Warning, Mormon lingo ahead

Sunday morning I got a phone call from Brother N in the bishopric asking if he could meet with me before church. Don’t you just LOVE phone calls like that? He said he could come over to our house, or I could come to the church, whichever was more convenient. What? I was busy trying to get people ready, also putting the final touches on my Relief Society lesson, but I told him I could come about 15 minutes before church started. Hopefully he’s just telling me I’m doing a great job in my calling, and maybe to ask me how things are going. Maybe they were really calling RYAN (who hides out in the nursery playing with little kids each week) to a calling and were asking me if I could support him. They couldn’t be releasing me from my calling yet, though, because I’ve barely been in this presidency a year, and I’m just getting the hang of things.

Well, I was partly right. They didn’t release me. They did CALL me to a new calling. Seems they were reorganizing both the Primary Presidency and the Young Women’s, and they would like for me to serve in the Primary Presidency as the 2nd counselor. What? Of course I said I would. While I’m thinking it will be more work than the Relief Society gig, I’m looking forward to working in Primary. It’ll be fun, right?

I still had to teach my lesson, since it was my month to do the Presidency Message. I had a lesson on faith all planned out, and I was going to show this video clip. It went so well with the message I was giving on having faith in times of trial.

Well, that video combined with this being my last lesson to teach in Relief Society for a while, and my last Sunday working with this amazing presidency who I have grown to love so much in the past year got me crying. I could barely see the words on the page. I tried to hold it together to get through the lesson–I’m really not usually a crier, dangit– and somehow managed to finish. I will miss working with those ladies. I’ve learned a lot from them and I love them, and I will miss them.

But I seem to be getting a little bit of a reputation in our ward. For the past several years, I’ve been bounced around from calling to calling. I was in activity days for a short time, just getting to know and like that calling, when they called me to Young women’s. I was getting used to that and having a grand time, when they called me to the Relief Society Presidency job. Then I do that for a year and get drafted into the primary. Maybe they think they want to work with me, then they realize I am not all that great and they want to get rid of me. Maybe they know I get bored easily. What they all seem to be forgetting, however, is that I already have a pretty major church calling. One that I devote at least four hours a week minimum to. Yes, playing bells IS a calling. A pretty great calling, if you ask me, but still a calling.

The funny thing is, they haven’t released me from the RS job. I expected them to call someone new and release me today, since it’s been a week, but they didn’t call anyone.

As a primary presidency, we are now scrambling to fill a whole lot of holes. Our president and one counselor were teachers, our music leader got called to be YW president, activity day leaders and scout leaders were also called into YW. So, we’ve got some shoes to fill.

Today we managed to pull together a quick sharing time, but that will be fun–coming up with sharing time lessons and all that. Oh, and writing and putting together a program, and quarterly activities. Fun, fun, fun.

Since we’re talking about church and all that, I went to my mission reunion last night. It was the Duesseldorf Germany 20 year mission reunion. Has it really been 20 years? ACK? I served from fall of 1990 to spring of 1992, so I guess it’s *almost* been 20 years since my mission. I guess they were speaking of President Wolfert’s 20 years, since he was called to that mission in 1990. It was fun to see many Elders and Sisters from my mission. Sadly, not one of my companions was there, although I did know many of the sisters that were there, and a few of the Elders. As a sister in the mission field, you have a little bit of a disadvantage because you don’t get to know as many of the Elders. After all, the guys have an extra 6 months. But it was fun hearing the mission stories, hearing what people are doing now, how many kids they have, and just seeing them. I missed out on my informal high school reunion that was also going on this weekend, but I’m really glad I got to go to the mission reunion. It brought back a lot of memories of what a fabulous experience serving a mission was for me, and also my love of the German people. I need to take my family over to Germany! I’ll have to work on that one.

Today I took Cole, Megan, Natalie and our two Chinese girls up to see Music and the Spoken Word. You can’t visit Utah and not at least try to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, can you? Ryan stayed home with John, who wasn’t old enough to go, and Jenna, who complained of a headache last night and an earache this morning. We got there early enough to get great seats, and listened to the run through. After the run through, there were some announcements and introductions and then they explained that we would have to be very quiet while the broadcast was recording, since this is a LIVE broadcast as well as being recorded for rebroadcast. One of my girls said, “you mean they are going to do that AGAIN?” Way to enjoy the beauty of the music, kiddo. One of my girls was complaining that it’s too cold, and the other one kept whining that it was too long. *Sigh*. I’m doing this for my two Chinese girls. This whole time we’ve been trying to give them new experiences, take them new and different places and have fun.

After it was over, I asked the girls what they thought of the whole experience. One of them told me, “We saw this with the school already.” I’m sure she didn’t mean to deflate my bubble, but I seemed to lose all my enthusiasm at that moment. “Yes”, I said, “you’ve already seen the building, but you hadn’t see the choir.” I said. I guess I was fishing for some kind of comment, but I didn’t get it. We drove home in relative silence. When I got home and Ryan asked how it was, I whined something like “why do I even try? You know how much the kids LOVE (I was saying this sarcastically, by the way) going to Music and the Spoken word? Daisy and Vivian seemed to love it just as much.” I was a little down and wondering why I try so hard. I mean, I would have enjoyed sleeping in this morning, too. I could have done without the two hours of driving up to Salt Lake City and back. I could have done without listening to the complaining. But I did it because I want to give them experiences. All of them. I hope that they did enjoy the experience. They just aren’t big talkers, so I guess I shouldn’t expect gushing enthusiasm, right?

So, it’s been a big week. New calling, lots of activities with the exchange students, Mission reunion. This week should be good too. Hopefully we’ll get ourselves organized as a Primary Presidency this week, and we can start to feel more confident in that. Oh, and hopefully soon they’ll release me. Because being in the Primary Presidency AND the Relief Society Presidency? That’s a little much.