The Famous Organist

For those of you who don't know . . . I play the organ! It's a new hobby I have picked up over the past year. These are some pictures of me playing for Devotional at school.

For those who do not know what Devotional is, I will explain . . . every Tuesday at 2 p.m., the school pretty much shuts down for one hour. There are no classes offered at this time and the stores on campus are closed. Students and faculty gather together to watch the Devotional in which a church or school leader is invited to speak. They speak on various topics such as the temple, religious freedom, gratitude, and the atonement. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to receive spiritual instruction in addition to our secular learning. It is a time to be edified and uplifted by the spirit. Every Devotional has an opening and closing hymn as well as prelude and postlude music and on November 3rd, I got to play! President Clark (president of BYU-Idaho) announced my name in the program and we even made eye contact at one point! :)

I played in front of thousands of students . . . really loudly. What a rush! I was so nervous, but it turned out so well and I received several compliments about my playing from friends, classmates, and teachers. I felt like some sort of celebrity because people were taking my picture and coming up to compliment me. My organ masterclass teacher publicly announced that it was the best devotional playing of the semester! I was so thrilled, but embarrassed at the same time.

I have been asked to play at a graduation convocation for the College of Business and Communications on December 18th (the night before I attend my own convocation!). I am excited for another opportunity to play in front of lots of people and to use my talents to serve!

The organ is yet another thing I wish I had discovered earlier in my college career so that I could have had the opportunity to take more lessons and become more advanced.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to attend a university where we are able to receive spiritual instruction and to incorporate the gospel in class every day; where we can start class with a prayer, and read scriptures in my health classes, and talk about how the restoration of the gospel relates to things like economics! I am also so very grateful to live in a country where we have freedom to choose how, when, and where we worship. How blessed we truly are!