Ten talents

I just want to brag about my youngest son, Jonathan. Last Sunday I gave a FHE lesson on talents. We talked about discovering new talents and sharing old ones. May I just say that Jonathan totally lives that parable of the wise steward. Since that lesson he had to do lots of last minute projects at school; a speech and "creative" presentation in English, a history report, and a math presentation. He had his last choir concert at Bingham on Monday night in which he sang with the acapella choir in one number and accompanied the combined choirs singing the finale (see last week's posts). He participated in the chalk the walk art project on Thursday and came home with big plans to spend the week-end working on his school projects. He'd had 6:30 am practices with his new Madrigal group from Wednesday through Monday.

Friday afternoon the ward music leader called and asked him to play at a funeral on Monday. The family requested "There is a Green Hill Far Away". So we spent a couple of hours Friday looking for a piano solo of that hymn. After checking all the stores we discovered that the only version is in a $35 book at Deseret Book. Unwilling to pay that, for one song, we started calling neighbors and discovered that our wonderful neighbor, Val had that book. So he spent the evening practicing the song, meeting with his group for his English assignment and was up until 1:00 am drawing an amazing picture of Edgar Allen Poe for his English presentation.

Before 5:00 am Saturday, we heard a tapping on his window (interesting, since we'd just been reading and listening to "The Raven") It was the last year Madrigals coming to wake him up for breakfast to begin his Madrigal year. He came home from that, worked on his song for the funeral, and his speech for English. He also managed to mow the 6 inch long back lawn.

Then they asked him to play the opening and closing songs at the funeral, so on Sunday he made it over and practiced the organ. (He went to an organ workshop the stake put on, but had never played it for anything). He's also the ward choir accompanist, but we had no practice that week.

Yesterday he went to school (fasting for a boy having surgery that day) gave his speech in English, checked out and played at the funeral and did an amazing job on both his solo and his organ accompaniment (not an easy opening song; "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"). He made it to school to take a test he'd missed during Chalk the Walk the week before after school and then came home to relax until he headed to school for the Madrigal Review performance. So he's almost done for the year. The last last acapella concert is at the Libby Gardner Hall at 7:00 pm on Thursday. He loves music and is so sweet about playing the piano for so many people and programs. His 10 talents seem to be multiplying quickly!