Baby Blessing and Skype

"Baby Blessing and Skype"
Elder Darrel L. Hammon

I am convinced Heavenly Father helped create Skype through divine inspiration--at least the good parts. While we are serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Welfare Specialists in the Caribbean Area Welfare Office, we have the opportunity to stay in touch with our family and friends. How? Skype, Twitter, Gmail, blogs (like this one), and Facebook (more on all of this on another blog).

This past Sunday, though, we participated in the baby blessing of our new grandson. The Bishop of daughter's ward approved of having the baby blessing at their home, primarily so we could attend. Normally, baby blessings happen in the chapel on the first Sunday of the month. We were quite pleased when the permission was granted so we could attend. We know the Bishop, and we believe he wanted to make sure we were able to participate (Thanks, Bishop!).

So, at 1:00 p.m. Dominican Republic time and 11:00 a.m. Orem, Utah, time, we Skyped in. We were instantly chatting with lots of people--Joanne's mother, her brother and sister-in-law, our other daughter, some of our nieces and nephews, Anna Rose's in-laws, and others. It was wonderful to chat with them before the baby blessing.

When the Bishop arrived, then the blessing began. Christiaan took baby William in his arms, and all those Melchizedek Priesthood holders took their places in the circle, right hands beneath the baby, gently bouncing him (William was asleep), and left hands on right shoulders. Christiaan then pronounced the blessing. While we could not hear all of the words, we knew Christiaan gave a wonderful blessing. Now, William is official!

The part that is not participative is you cannot have lunch with the family after a blessing, which is a tradition in the Church. But Anna Rose let us "see" what was on the menu. They were going to have pulled pork sandwiches with all of the trimmings. Yum! I could almost taste it.

Well, thanks to Skype we participated in the baby's blessing, talked to family and friends, and was a part of a traditional family gathering at a baby blessing. We enjoyed ourselves.