Speaking in Church

I know everyone dreads this because this is pretty much the first thing most people say when they get up to speak in church. Mark and I have been pretty awesome at avoiding speaking thus far. We've been asked once, were going to out of town and they left us alone. Well the first week of July we were asked to speak on that upcoming Sunday, we conveniently were going to be out of town again. Mark feeling guilty at telling the bishopric "No" twice asked if there was another week we could speak. I wanted to punch Mark, but it was probably the right thing to do and we were set to speak on the 29th and given the topic of "Pioneers".
Ugh the big range topics. Can anyone please tell me why they do this to you? You can only go about a million different directions with this. Could they not have assigned me something a little smaller? If they did I would probably be complaining about that.
Anyways, I somehow managed to tie in "Tuesdays with Morrie" into my talk. Which I think worked out great. Except the fact that Mark and I were the only two speakers and they started sacrament meeting early. Guess what time it was when I got up to talk? 3:05. As if my legs were not already acting like a sewing machine lets add in the fact that Mark and I have to take up 55 minutes. I'll admit we had the help of a very short rest hymn, but I had only prepared a 15 minute talk. When I'm nervous I tend to speak really really fast. So if I was lucky I was going to make it to 15 minutes.
I'm standing up there thinking, "STRETCH!!!!" I was pulling stuff out of nowhere. I was chatty and giving my talk and when it was over I looked at the clock hoping that I somehow made it to about ten minutes, because it felt a lot more like five. Let's be honest here, I don't even remember half of what I said. I've been told my multiple people that I did, in fact, speak for at least 15 minutes. Mark was watching the clock correctly while I stared at the hour hand willing it to move like the minute hand.
Even so when my talk was over and we sang the rest hymn it just past 3:25. Here's the funny thing, Mark had only prepared a talk slightly longer than mine. Guess how far he stretched it? 3:50. That's right my husband is awesome. His talk didn't even sound like he stretched it either. I was jealous, his was so much better than mine.
We expected the Bishop to at least try and fill the last ten minutes of the block and help us out a little bit. But he didn't and we sang the closing hymn and church ended early, you know just to draw further attention to the fact that Mark and I had not filled the meeting.
Seriously though, what kind of bishopric gives two speakers almost an entire hour to fill? Mark and I figured if we were prepared to cover a little more than a half hour we would be golden. Not so. We weren't even close.
At least that adventure is over. For a few years if we're lucky.