Saturday, June 26, 2010

100 Year Celebration

The Buchanan branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is 100 years old. It is a church filled with so much history and sentimentality that when I learned they were celebrating today, I wanted to go. It was a very small celebration, after all,... the branch has always been sort of like that Amish Friendship Bread: you make the starter dough, then you divide it and give it to those you love so they have it as well,...but by doing so, your starter never becomes a loaf of bread to be eaten. It just continues to break off parts to become someone else's starter dough or a wonderful loaf of sweet tasting bread. Wasn't that a great analogy? I thought that one up by myself!

Ok, so today we drove out there. I felt like I should have been sitting in seats designated for "old timers" because even though I'm not a member, I attended there LONG before some of them ever heard of the place. It was a pioneer style theme and some of them even dressed the part. They decorated the parking lot with stations of interest and it was really interesting for me. The kids played games and there was music and of course,.... FOOD! Now I have to insert this note: Buchanan branch has never held ANY function without food, and I don't many just snacks, I mean MEALS! and you do NOT go home hungry! There is oftentimes more food at that branch for their activities than my WARD even considers assigning people to bring! By the way, my ward is one of those loaves of bread that came from the starter dough :)

So we got there and walked right into a sack race beginning. Morgan wanted in, so these wonderful amazing REAL Mormons handed my son a sack....even though he was a total stranger to them. Check him out:


And then race #2 appealed so much to Jared that he had to get into it....WITH his Morgan of course!

You'll never guess what happened next,....Manti couldn't resist!


So then we move along and come to where they are making ice cream in ziploc bags. I've heard of making butter in a ziplock bag, but NOT ice cream! Crazy! But it works! You mix the ingredients in a bag, zip it up, place that bag into a bag of salted ice and shake yourself silly. This was a kid activity, but look who ended up doing the shaking...

And there other cute things to see as well.

One of my Daddy's cousin read some of the history of the church, and as it turns out, she compiled eye witness accounts of the history from the time it started, and the sources are ALL my relatives except for one, and maybe Vera Kimball IS my relative, I don't know! But the other 3 definitely are (Lana, Aunt Maurice, and Thomasene for those of you who know those names).

We ate, like I told you we would, but the heat was so hard that I think I was heading towards heat exhaustion. Mesa was worried. She said my face was super red, and my entire head was throbbing, not like a headache, but like it was bobbing on top of my shoulders. It was HOT! But shortly after, they started playing music for us to enjoy. I sat down on a hay bale to listen, and look who ended up on the stage!!! This is Patriarch Bristol! WOW! I was surprised! No, he's not a resident of Buchanan. He's in Powder Springs!

So we had an enjoyable day. One of the things that made it nice was seeing the memorial that is placed in front of the building. The building is new, not the original one with all the history. It's sad that the old building is gone, but there are those who still remember and as long as ONE person remembers, it is not "dead and gone" and neither are those people who made it happen.

My grandparents came to this branch in 1939. My father is listed as one of the first missionaries sent from this branch. My family attended this branch for a period of time before we were divided and some of us sent to Carrollton, where I still attend. So this was a good day for me, and made me yearn for some of those days gone by. I wish Grandmaw and Paw could have been there,....and I hope they were allowed to watch and smile at the days events.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post. It brings back so good, warm memories of people I met when I was investigating the church. They accepted me from the very beginning and made me feel part of them. I know Grandmaw and Paw watched with big smiles on their faces. I'm glad you went.

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