Light on a Hill

7 days till New Beginnings and I am a FREAK, which means that even with only a week until the program, I am still planning and replanning and perfecting and changing...ugh!   The lists in my head start early and continue through the day.

Originally I had planned to have all the YW sing this song...

but after practicing it for a couple of weeks, I have decided to scrap the song...sort of...(this will be news to the rest of the YW Presidency who I'm sure are becoming totally frustrated with my flighty-ness.)  I love this song, and I love hearing the girls sing it, but it's 7 pages long, with two key changes, and it splits into three part harmony at the end.  After last Sunday's practice, I was a little disheartened that it wasn't coming together, especially since I have another song that I really, really want them to sing at the end of the program, and they don't even know about that one yet.

As I spent all of yesterday immersed in New Beginnings, I had an inspiration.  I decided to use the song.  In fact, it's even on the same place in the program.  But instead of having the girls sing it, I put together a slideshow of all the jillions of pictures I've taken of them over the last few months and used Light on a Hill as the background music.  (do slideshows make you cry??...they always make me cry...ALWAYS...it could be a slideshow of a football game, but something about setting music to pictures instantly turns me into a giant puddle of tears.)   So, after sitting here for the last hour, cutting and editing and listening and watching, I am a complete mess...a happy, satisfied, joyful mess, but a mess nonetheless.   Seriously, how can you look at these beautiful faces with that music playing and not be a wreck!?

To see the way these girls have changed in just the last 6 months, to feel the obvious love that they have for one another, and to have been part of all of those activities, I am overwhelmed at the love I have for each of them.  At the end of the slideshow, I'm going to add 6 pictures of each of my upcoming Beehives because they are part of this group, too.  I already feel like those six little girls are seared into my heart. 

I'm trying so hard not to overthink this.  I don't want to put so much into the cupcakes and the slideshow that I forget the whole purpose of the event.  My hope is that the evening will be uplifting and testimony building; that the new girls will be excited about what's ahead for them, and that all of us will feel a greater desire to Arise and Shine Forth and do a little more than we've done before.