Referrals!
Welcome to the first of two blogs for the month of July! Last month’s YouTube video was a video to celebrate five years since I came home from serving a mission for a year and a half. It just so happens that it’s been a year and a half since I started doing YouTube videos as well(more on that later in tomorrow’s blog). Time really does fly by fast!
I’ve mentioned before that I wrote songs on my mission. Sometimes I’d do musical projects with my sister missionary companions. Knowing that I was into music, one of my companions shared with me a parody she learned from other missionaries. It’s called “Cupstoration”, a missionary version of the cup song. I wasn’t very good at both singing and making the cup rhythm at the same time, so I put up the cup pyramid and sang while my companion did the cup rhythm and sang with me. Later on in my missionary journal I wrote,
“We had fun learning “the cup song” for the Restoration. We got it good enough that we planned to use it for the family we would visit next. They LOVED it! And so did the family we had dinner with a while later.”
Sharing this song was just the beginning for us realizing that we could use a creative approach in teaching religion. Not long after that, we decided to make our own missionary parody of the song “I’m Yours”. We chose this song because my companion knew the chords to the song on the Ukulele. She also had a Ukulele with her… I can’t remember how she was able to have it with her on her mission though… but I think a member lended it to her. Anyways, we had only figured out the first verse and chorus but still wanted to share it with a family of members after they fed us dinner. Here’s what I wrote in my journal afterwards,
“We shared part of the song we’ve been trying to write since Thursday. We then shared scriptures about the real meaning of “Referrals”, explaining that writing a song about getting referrals isn’t about us begging them to give us people to teach. It’s a fun reminder to help God’s children.”
A year and a few months later, I was home hanging out with my niece who is also musically talented. When I found out that she also knew the chords to “I’m Yours”, we made a video of the song with her accompanying me. My companion and I had been so busy while in our area, and we never finished the parody. So in this recording I did with my niece, I sang the first verse, the chorus, and then stumbled through a bunch of ‘do-do-do-do’s’ before laughing and then singing, “Referrals!” I sent the video to my companion and tried to convince her to finish the song with me! She agreed that it needed finishing, but she couldn’t think of anything to add. Not to mention the fact that we were both home from our missions and across the world from each other living our own busy lives.
Fast forward again to this summer where I had already taken guitar lessons, bought a ukulele, and wrote a ukulele solo. (I mentioned guitar lessons because after learning some guitar, the tiny ukulele felt a lot easier to play.) While I was trying to figure out what my June video was going to be, I realized that I could figure out the chords for the Referrals song and have it as a video to celebrate my five year anniversary since coming back from my mission! But the song still wasn’t complete…
Then I realized that this parody didn’t really need more verses, it just needed some finality. So I decided to replace the ‘do-do-do-do’s’ with a phrase and repeat it. I told my companion about finishing this song with this tiny detail. I also asked her for permission to include pictures of the two of us in this song’s video since she helped me with the song. She was excited to hear that I figured out an ending and was totally fine with being in the video. Just like that, I knew what my June video was going to be! Before I knew it, I had recorded the song, matched the pictures up with it, and uploaded and scheduled the video to come out on my five year mark, June 26th.
I hope you enjoyed today’s blog! Remember to check out my merchandise at my shop, donate to my website, and read tomorrow’s blog when it comes out!
