Missing the Children

“Every member of the Church is important to us. Indeed, every person—member or not—is important to us, but surely among the most significant of all our responsibilities is the responsibility to protect and nurture the children of the Church. . . . We care so much about you and about the children you are teaching. Prepare well to bless these little ones. Give it your best effort. Your influence will, quite literally, affect these children for eternity. Enjoy the assignment that you have, and discharge it faithfully. . . . However much we love and admire children, I am certain we underestimate who and what a child is and what in the hands of God he or she may become. May God bless you always in your sacred opportunity to help save the children of this Church” (Jeffrey R. Holland, Message to Primary Leaders, Mar. 2006).

Not long ago I was called to a new position -- counselor in our Stake Primary presidency. That of course meant a release from our ward Primary, where I had served for nearly 5 years, 1 year as the chorister and nearly 4 as the President. I love our Primary, the children and their teachers more than I had imagined possible. I loved being with them and serving them. I loved feeling the spirit with them and talking about the gospel with them.

I also knew that Heavenly Father had something else in mind for me. I know that I am where I am now for a reason. I know that His hand was in this change. But I miss the children and teachers of our ward.

Stake callings are different. I know this because I have had them before. You are dealing with the adults, training them, and helping them to love their Primary (or whatever organization you are serving in) calling. It's very different from serving in the ward. I had a dream presidency when I was released, wonderful teachers and Primary workers to serve with and children that I will always love. And change is hard.

Now I have a new presidency to learn to know and love. The fact that most of us are in different wards makes it harder. And that it's summer doesn't help either, with many people traveling. And have I mentioned (ha!) that I miss the children?

I have such a testimony of Primary and the love that the Savior has for the children. That's where I have been planted, and that's where my heart is. Working directly with the children.

And now I have to figure out how to help other adults love serving in the Primary. I hope I can do it.

(picture of our Primary in a Christmas Sharing Time)

New House

family room

Front door, looking from living room into family room

Upstairs playroom (ours looks a lot the same as this)

Other side of playroom -- our TV is there along with the elliptical

kitchen

Dining nook (not very big - -not sure what we'll do when we have big dinners here -- like Christmas. We'll figure it out, I'm sure!)

kitchen

Front yard (don't you love those trees?!)

Things are (finally) slowing down - -and I have had numerous requests for pics of the new house. I want to make it clear that these pics are not of us moved into this house - they are the pics that were posted when the house went up for sale. So it doesn't look like this anymore. I am not ready to take pics of it yet 'cause it's still in a mess. But here's what it looks like in general.

We love it.

Moved In

I am finally feeling like there will be a time (still in a fairly distant future - but now there is hope) that we will be all moved in and settled. Even though we've moved a lot, I had forgotten that when you change houses, everything changes. The rooms don't work with your furniture, or the places you used to store stuff don't exist anymore. You know what I mean. So we've bought new shelving, new TVs (yup, you read that right -- we figured we deserved it since our newest TV was over 10 years old), new organizers for the drawers, etc. etc. etc. We still need to get a cabinet to hang over the toilet in our bathroom (where else am I going to store the TP?!), the king guest bed takes up the entire guest room so I think we're going to go to a full instead, and bunk beds are what we want for the room for the little people who visit.

Mark has a lot of things to put together or to hang or to do something to and then I can continue what I need to do. More, I need help with trying to figure out how to set up our family room. I'm so not good at that - but what I do know is that it doesn't look right. And my Candice has moved! Ack! So we're kind of still in a mess - -but progress has been made. And that's good.

Just another little (sort of) funny note: as we were clearing out the storage unit on Saturday, we made one last trip and in our zeal to be done, we over-loaded the back of the pick-up we had borrowed from Mark's work. Math was riding back there, keeping his hand on a purple chair (that's why it it was in storage - - no purple at either house anymore) that was a perched just little bit precariously. Just as we came down Slaughter (quite a busy street here in Austin, especially on a Saturday afternoon), a breeze came up, pretty much swept the chair away and it landed in the middle of that busy street. Math said that he felt it coming, but if he had held onto it, he would have gone along with it. (Good call on that one!) Math's friend Kim was driving behind us and she managed to stop, and everyone else around us managed to do the same, thank goodness. Math and Mark leaped out and put Little Purple (didn't know we named our furniture, did you?) onto the median and then we just kept on going. No one knew what else to do and I think it was the right answer.

We rushed home, unloaded the truck, formulated a plan and headed back to rescue Little Purple. But in that short time period (no more than 30 minutes, I think), Little Purple had been kidnapped. So RIP, Little Purple. We hope you like your new home!

'Cause we like ours. A lot.