Interesting events at church

A week ago Saturday we had an awesome sarcrament meeting. It was the primary presentation and it has been a long time since I have seen one of those being in YSA wards for the past 3 years. It was humorous and entertaining. This week we had a large LDS Holy Land tour come to church. In sunday school our teacher Aaron, who I really enjoy hearing his lessons, was suffering from a massive migrane that he woke up with, he apologized but still taught a good lesson. His way of teaching the lesson today was very logistical as he went over the events of Christ's visit to the Americas. 10 minutes before we were out of time an older gentleman gets up and walks down the auditorium stairs and walks up to the podium and Aaron says, "Oh is my time up?" (probably asking that because he was so confused as to what was happening). Then the man says, "Yes you are out of time" then takes the pulpit and starts to talk about when he was called by President Hinckley to be a Seventy. It was very uncomfortable and the spirit left the room. Then President Schafer, our Branch President, came down and asked him to sit down, the man continued to finish then sat down. He was an emeritus Seventy who was traveling the Holy Land with a LDS tour group as the "celebrity". Brother Jackson, the director of the BYU Jerusalem Center said that this happens a few times a year, these tour groups advertise the emeritus Seventies to help promote their tours, he then said that what we saw was a commercialized event and should not be happening. Then in Priesthood, after a question was posed during the lesson, the Seventy said, "President Schafer has a comment" in which President Schafer turned around and said, "oh, no, my hand wasn't up" then the emeritus Seventy had the audacity to say, "I know, I want you to make a comment on this" in which President Schafer replied, "I appreciate your offer, But I will have to defer". I was so confused about how this emeritus Seventy can conceit himself to think that every meeting he ever attends revolves around his agenda and that he presides. Our Branch President is awesome, President Schafer took care of it after church, he was not happy about his behavior. As unconventional as these events were today I learned two major lessons.

1. God has set order to the way the Chruch functions. When this is disruppted, no matter who, there is a lack of spirit and productivity. The spirit left the room, everyone I spoke with after said the same thing, they felt the spirit leave and/or they felt uncomfortable even though an ex-general authoriy is up bearing testimony about the savior. He did not have the sanction of the presiding authority and he cut off the person who was set apart to teach the class, thus cutting off the spirit.

2. Where there are congregations of faithful saints who are living in a way that creates an environment that fosters the Holy Ghost, general apostasy cannot grow. It was interesting how everyone in our group and the branch members all felt the spirit leave and they knew something was amiss. This gave me more hope and trust in the general membership in the Church, if they are living righteously and feeling the influence of the Holy Ghost, collective apostasy is hard to obtain.