Baccalaureate

Today was Rebekah's Baccalaureate. Before we went, some of he kids had asked what it was. Bill told them it was basically a NON-Denominational religious ceremony to help encourage the Graduates as they go on their way.

They had one speaker today. He was a Youth and Family Minister from Madison Church of Christ. He gave a good speech on life lessons.

One of the stories he told, was of when he was a kid, and had broken a table at someones home where his parents were visiting. He tried to 'fix' it and when he was on the way home in the back seat of the car... the guilt became so big that he couldn't stand it any more. So, he spilled his guts, and his parents did a u-turn, and took him back to make him apologize and tell the family what he had done. The family informed him that the table was already broken, and they regularly have to prop the table leg back up, just like he had done. He made the point, that his parents taught him a valuable lesson, even though it turned out that it really wasn't a big deal, and he hadn't really broken the table... but they helped him learn that you need to take responsibility for your actions.

Another time he had done some things he was supposed to get in trouble for, but his parents sort of 'forgot' and when he arrived home, they told him to get ready for bed, and he got ready faster, than ever before, and went right to sleep. However... at 4 a.m. his mom opened the bedroom door, and he got the punishment for the earlier 'crime'! He said that taught him that, there will always be a day of reckoning. You will have to pay for your actions, eventually.
It was pretty good.

We were talking about it, and thinking about how each of our own Baccalaureate ceremony's were probably a bit different. Bill's was held at the Post Chapel on the Military Base he was at in Germany during his High School years. Mine, was held at the Stake Center of the Church, in a very small mostly LDS community. Bill commented that he remembers the music being fairly traditional probably Hymns. I would think the same of mine.

This one? a 5 piece rock band on guitars/both electric and acoustic, and an electric keyboard, and drums, and a woman singer who clapped her hands to encourage the crowd. It was definitely not traditional Hymns. They had the words to all the songs printed in the program, and I sang along to most of the songs, as they had pretty easy tunes to pick up...
Something I thought was interesting, was watching the youth minister up on stage. He didn't try to sing along with any of the songs... and he just watched as the band rocked out to all the songs.

Well, that is one more step down... Graduation is Tuesday! Rebekah has some plans to go out of town for parts of the summer, and then will be leaving mid July to go to New York... Life sure will be different with her gone from home.