"If you were really Mary, you'd be dead by now."

So with just 17 hours until Eli's flight is scheduled to touch down at the Salt Lake City Airport, I am in desperate need of a diversion. Like truly desperate. And what does any self-respecting missionary mom do in this situation? Why, she gets her hair done, of course. And she goes shopping for a new outfit to wear to the airport. And she blogs.

Allow me to tell you a story from yesterday that will make you laugh. At least I hope it does. I'm still cracking up each time I think about it. So my Sunday was fairly busy. Each week I teach our ward's Gospel Essentials class, but once a month (4th Sunday) I also teach Relief Society, and yesterday was the 4th Sunday. Most people would find it stressful to teach two lessons in a row, but I actually love it. I stay busy, I don't get bored, and I have fun. It's a win/win all around. I often joke that the only thing that could make the 4th Sunday any better would be if I could also speak in Sacrament Meeting. Except I'm not joking.

Early in the week, our primary president called me to ask a favor. She wanted me to prepare a 5-minute monologue portraying Mary Magdalene just after the resurrection and come present it to both junior and senior primaries. Now I know it would have made sense to tell her no because I was already teaching in both the second and third hours of the block, but seriously, how could I pass up an opportunity like this? To do something this fun? She needed me right at the end of both the second and third hours, so I figured I could just leave five minutes early from both my classes and run down to primary and do this monologue. And it worked out perfectly. Like clockwork. No problem at all.

So here's the hilarious part. When I was in junior primary, the children were super quiet. They sat perfectly still and seemed to hang on my every word. I was fairly shocked by this, truth be told, but it made for a lovely atmosphere, and the whole thing went very well. Before I began the actual reading, I explained that I would be pretending to be someone else, kind of like acting. Even though my name is Terrianne, I would be pretending to be a woman named Mary. They seemed to understand, but who really knows what goes on in the minds of children that young? I love their innocence, their faith, and their concrete view of the world. I'm saddened at times when I see parents become angry because their young children tell "lies." Honestly, people this young live right in the moment, and they have little understanding of the line between fantasy and reality. They are incapable of lying because they can't consistently tell the difference between what is true and what is make-believe.

Not knowing for sure the extent to which they would understand my "pretending" to be Mary, I went ahead with my monologue, and as I said, they appeared to be mesmerized. Then I ran out, grabbed my stuff out of my Sunday School classroom and headed down the hall to relief society. About half way there, a junior primary teacher had her little class lined up at the drinking fountain. One of the little boys (I didn't recognize him) looked at me and said as emphatically as any six-year-old could:

"If you were really Mary, you'd be dead by now."

Yes, yes I would be.