance or musical performances. It makes me tired just remembering all of the Church activities we grew up participating in!
This split schedule has since changed, and now days congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attend meetings in two hour blocks each Sunday. The first hour is generally the Sacrament Meeting worship service with the second hour rotating between Sunday School and the auxiliary or Priesthood Meetings. Teenagers do still gather together on a weekly basis for activities and and the women and children usually have a monthly activity too, but we seem to have a bit more time for home and family and other evening activities these days.
What kinds of chores did you have as a teenager?
Did you participate in Church services or activities?
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