Week Ending January 18, 2014

Sunday I spent time with one of my students explaining that he needed to be doing online seminary again. He had forgotten which lesson we were on, so he waited to ask instead of calling me. I’m really impressed with the efforts of one of the members to be ready to pass the Sacrament. Ever since the first time he was asked, when he didn’t feel he could do it, he has come with a white shirt and tie, shirt tucked in, ready to pass. And he always accepts when asked. I think he’s making a real effort to be ready. Our new student has also helped the last two weeks. He’s trying to get ready to serve a mission and get advanced in the priesthood. He’s hoping to go out the first of the summer. That’s a lot to get done in just a few months.

My Relief Society lesson went well. It was on Our Heavenly Father and I really appreciated some of the things Pres. Joseph Fielding Smith said in the manual. I felt it was really an important lesson. I’m not sure how much the sisters got out of the lesson because they don’t volunteer their thoughts.

In the evening we went to the CES Fireside with Elder Tad R. Callister. He spoke about the blueprint of the church and how a blueprint matches just one specific building or item. He talked about the various parts of the blueprint and how the church matches the blueprint Christ created exactly. It was a wonderful talk.

Monday we went to the Navajo Trading Center just north of town and bought some rug yarn. I got maroon, dark gray, and cream. Black was on order and will arrive in a couple of weeks. They had lots of shades of beige and brown. I guess a lot of people make the Two Gray Hills rugs in the earth tones.

We stopped at Walmart for a few groceries. I introduced myself to our student/missionary’s mom in the pharmacy. She’s a sweet lady and said she thinks he’s doing fine. We also visited with a friend who was baptized at Tohlakai just after we started seminary there. She is getting ready to go to the Mesa Temple, probably in February. Exciting.

Home evening was fun. We had an activity demonstrating mind over matter and played a game called “Battle of the Sexes” where the men ask the women guy questions and women ask the men girl questions. I talked to the kids about institute and encouraged them to come. Some are working nights, going with missionaries, family birthdays or weddings, etc. It’s difficult to build the program when the kids don’t come regularly. It is an uphill battle.

Home evening activity--mind over matter

Tuesday I had to hurriedly open seminary for the week and send out an email that it was ready. I had forgotten to open it Sunday. Since the break I have had a hard time getting into a routine. In the evening I was supposed to help the son-in-law of a family get his mom’s name prepared for temple work. He had an unexpected meeting at work and wasn’t sure when he would be home. When they called, I had figured out that we could do it over the phone, with me “helping” him in the system. There is a feature that allows me to put a code in the system so it looks like he did the work, but my hands are on the keys. We were able to do it all over the phone and did everything we needed for Saturday. It worked great.

Wednesday we went to the senior center for lunch and had a good visit with some of the people there. In the evening we had our Relief Society night meeting. I taught the ladies to make frilly scarves. We had three ladies come and none knew how to knit, but they all did really well on the scarves and made really good progress. In fact, they all liked it so much they took the extra yarn I had bought. Now I just need to collect the money. Two of the ladies nearly finished while they were there. The other came later so she was just getting started.

Making our scarves

 Thursday we had the quilting group. One lady cut the pieces for the side of the quilt blocks. I measured one of her squares and had her cut all the pieces that length. After she had cut them, she sewed the strips together. When she went to sew them on the blocks, they were too small. Apparently, my ruler doesn’t start at 0 and I must have measured from the edge of the ruler to get the length of the strips. They were all too short and there was no more fabric. We found some navy blue fabric she said would work, but I felt sick that I had made such a stupid error. The other lady began sewing her strips on her blocks. I told her she needed to trim all her blocks to be the same size—there was a wide variety—and she agreed, but she didn’t do it. She sewed the strips along the edges to make them straight instead of trimming them. We’ll see how it all works out.

In the afternoon I worked on seminary until it was time for class. One student emailed me in the afternoon to say she wouldn’t be in class. I wonder what it would be like to have all four of the girls in class. I think it went well—we had some good comments.

After seminary was over we grabbed a quick bite to eat then headed out to institute. We’d had a text in the afternoon from a new student asking how to register and when class was held, so we expected him to be there. He wasn’t. We had three students. One starts a class on Thursday next week so she won’t be able to attend this semester.

Afterward, we got the kids going with refreshments and games then our supervisor wanted to talk with us. He said our assignment was changing to be the stake seminary/institute supervisors. The details are uncertain, but they are calling a new institute teacher and they would like me to find a new seminary teacher for the branch. I will keep the online class. We will be meeting with priesthood leaders and identifying and working with young adults to help get them involved in the program. We will also be visiting and observing classes and offering suggestions. The supervisor is spread too thin and he needs to be training the teachers. He will train then we will follow up to make sure the teachers are getting it. We will meet with him regularly. There will be three institute classes in the stake. We’ll also visit the seminary classes on a regular basis. It sounds like a lot of stretching ourselves. I think this is a good idea—I’m not sure we’re the best for the job, but I’m sure the Lord will help us do what needs to be done.

Friday we had zone conference in Chine. We had to leave around 8 am, but the weather was good, unlike our last venture to that area. We got there in good time and visited with some of the other couples. When the meeting started, for some reason I was feeling a little down. I think I was having thoughts from the conversation with Bro. Miller and feeling very inadequate. Also, this would have been the zone conference when we shared our going home testimonies. The opening song was “Be Thou Humble” and the message really touched me. It reminded me the Lord speaks to us when we need it. It was still a little sad when it came time for testimonies to think it was not our time. I’m happy to be here and doing this work, but I am looking forward to going home as well.

We finished in plenty of time to go to Canyon de Chelly, but we were ready to head home. Ted was really tired and I was anxious to go by the trading post and look at yarn. We were amazed when we got there—there was an entire wall covered with large hanks of yarn of many different colors. My mind started swimming with ideas for ways to use the yarn. I bought some fairly basic colors because I want to learn before I do more, but I kept thinking of the beautiful colors and how I would like to use them in a rug.

Saturday we picked up our friends and their granddaughter to go to the temple. We were supposed to be at the temple at 1:30, but it was a little after 1 when we arrived. We decided to go into the baptistery to wait. When we got in there, the man in charge said we could go ahead and do our work at the tail end of another group. The man baptized his granddaughter for his mom and her other grandma then they did the confirmations at the side of the font. It was really special. I know he was touched. He said it was all he could do to keep from crying.

After we finished there, we had about an hour before the sealing of a family in the branch. It was a sweet ceremony and the man who officiated was very kind to them. I was really glad we had gone.