Singing Our Praises

A few years ago, I realised that I didn't know many of the hymns in the hymnbook that we use at Church and so decided that I would learn them and the children thought it would be fun to join me. We agreed that the best way for us to do this would be to go through the hymnbook one at a time, ensuring that we knew the hymn before moving on to the next hymn.

We started off great.

Each week, I would play the new hymn on repeat. I would read the lyrics, I would look at the scriptures that the lyrics referenced or were based on. We would sing it together at Family Home Evening and before our Scripture Study. We would sing it in the car and we managed to memorise quite a few hymns!

Then of course, as always the good habits were lost. 

We did keep the listening of hymns in the car up, and it is great to sing together, especially when we have our friends in the car who love singing hymns (and also love singing Disney songs) and so we end up singing together.

Recently though, one of our friends has been called as the Ward Music Chairman, which means in our ward that she is the one who conducts us each Sunday as we sing hymns and also leads the choir (and as she and I live close and share a lift most weeks, means that she also reminds me to go to choir practice!).

Our Ward Music Leader has us singing songs each week that the ward doesn't really know and it's FANTASTIC.

Each week, trying to get our heads and tongues around strange lyrics, melodies and rhythms the entire ward joins together to sing our praises to our Heavenly Father, to express our love of Christ, to raise the roof with the Spirit that can only come from singing in a group, not caring if we sing in tune (okay so slightly caring if we sing in tune) but just wanting to express what is in our hearts.

It's kinda awesome singing our praises each week.