10 virgins presentation

For Christmas Tim gave me a copy of the musical presentation of the 10 virgins.  My next door neighbor Christie is the Relief Society President of our ward and one afternoon when she was over I said something along the lines of "if you want to borrow this to look it over, the Relief Society might want to use it for a RS activity.")  I thought I might get asked to participate in such a production, but felt relatively safe, since I am in the PRIMARY...

Christie returned my booklet and music about a week later and said, Bishop approved it, the enrichment committee thinks it sounds great, will you be in charge of putting it together for our March RS birthday activity?"  (not quite what I had in mind, but many people have told me, "duh, what did you expect?")

It was an interesting experience.  I should let you know upfront that I am NOT a "director."  I have no "drama" experience.  I had absolutely NO clue what I was doing.  That being said, it went pretty well.

I truly felt that things were guided by a power greater than myself.  From the very beginning, in selecting which sister would play which roles, all the way along.  I thought it was inspiring how so many times during the process, I would have an idea of how I was going to do something, then as I was attempting to implement the ideas, it wouldn't go well.  I would persevere, not knowing what else to do, until suddenly (usually at night as I was dropping off to sleep) an idea would pop into my mind, clear as could be.  And that new idea worked every time.

Each Sunday, for the 7 or 8 weeks leading up to the event, I went into RS to make the announcement.  I took about 5 minutes each week to introduce one of the characters.  I shared a bit about her strengths and her challenges.  I shared a bit about the song she sings, and the messages that I personally learned from each song.  Then I issued a "10 virgins challenge" for the week.  For example, right after stake conference I talked about the character Nava, who's song sings "I try so hard to remember, but it's so easy to forget."  and I reminded the sisters how powerful our Stake Conference had been and how easy it is to forget that power and just slip back into our "regular lives."  The challenge for the week was to fight that tendency to slip back into the routine and to fight to REMEMBER and not forget the promptings we had received during the conference.  Doing this helped the sisters to be excited about the activity, and to begin to prepare their hearts and minds for the messages they would hear.

Practices were a challenge.  Consider the fact that we were trying to arrange the schedules of 10 busy women; mothers, students, wives, etc (some of them all 3 of those aforementioned roles)... plus 2 young women, plus the ward building availability...  It was an adventure...  We actually only had one practice (well, 1 hour of one practice to be exact) with everyone there -  at our dress rehearsal.   At that same dress rehearsal, we still had several of the participants who didn't know their parts, and 2 sisters for whom it was their FIRST practice at all...  in other words it was a really stressful practice for me!  (The dress rehearsal also happened to fall on the same day as my little brother Eric's wedding - so it was an ultra crazy day for me!  Eric's wedding the weekend before was a HUGE blessing though, because I just hi-jacked the wedding cake from the reception and used it as props for our presentation.  It worked GREAT!) 

The night of the actual dinner and presentation, the turn out was great!  They ended up having to set out 2 more tables as more people kept coming, and they were a little short on food.  The big panic moment for me came when one of the YW was LATE!  I knew she had a soccer game and she told me she'd be there by 6:30.  We were slated to start the presentation at 7. 7PM rolls around and Jenny wasn't there yet.  I was just a smidgen panicked!  At 7 I just started to put on a costume and figured I could do her part until she got there, then she could slip into her spot.  Not the best idea, but certainly better than me trying to sing her song!  Luckily for me, she ran in before I had to do that!

The sisters did an amazing job.  The spirit was there in abundance and hearts were touched.  I'm not saying that I'd like to do it all again... but I will say that it was a great opportunity for me and I was thankful for how much I learned personally from the experience.

I feel badly that I never thought to take picture of each sister with her props, and I sent out my camera with someone else to take pictures of the set and everything, but the camera wasn't on the right setting, so all of those pictures were blurry.  I did get a few pictures though, and here they are.

some of the lamps... I meant to take a picture of all 12, but of course I forget...

Jenny S.,  Jessica G.,  Kristen D.,  Rebecca M.,  Paula S.,  Jenny N.,  Allison B.,  Evelyn E.,  Tenille F.,  Aubrey B.,  Brooke P.,  and Emily G.     12 AMAZING sisters!!!

not a great shot, but the basic set up.  the cake is back in that closet with the open doors.  It worked perfectly, so the 5 wise virgins could go into the wedding feast and "the great wooden doors were shut."

the cake, with the 2 narrator chairs on either side.