9:30 a.m.--The gods were with me , or at least one God was. Between my son Mark a and grand daughters I was fairly respectable when I rolled into the chapel and the beginning of baptism. Now, here I have to admit it has been a long time sine my baptism and I have not been to too many others. But I had been to a couple of Mormon baptisms but the seemed to have changed to what I remembered, In the old days, the kid getting dunked would show up with the others o be baptized Saturday night before Fast and Testimony(F&T) meeting. The individual was processed underwater and then the confirmation took place the next day at the F&T meeting always held the first Sunday of the month excepting for Federal holidays and natural disasters. The ordinance was pretty straight forward event; usually an opening prayer maybe a few remarks by the officiating male, the ordinances and that wwas it...but now things seemed to have changed.
Now, there seems to be a program, in fact there are even programs outlining the events of the meeting, songs to be song, names of officials, music directors and even speakers and then the kids are baptized I could been an half hour late and not missed the event! I settled in for what I perceived might be a long morning. I should have realized the event would be long after all this is Utah, it seems my grAnd daughter was just one of a number of kids born in December eight short years ago and today there were not less then eight others being baptized and confirmed.
The baptism is held in a Stake Center, a large LDS meeting house, bigger,s some times much bigger then the ward house or chapel. The Stake Center comes equipped with the baptismal pool, a pool of water deep enough for the child and grown up to both enter and lay the candidate completely under water. The baptism is traditionally attended by family of the child. Immediate and extended if possible. Mormon families can be huge so depending on home many are being processed there can be many in attendance. So there are babies, little brothers and sisters everywhere, there is a loosely controlled chaos and this chaos is loud enough on a Sunday but on a Saturday something had to be done. So, the baptism is broken up into wards and each ward is baptized in its time in the case of my grand daughter there were four wards and each ward would do they're own individual baptism.
So there is a main meeting where all the baptism candidates and their families are gathered, and before and before the baptisms begin the meeting is held and after a general introduction and overview of events each individual is called and the kids and families leave the chapel and troop over the baptismal area leaving those unfortunate not to bee called alone in the chapel to wait to b called.
Please bare in mind, in the Mormon faith these ordinances can be preformed by anyone who is worthy and holds the power, always a guy and usually some family member and usually the dad. So the kid and well as the individual doing the baptizing must completely change clothes, get totally wet and change back again=long time and there are still a bunch a folk i.e. kids and infants back in the chapel getting restless. I have to admit here I soon became impressed. When the baptizing began the chapel darkened, the movie screen descended and soon one of the LDS greatest hits was playing for the benefit of all those who remained behind—and I was impressed. A film about the theological roots of baptism was being screened. Great acting, sound and story line anything as good as De-mille could have produced interrupted only when the next group was called and all trooped out and down to the “pond.”
Of course our group was last—and I never did get to see the end of the movie. But Jasmine was baptized and confirmed. The ordinance was simple and sweet and over. Jasmine got to pick her choice of restaurants for lunch and there was great pressure placed on her to choose some place like Olive garden but the newly baptized girl new what she wanted was McDonald’s with a Play Land and that is where the family ended up: a brand new page, a movie and Mc Donald’s what could be better...?
No comments:
Post a Comment