The Perfect Calling

I've had one calling in my life, and that was to run the Enrichment meetings on Wednesday nights. Since I was a nomad in college, that lasted all of about a month. I've never really gotten a chance to have a real calling.

But now that my husband and I have settled down, I am very excited to announce that I have a NEW calling. I will be a Young Women's advisor, more specifically the Mia Maids advisor! Okay - it's not like I'm the RS president, but I seriously think Heavenly Father was inspiring the bishop when they picked this one.

Every weekend I hang out with my 13 year old niece and her friend. First of all because it's fun, and having family over all weekend is what I look forward to. Secondly, I am hoping that by hanging out at my house, I can be a "good influence" and keep them out of trouble. They both consider me to be a best friend (second only to each other), and so they tell me everything. Which is scary because I have found that they have pregnant, lesbian, gay, sexually active, peers who are considered "popular" at their school. Fortunatley, I have also found that they both have good heads on their shoulders. My niece comes from a Lutheran father, and an inactive LDS mother, so she only goes to church when she's at Nana and Papa's house. Her friend isn't a member. But this Sunday they asked if they could go to church with us. Strange, because Mormon church for a 13 year old is like pulling teeth. It's almost that way for me sometimes.

We went to church and I was sustained. Then absolutely the MOST boring talks occured, assuredly reaffirming my nieces former thoughts on church. Her friend tried to pay attention, but was too focused on the fact that she wore sporty capri pants to church instead of a skirt. We wrote notes back and forth, and my husband tried to keep the spirit by playing a matching game. He wrote down the names of people in the Bible and BoM and made us guess their description. The girls and I drew lines from "Adam" to "ate the apple" and from Moses to "parted the red sea." From "Noah" to "built the ark" and from "Moroni" to "buried the plates." We got all the Bible ones right, and got stuck on the more difficult BoM ones.

Then we went to Dairy Queen for Sunday School. I was trying to do my best to convince the girls to stay for Young Women's, which was becoming more difficult as the weekend's boredom came to a head. So we had some ice cream, and sneaked back into church. The talk was on endowments. Since I haven't even gotten mine yet, I thought it was strangely appropriate to talk about it.

My talk next week is preparing to go to the temple, which I will be doing on 08/08/08.

So this calling will not only encourage my niece and her friend to attend church for nothing other than to "hang out" with me at this point, but it will also give me a chance to actually know what Young Women's is like. I never went, so I have no clue what you are supposed to learn. But maybe that's why God wants me there - to learn too! I mean, how perfect is it to have two talks on the two next steps in my own salvation - the endowment and temple marriage! I also will need to get the inactive girls to come to church, which I hope will be easy since 13 year olds tend to think I'm "cool" already... well, I think.

This truly was the perfect calling!