Bilingual Singin'

Today my church building had two baptisms. One was a young boy, Shamir, that I assume was eight, and the other, Jesus, was a young man probably around my age. We had the program right after church in the chapel, as it needed to be big enough to accommodate the Inwood Third ward (mine) and the Inwood First ward (the family ward). Now, for those of you who haven't been to New York, and all you're familiar with is what you see on tv and movies, it doesn't really look like that. For one, it's dirty and smelly and busy and crazy, and for two, there are more than just white people that live here.

My church building (and where I live!) is in a large Hispanic neighborhood, and the First ward is a spanish-speaking ward. Our singles ward is fairly homogeneous, with lots of Utah implants and BYU interns/graduates. So it was great to look around during the meeting and see our two wards combined for these two great events. It was so cool to be part of something as life-changing as baptism in another language, where the talk was given in Spanish then English, the musical number was sung in Spanish by the missionaries, the closing prayer was in Spanish, and one of the baptisms was said in Spanish. The opening song was sung in English and Spanish and it was so amazing! We were singing the same song but in different languages and we were in sync with one another. I don't mean it as in "Wow, our songs are the same, just the words are different" but that no matter what language the message is the same, and the feeling and meaning behind it. I had never experienced that before, but there we all were, people who speak English and Spanish, some who are white and some who are Hispanic, and we were all combined in our worship and praise. It was such a powerful moment. And it was only topped by the baptisms themselves, two moments that were so amazing that it's hard to describe it.

I'm just glad that I get the chance to experience so much diversity and differences, and yet still feel so connected.