The Sabbath Day

Church began at 9 for us. I had to be there early to get at least a few minutes of organ time in before the congregation started arriving and I started prelude. I ended up not using pedals and using the coupler for the first time in over a year. I just wasn't familiar enough with two of the songs to feel confident in playing them without wrecking the service. One of the hymns was great with the pedals, but I've played it before. Can I just say how much I've enjoyed learning this instrument? And even though I am still in the learning stages, I find great satisfaction and joy in this endeavor.

I got a new RS Meeting Coordinator last week and I am thrilled. Even though she only just got the calling she had publicity and everything prepared for our meeting this Tuesday evening. Yea!!! She has some health issues but if we can get her a good committee then I think she'll be able to function without too much stress. I cannot even begin to express my joy as this has been such a huge headache for so, so, so long. I spent the second hour of meetings talking to her, getting her keys to the building and closet, and running down a nursery toy closet key. I think she is about set and I know she'll be fabulous!

Rich's Sunday School class seemed to go really well. He has a great bunch of kids and they all participate. He recapped the lesson for me on the way home and he seemed really pleased. He may be an unothodox teacher but the kids seem to love him and he loves them...and I'm willing to bet they won't forget the lessons! He played a parody on the old "What's My Line?" tv show and called it "What's My Crime?" and tied up the hands of one of his students and had him be William Tyndale. He then had the kids ask questions to elicit info about Tyndale. Rich had the kids consider why the opposition to him and the Bible was so fierce and how it was similar to the opposition that Joseph Smith encountered for the Book of Mormon.

I got to RS and needed to conduct. Our meeting only had about 20 Sisters - but there is a lot of illness and travel from the holidays. I'm hoping that everyone gets home safely and that all who are ill get better quickly. Sue Urbach taught the Presidency message on prayer and did a very nice job. There was lots of participation and I know that she usually sweats bullets about that...I'm pretty sure she was happy.

In anticipation for the Sunday Meeting change I had decided that I would do some family history stuff and so came home to get underway. However, that ended up being a total loss as my computer died. Rich has worked on it all afternoon and evening to try and restore, reload, and whatever else needs to be done. Once he has that done I can only hope that my genealogy files are safe.

Before I left to go to Wisconsin I taught my Institute group about record keeping, journals, histories, and the like. I challenged them to keep a journal, blog, vlog, or some other way to record the doings of their lives. I handed out some great talks given by general authorities through the years as well as some ideas on things to write about that I had found at FamilySearch and a couple of other sites. The one from FamilySearch is geared more towards writing your life story - and notes that with their 52 questions you can write your story in 52 weeks. Although I am trying to be more diligent about writing every day, and I will certainly spend some time remembering things from my past, or the past of family members from time to time, I think I will use Sunday evenings to answer these 52 questions. So...here goes....

Question: What is your full name? Explain why your parents gave you that name.

My full name is Wanda Karen Pehrson Bainbridge. I don't know that there is any other reason for the name "Karen" than that they just liked it. However, I was named after my Grandmother, Wanda Bingham Roskelley, as a way to honor her and to remember her. Obviously the "Pehrson" was my father's last name and I chose to take my Husband's last name, "Bainbridge" when we married. My assumption about the order of my name is that Wanda Karen was more fluid than Karen Wanda...at least to me it is. LOL! I have always gone by "Karen" though, but vowed I would never call one of my children by their last name since it is such a difficult thing with school, records, etc. But, wouldn't you know it...I did it to one of my own...Sarah Cherstin Bainbridge!

When I was pregnant with Desi, I had been doing quite a bit of genealogy on my father's lines. I searched and searched for my father's great grandmother, Cherstin Samuelson, in Danish and Swedish records. The Danish records used a more typical spelling, Kerstin, but the Swedish records had two ways to spell her name, Cherstin and Kjerstin. By the time I found her I was in love with her and I loved her name. I was pretty certain that should be the name of our daughter, if the baby I was carrying was a girl. And - Desi was a girl AND she was born on Cherstin's birthday, no less!!! I really wanted to name her Cherstin Elizabeth (Elizabeth for another ancestor) but we had had such difficulty getting pregnant and keeping the pregnancy that Rich wanted to name her Desiree. She quite literally was the desire of our hearts. I couldn't fault him with that...but I still wanted Cherstin.

The day following her birth, Rich brought the kids to the hospital to meet their new little sister. He suggested that we propose the two names and let the kids have a say too. I was game. What I didn't know was that he had hatched a plan with them that if they would vote for "Desiree" he would get them Slurpees on the way home from the hospital! LOL! The results of the vote obviously went in his favor and we had a beautiful baby girl, Desiree Dawn Bainbridge. Rich assured me that we could use Cherstin Elizabeth for our next baby, which he was sure would be a girl.

When I was pregnant with Cherstin, I was sure to remind Rich that the baby's name was settled already if she were a girl...and prophetically...she was. However, Wanda was extremely anxious that we name her "Sally". She was just a toddler when Joey was born, and she had wanted to name the baby, if she was a girl, "Sally", and if he were a boy, "Rachel". Obviously I was not going to name Joey "Rachel"! She was terribly sad about that but when I was pregnant with Phil, she wanted the same thing...and I still wasn't going to name my son, "Rachel" - imagine that!!! By the time that Desiree was born she was pretty into the trick they were all playing on me and was all for, "Desiree Dawn". She was 10 when I was pregnant with Cherstin and I hadn't realized that she was still harboring the desire for "Sally" if the baby was a girl but she voiced it over and over...we knew it was important to her. However, I wasn't a fan of Sally. It was so "old fashioned" and besides...it just conjured up memories of the old "Dick and Jane" reading series that I was taught from. I really didn't want it. Rich and I poured over baby name books trying to find a way to honor Wanda's desire...and then we found out that "Sally" is a knickname for "Sarah"...I was okay with "Sarah" but I still wanted "Cherstin" and "Sarah Cherstin" seemed to flow better than "Cherstin Sarah" to me...and as I type this...I don't really know why because either way seems okay now. Perhaps it was because of the years that I had spent loving the name "Cherstin Elizabeth"...who knows? What I do know is that I violated my vow never to call a child of mine by their middle name (except when I was angry or frustrated at them :) and we called our precious baby daughter, Cherstin. Not only did we call her by her middle name, but we gave her a spelling that would prove difficult for most people to read or pronounce. My great-great-grandmother was born in Sweden and imigrated to Denmark...hence the different spellings. Had we given her the "Kjerstin" people seem to have less trouble with that, but we kept the way it was spelled on her birth record, "Cherstin". Even my Father had difficulty when he saw it written, asking, "Why did you name her 'Cheer-stin?'" I had responded quizically, "What? You don't say 'Cheerstmas'...this is the same thing!" I hadn't even considered that it would be such a stumbling block, perhaps because I had been so involved in the research that the spelling made sense to me. But Cherstin has spent her life telling people her name, over, and over, and over again...then when they see it in print...it's back to helping them learn how to say it again. And, when, as inevitably happens, there is a medical record, school record, church record, etc. that prints her name, Sarah Cherstin is it and she ends up fighting that battle too. For a time, when she was younger and in school, I think she just got tired of it being so difficult, that she went by Sarah...it was infinitely easier! Perhaps to honor me, she ended up going back to Cherstin...or maybe because it was to honor her great-great-great-grandmother. Needless to say...Cherstin Samuelson has not been forgotten!