A Busy, Good Sabbath

Today was a pretty good church day. I went to ward council, which so often increases my faith in humanity. We have some absolutely stellar humans in our ward, not least of which is our YW president, Maryanne Nelson. I sat by a divorcing woman who I haven't seen at church for several weeks, between her work schedule and some family insanity going on. I am going to help her move this week.

Relief Society was beautiful. "The Immediate Goodness of God." There wasn't anything that raised my hackles, and there was some pretty frank vulnerability.

I came home from choir practice to find my hard drive on the desk. I even found the fishing merit badge photos for William's Eagle court of honor. I will have to hunt through some more to find what other scouting mementos are buried in there. I have one week.

Self-reliance group went well. Four left! I went straight from there to the Crawfords to talk to Eean about my performance review. That also went well. After also speaking with Cristi yesterday, I feel prepared. I stayed for dinner and had a nice time being with the Crawfords, winding things up with dessert and scriptures. Eean grilled some fabulous Brazilian beef dish, served with beans and rice. It was all so good.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My daughter did not go to church today

We had a remarkable sacrament meeting today. The youth speaker did a lovely job talking about how prayer has brought her comfort and peace. Makayla, a woman who recently joined our ward, gave a beautiful talk about being of good cheer. It turns out, it isn't so much about being happy as having courage. She shared stories of her grandmothers and her mother that showed their different ways of having courage and the confidence that can come to us through faith in Jesus Christ. Then we sang, "I Am a Child of God." Isaac gave the last talk, with similar motifs. He made a point at the end to say that having challenges and feeling bad are not synonymous with being out of favor with God. The Relief Society discussion topic was on Becky Craven's talk "Careful vs. Casual" and Pr. Oaks's talk "Where Will This Lead?" It was good for me to revisit Sis. Craven's talk and find that it was less annoying than I perceived in its delivery the first time aro...
Read more

60-minute testimony meeting

Today was our first Sunday with 2-hour church. I went to church at 9:00 a.m. and got home before noon, even though I spent a long time chatting with people after the meetings. It was nice! Sacrament meeting went by quickly. I didn't miss those extra ten minutes. Our bishop has been practicing for going without them for the past couple of weeks. There were 6 males and 5 females who bore their testimonies, which is about as close to balanced as we get in our ward. One of the males was the bishop, who conducted the meeting. It bodes well as a start to the new year. About three years ago I noticed that it seemed like more men bore their testimony than women in our ward. I expressed on the ward sisters' Facebook group a desire to hear from more women, for myself and for my sons and daughters. Since we have a fair number of young families, and one parent is sometimes called away for work, I offered to hold children or take them out in the hall if that would help anyone out. Since...
Read more

A day late

I arrived a few minutes early for ward council. As the other people arrived, I felt a thrill at the four women in attendance: me (Self-Reliance Specialist) and the three female auxiliary presidents. We were a full third of the people in the room. We had sacrament meeting talks by a graduating senior, the stake patriarch, and a high council visitor. The youth talk was the best one. Relief Society made me a little nervous. The teacher told us how she is used to lecturing and being an authority, but that's not what we're meant to do in Relief Society. Often when people make such assertions, they disappoint. This one didn't. She actually entertained numerous comments, including responses to the comments of others. We spent a few minutes in groups discussing questions after the initial general discussion. She even wrapped up pretty close to on time, in spite of having the groups report a little on their discussions. We had a linger longer at the pavilion after church. A lo...
Read more