Yesterday was our Ward Conference. Sacrament meeting went a little longer than usual, and then instead of Sunday School, we had a joint Priesthood/ Relief Society lesson taught by Al Wimmer, with a short wrap-up at the end by Cynthia Christensen. I was, unfortunately, late for class, and thus missed the beginning. If anyone is reading this and cares to add a comment about what happened before I arrived, please do so.
The topic of the lesson was home and visiting teaching. When I arrived, Al was passing on some counsel that he had heard President Mallory give. He suggested that we try to find out the goals of the family we are visiting--not just their spiritual goals, but the everyday, temporal things they are working on. When we know more about what they are trying to accomplish, we can offer our services in a way that will make our visits part of the solution, instead of an intrusion in their already overly full lives. We can think of this effort as "Home and Family Service."
Then Al reminded us that President Hedquist wants us to focus on home and visiting teaching as a way of building relationships with individuals and families. It is about people, not numbers. Sister Elaine Jack, he told us, has said that we cannot always lift the burden from another person, but we can try to lift the person, giving him or her added strength to lift their own burdens.
Al then turned the time over to four people he had asked to share personal experiences with home or visiting teaching. The first to speak was Rebecca Shaw, who shared the story of when she found out she needed to be hospitalized. She didn't know how she could do this with a three-month old baby, a husband on his way out of town, and her family on the other side of the country. But her visiting teachers came to her aid as they took charge of the care of her baby so that she could focus on getting well.
The next story was by Shirley Thornton. She told us about the time when she was a young mother with three or four little children and a husband in graduate school. Her shoulder was dislocated in a car accident, and her arm was in a sling. Her visiting teachers stopped by at the end of the month. They had not heard about her accident, but instead of trying to find out how they could help her through this difficult time, they told Shirley that they were in a hurry and had to go. This hurt Shirley, and she determined then to try to be more sensitive to the needs of the sisters she visited, and to make a point of going to see them early in the month, and not at the very end.
Our third story was by Tom Cotton. He told of his experience as the home teacher to a wheelchair-bound sister who was quite needy. He was frustrated by all of the things she wanted other people to do for her, but he was able to find a way of serving her that he felt good about. He offered to work on her family history, researching her family tree back several generations. With the help of his wife and the woman's son, they were able to do the temple work for many of her family members, and then help her participate in their sealings.
Our final story was by Bob Pace. He told us about his first home teaching assignment here in Michigan in the 1950s when he had a 75-mile route with 8 families. He was able to re-activate one of the brothers on his route. Then in 1983, while living in Utah, Bob came back to Michigan to baptize his mother. He was worried about who would take care of her as a new member, with him all the way in Utah. But then he found out that her new home teacher would be Dave Downie, the same brother that Bob had helped to re-activate as a home teacher in the 1950s.
To close the lesson, Cynthia Christensen re-iterated the message of Bob's experience, reminding us of the ripple affect our service in the church can have. She told us that she will always remember the counsel of President Quinn, who told us to pray daily, by name, for each of the people we visit or home teach. Doing this will help us to think of them each day, to remember them. This will make it easier for us to receive revelation from God on their behalf.
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Since I am vitally interested in Al Wimmer, I know what he said at the first. First he had us read a scripture from Moroni 6:4
"And after they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken, that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God, to keep them in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith."
He stated that churchwide, about 32% of home teaching gets done. He asked why that would be the case. Someone pointed out that the church has an activity rate of about 50% and that many people on our lists are "do not visit". Shirley Thornton suggested that it is hard to actually plan on and make these visits happen because there isn't a set structure for making it happen (like teaching a Sunday school class, which happens every week). Lisa Jibson suggested that the scripture we read says we should remember each other and perhaps because we are so busy with our own lives, sometimes we forget the people we have been called to remember.
I think the rest of it you summarized nicely.
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