Public Speaking? No problem!

Lincoln and Marian both gave talks in church in the last two weeks. Lincoln spoke on April 26. Lincoln prepared his talk with only a little help, and he practiced it too. He talked about Nephi and his brothers and how the Lord may ask us to do challenging things, but he will always help us do them. He did a great job! He is a natural public speaker.

Marina talked on May 3. She insisted that she did not want ANY help with her talk. I asked her several times what she was going to talk about. She usually said baby Jesus. I tried to coach her in the story of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus going to Egypt. The morning of the talk, Marina said she was going to talk about baby Jesus and the animals at the zoo, but she would not practice her talk. She 'wrote' her talk down (a paper full of the letter M, her favorite), and carried it to church with her. She insisted that she needed no help in delivering her talk. Here is her talk, as close to verbatim as I can remember.

"I am going to talk about the baby Jesus, right?" (looks at me, waits for an answer) "Right. So Jesus was a baby and when he growed up he took the angels wings. The animals live at the zoo cuz that's their home and they live there. Some animals live in the jungle becuase that's where they live. But the other animals live at the zoo. That's it." Then one of the ladies told Marina to say amen. So Marina said, "I don't wanna say amen," gave her best pouty face, and walked away.

All in all, it's clear we have two great public speakers in the family!