Chicago Updates

Today was church, but it was a little different than it has been the past few weeks. We moved to a new building today--an elementary school that the church is renting for four hours on Sundays while they find somewhere that they can build a building in the city. This means that we got to go to church at 10:00 rather than 3:00 in the afternoon! Our YSA branch and a family ward meet at the same time in the school. We start with Relief Society/Priesthood, while the family ward starts with sacrament meeting. This is the farthest into the city that the church has ever actually had a building that they met in. We can walk to church from our apartment in about 18 minutes. I feel like I’m back at BYU with church being that close.
We had a group of people over for dinner tonight. I love getting to know the members of the branch here. (Hopefully within the next little bit we will become a ward though.) Since we are so close to church, we are planning on having people over quite often, and our apartment has the perfect set up for it. It will be great.
I am loving my classes, although it has been a bit of an adjustment remembering how to be a student again. I am taking five classes, and I feel like I was led to every class that I got to choose to take. I have two required courses: Educational Research, and Philosophy of Music Education. They both are fascinating and will be great. The classes that I got to choose as electives ended up being Music of the 1920’s, and Music of Chicago Neighborhoods. I also am required to be in a performing ensemble, and the only one that fit in my schedule was Chapel Choir. I didn’t realize, but this choir sings for all of the chapel services. If our church had been at 3:00, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but we just moved to 10:00, and the Sunday services are at 11:00 in Evanston. I talked to the director and told him my situation, and he is allowing me to just perform in the evening concerts. I felt so incredibly blessed. There is nothing else I could do without someone else’s help. We are singing all religious litergy, and are even performing Monteverdi’s Vespers with a 17th century style orchestra. I’m thankful I get to be a part and not have to miss church because of it.
I got to spend last weekend in Nauvoo (I posted pictures.) I went with my roommate Elizabeth, and I opened up my car to anyone else in the branch who wanted to go. I had never met Marila before our trip, but she is darling. We were supposed to have two others go with us, but they cancelled last minute. I called up one of the families I knew really well, and we stayed in their condos while we were there. Both Elizabeth and Marila were so impressed that I was able to get us a good room (at a discount price) the day we were going because we kind of decided last minute what we were doing. I love the people in Nauvoo so much, and was so happy to get to see some of them again.
I'm posting a few of the pictures from boating in the Illinois River and from the African drumming concert.