50th Anniversary of the Kirkcaldy Ward Chapel

The Ceilidh Band

 The Kirkcaldy Ward is one of the Wards in our Stake, and the first meeting their Chapel was 50 years ago on Sunday 12 January 1964. To celebrate, the ward held a series of events during the three days ending with Sunday 12 January 2014. We drove down Friday evening for the Ceilidh with a live three piece band courtesy of one of the members of another Ward.  A Ceilidh (a Gaelic word) is Scottish folk dancing; our American square dancing has its roots in the Ceilidh. It was also the YSA activity for that Friday night, so we also got to hang out with them.

The Pipers

The Ceilidh opened with two pipers marching in and piping for about 10 minutes, which was wonderful. They repeated it after the break for the band, but this time with three pipers. We danced a couple of times, and had fun. Towards the end, we danced the Virginia reel (which it is generally considered to be an English country dance, even though it has Scottish origins).

The main refreshment for the night was "stovies", and was part of a competition with our Stake President as the judge. There were plenty of stovies with oatcakes for everyone during the break. From what we saw, stovies can be most anything, basically what we would call a stew: potatoes, onions and meat of some kind in gravy with whatever else you want thrown in. We quite liked them.

Stovies - each was labeled with a unique name

We went back down Saturday afternoon for an open house. They had fantastic displays of ward history including a timeline along one wall of the cultural hall, a video of the youth interviewing some of the longtime members about their conversion and testimony and two service projects that you could join in and help out. It was really well done and concluded with the burial of a time capsule made by the Primary

children.

Timeline - this pictures shows 20 of 50 years.

Part of the displays for the open house and one of the two service projects

Burying the Time Capsule

 On Sunday we attended the Special Sacrament meeting. The Bishop and Stake President Watson were the speakers. Our Mission President and his wife were also there, as he is a former Bishop of the Ward. Interestingly, the final three hymns, “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain”, “Redeemer of Israel” and “Praise to the Man” were all written by William W. Phelps, an early member of the Church with Scottish heritage (1792-1872). The tune for “Praise to the Man” is the traditional Scottish folk tune "Scotland the Brave".  Following Sacrament meeting, there was the always popular "munch and mingle", with lots of tasty food. It was a wonderful and meaningful weekend.