Church Callings

First off, I really didn't start writing this with the intent to complain. I'm very glad to serve in the church, but I write this for future reference so that I can look back and say, "What was I talking about? Life is sooooo much busier now!" Plus it's always good to write about what's happening now for journaling purposes... so here goes.

Since we got married, Brett and I have had pretty tame church callings - activities committee members at Wymount? Sure! No real time commitment there.

In Cedar Hills we were primary teachers, which wasn't too bad (especially when we were both able to be there). Usually I'd read the lesson the Saturday night before, and then make my brief lesson plan Sunday morning before church. So long as there was coloring involved, the lessons usually went pretty smoothly.

Now...

I'm a Beehive advisor. Luckily I only have to teach about once a month since we swap lessons around. But it does take me a lot more time to get these lessons ready than it did for Primary - about as long as it takes me to think of stuff to do for school! I spent a few hours yesterday prepping for my 35min. lesson today. I typed up and printed some handouts, had to glue them onto cuter paper (because that's what you do in YW), got stuff put together for some object lessons, etc. I do this on Saturday because that's the only day I have off of school really - thankfully I don't have any screaming children (yet), because then it would have taken me three times as long to get it done.

Secondly, I'm the unofficial choir pianist. Apparently it's not a calling. But once I moved home, the choir director called me the next week and asked if I could play every once in a while when the usual pianist was gone. "Sure!" Then that turned in to... "pick the songs you want to play, about every other month (plus half the Christmas songs)." I actually really enjoy playing, and don't mind doing it for ward choir, but it's just one more hour used up on Sundays plus the practice time.

Ever feel a little overwhelmed?

Brett also has double duty. I feel so bad for him - not because of his callings, but because he's often coming to church off of a night shift and sometimes has to go back Sunday night. Today for example... he came home from work around 7:15am, took a 30 minute nap, and then headed out to church to set up a broadcast of our meetings for a homebound member of our ward. His official calling is something like "Ward Audio Visual Specialist." Then he valiantly stayed awake during all 3 hours of church setting up and taking down the AV equipment he uses. He didn't get to bed until about 12:45pm and will sleep until about 4:30pm before going off to work another 12 hour night shift. So with the little nap in the morning he'll have gotten about 4.5 hours of sleep in a 30 hour time period. Poor Bert.

He has also been called as the Sunday School Secretary - he's in charge of the rolls. We found out today though, that apparently he's the guy people call when they get sick or needs substitutes. We had a bit of a run around today to try to figure out what to do with a class of about 14 teenagers whose teacher got sick. Fortunately a brave sister from the ward who taught the next age group up (of about 10 kids) was fine with teaching both classes in a larger room. Brett thought about just "winging it" and teaching the class himself, which I'm sure would have been kind of funny in his sleepless stupor (actually for going without sleep he was pretty lucid). Surprisingly, the rolls have been somewhat painful to take care of themselves. I never knew, but apparently once a month the secretary has to write a report to the Bishop about who's attending Sunday School and who's not - so those rolls are actually kind of important. Our roll printouts are horribly unorganized, however, so it was nigh impossible to figure out who's in what class. He has to take into account missionaries, primary teachers, infants, etc. that appear on rolls, but are out taking care of their callings. It's hard to describe the paperwork craziness involved, but Brett's had many a headache with it. There is light at the end of this tunnel, however, because he came up with a plan that we think will work to get it fixed relatively easily (he's such a genius - maybe that's why the Lord called him to this job. He knew Brett could figure out a better way).

I've found that Sunday's are often no longer the day of rest that they used to be... its almost like we have to be grown ups or something.