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“We are One, Big Family”
The Finnish Temple Cultural Celebration, Part 4
Text by Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor
Editors’ note: Most of
the pictures throughout this article (all parts) are not captioned
with the names of the performers. Can you, the readers, help us
caption each picture by identifying each person with a correct spelling
of their names and where they are from (branch, ward, and/or district
or stake)?
Please be sure and tell us
the exact person you are talking about by saying where they are
in the picture (example: third person from the left with the red
flower in her hair) and the exact picture to which you are referring—each
picture is numbered. Send all caption helps to sproctor3@cox.net
and we will update the articles every few days as we receive the
needed information. When you see someone you know — contact
them and let them know they’re being featured on Meridian
Magazine!
Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia
Please
click on any photo to enlarge.
The Latvian Saints performed a folk dance illustrating
how “Life is like a tree…Life is like a dance…and
Life is like a game.”
These Saints were full of enthusiasm, love and
joy.
The Lithuanian Saints took us to their country
in a series of slides of the countryside with expanses of green
fields and weathered barns and villages, before which they danced
with long tapestries connecting the partners.
A man on a Jew’s harp began a twanging
sound that ushered in the Estonian segment of the show. Children
were dressed as lambs and chicks, and a big, four-legged “cow”
ambled onto the stage, amidst much laughter from the crowd. Then
a line of young women, dressed in colorful peasant dress came in
singing the national song.
It is a special rhyme where the leader sings
the first sentence and the others take up the rest of the song.
The song says that they want to find the material in a field to
make a musical instrument.
Then children, who have been gathering flowers,
circle in a skipping dance. Former Finnish mission president, Malcolm
Asplund, who had served in the country when the Church was still
in a struggling infancy, had tears in his eyes when he explained,
“These are little children who were born in the covenant.”
The scene changes. Work is finished, and the
dancing begins for the adults. Then the performers dance a bit of
a story how two people get together. First they are introduced,
then they have a little spiff, where the dancers do a quick turn
on their heels, and finally there is the coming together.
Piret Lahtimae, one of the dancers said, “We
have had such a great time doing this, that we are talking about
learning new dances and continuing on.
Please
click here to go to Part 5 of The Finnish Temple Cultural Celebration.
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