Young Women & Primary Graduation!

Alayna turned 12 last week but our church schedule was off because of Christmas. The Church has made a lot of new changes in the last week or so and so it’s made things even more crazy.

In Primary, in our Ward, it’s been tradition on your birthday to have a “Red Carpet” ceremony for the kids turning 12. At that age they move up to Young Women or Young Men and graduate from Primary.

We didn’t have regular church on her bday. We only had Sacrament Meeting because if Christmas. So they post-poned it to today. However, the Church has made a BIG change for the youth and now the children who “will be” turning 12 that year will now in January all graduate from Primary. Those changes are for all youth actually. They will now move up all together at the beginning of the year accordingly instead of at their bdays. Which means Alayna will actually lose a year in Young Women and only be a Beehive for one year. It’s a little bananas! But we know inspired by the Lord.

So to make a long story even longer…LOL! She was invited to sing with the Youth today because she’s technically a Young Woman now but she hasn’t yet had her Red Carpet ceremony for Primary. She’s been dying go to Young Women so of course she jumped at the chance. It was also really neat to see her and Eli participate together! It’s been a while since our kids have been able to do something together in church because of their ages being so far apart.

We have a LOT more youth than this too. Several families were out of town for the holidays.

The musical number in Sacrament was beautiful. They sang, “Peace in Christ.”

Alayna went to YW for a little bit in 3rd hour (which is also the last time we’ll have 3rd hour church. Another BIG change is that church is only 2 hours now starting in January. The 3 hr block was implemented in 1980 and in Oct. 2018 General Conference it was announced our meeting time would change to 2 hours with a new added home centered program to be implemented called, “Come, Follow Me.”

Since Pres. Nelson has been called as our new prophet, after Pres. Monson’s passing a year ago, there have been some major changes to all areas of the Church. It’s been exciting to see that the Gospel is still being fully restored on the Earth and that the Lord still speaks to us today and gives us revelation for our time!!)

The last 20 minutes of church, the Primary invited parents and children who will be leaving next month to come in and watch a little picture/slide show and Red Carpet ceremony. It was really cute to see how adorable they all were as babies and growing up until now.