It's Sunday! Always a wonderful day. Today was especially exciting because I have recently been given a new calling at church. For those of you not up on your Mormon lingo, a "calling" is a job that you get assigned to do as part of your church attendance. The Bishop issues the calling and you may either accept or decline, but its always good to accept because every calling allows a person to learn and grow in a new way. Callings include such things as Sunday-School Teacher, Librarian, Family History Worker, Chorister, etc. My new calling is Relief Society Teacher. And again, for those of you who don't know, the Relief Society is the women's organization of the church, which meets the third hour of church every Sunday.
So in my new calling I get to teach the Relief Society lesson about once or twice each month. The topic is determined by the leaders of the church so that each ward in every city around the world gets taught the same things (and the men get taught the same topic too, in Elders Quorum). But its up to me to decide how to teach that topic and what specific things my women ought to hear.
My sister was horrified when I told her what my calling was going to be, because she has a horror of public speaking. (She hasn't received a calling in this ward yet.) I guess I'm old enough now that it doesn't bother me in the least to stand in front of 40 girls and teach a lesson. In fact, I rather enjoy it. I get to be in charge, and view it as an exciting challenge. Plus, it forces me, in a good way, to read up on and learn about a topic that I may need some work on in my own life. In fact, if I were to choose my own calling right now, it would be RS Teacher, so I am very happy. I'm very relieved not to be on the Activities Committee, or an FHE leader!
However, last Sunday when I got my calling, my initial excitement turned to surprise and almost dismay when I found out that I would be teaching my first lesson in just one week, and it would be on the topic of Divorce! The fourth Sunday of each month the lesson comes from a talk or talks given in recent General Conference, and this particular talk was given last April by one of my favorite Apostles, Dallin H. Oaks. His talk is actually quite wonderful, (you can read it on www.lds.org in the Gospel Library section, under General Conference--just do a search) and I enjoyed rereading it. Elder Oaks is a lawyer by profession and he seems to always say things in a very orderly, logical way, which allows the truth of the gospel to shine through.
You'd think that the subject of Divorce would have nothing to do with single adults under the age of 30, but there was actually a lot to be said and discussed. The lesson was actually easier to plan than I thought it would be. The hard part was teaching it. It's a subject that a lot of people get very emotional about, as it has touched so many lives, and it involves discussions on marriage and dating, which single Mormons are also very opinionated about. My main task was steering the discussion to a desired goal, and that was to reaffirm some key points:
1. Heavenly Father loves each of us and wants what is best for us.
2. He cannot deny us blessings if we are righteous and do our best to work hard and keep the commandments.
3. Families are sacred, and marriages can be eternal.
With those things in mind, I was able to steer every tangential comment back to the point that if we just do everything we are supposed to do as obedient sons and daughters of God, marriages will work, relationships will be strong, and families will be happy and blessed. I've seen it happen in real life!
So, I'm really excited about this new calling, though I am eager for less controversial topics.
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