Visiting Teaching

(Visiting Teaching is done by women in the Relief Society at church - we're assigned a partner and together we go visit 2-4 other women once a month)

I love Visiting Teaching. It's a very easy assignment for me to do. I'm usually even very good about not waiting until the very end of the month. I have had some of the best experiences with visiting teaching and I think what I like best about it is that so often it puts me in the position of getting to know someone I would have never come close to otherwise. I don't know if I offer much to the women I visit teach (see previous post about lack of baking skills), but I know that I learn so much from the women who visit me, my partner and the women I visit.

Here are a few experiences I've had that had lead to me feel the way I do about visiting teaching.

1. I was working in the I.T. department for a bank and my visiting teacher's husband was a V.P. for the same bank. Sometimes she would send something to work with him to give to me if she hadn't seen me that month. So, imagine you are sitting in a conference room and notice that one of the bank's V.P.'s, who works on a different floor in a different department, is giving a gift to the 23 year old secretary whose desk is right outside the conference room. Yeah - happened more than once. Ah, I love a good scandal!

2. I had a v.t. partner who was so great at thinking of ways to really become friends with the people we visited. She was also incredibly talents and was the one who started me on scrapbooking. She taught me and one of the ladies we visited how to baked bread, make bracelets and clay beads, and ideas for keeping and using food storage. We had dinner's together as families, took our ladies to lunch and had so much fun. I never would have gotten to know her and learn all the things I did from her had we not been assigned to each other.

3. When we were in Texas I had a really hard time doing my visiting teaching. My partner and I didn't click. We had one lady who was very needy but not terribly interested in coming to church. Another was an elderly woman who's husband played the drums. These drums sat in the living room of their little condo and 3 year old Bryce wasn't allowed to touch them. Many temper tantrums ensued. We had to meet on her covered patio. Thankfully, at the same time I had wonderful visiting teachers myself. Every single month, for two years, they were there. Here I was in a new town, with no money, a husband who was swamped at school and an out of control toddler. But my visiting teachers had my back. They were awesome. And the most fun part - they wanted to meet at places like Cheesecake Factory and girly little bistro's named Che-Z or something like that (and they paid). I can't tell you how grateful I am, even today, that I had them. My time in Austin wouldn't have been the same without them.

So the reason I've been thinking about this is because today at church I got a new visiting teaching assignment. I've had the same partner, Nicolee, since I moved here and we do so well together. Apparently, we did too well together because they've now split us up so we can share the love. My new partner is a sweet girl, and I'm really excited about the women I'll get to visit (one was my old visiting teacher whom I actively petitioned to get back after her route was changed, so this works). But I am so sad. I've never been this sad about a change in routes. Not only did I loose my visiting teachee's, one who just had a baby and I could finally do something for her, but I lost my partner too. Part of me understands it, but the other part of me says that here was a companionship that was working and now we've been split up. I don't know that the sum of the halves equals the whole here (if that makes sense). I have to remind myself that I'll like my new companion and, honestly, I already really like the women I'm assigned, but change is hard. Why is it just when you get comfortable that things have to change? Derek got a new calling today too and it'll change the routine we've got going also. Both things were out of the blue too, so I guess maybe another reason I'm so sad about it is because I didn't have any forewarning that either change was headed our way.