Thoughts on a Sunday

I'm a Visiting Teaching "district leader" in my Relief Society organization and I got an email this morning from my Relief Society President regarding some updates to Visiting Teaching assignments and some general business.  One item that was raised in the email was that our monthly meetings with all the other district leaders and the RS presidency to go over the needs of the women in our group would now include the Elder's Quorum auxillary over Home Teaching to put our heads together regarding the sisters. 

This got me musing about my past Home Teachers, especially about the ones that made a significant impact on my life through very small means.  I'm still friends with my first set of HT's when I was a freshman at BYU, but my thoughts settled around a set that I had the following year when I was a sophomore.  Due the course of events, I was living with none of my adopted sisters I made freshman year, but went "pot luck" in my transition to real world living (i.e. apartment and all the responsiblities that accompany that leap).  That fall, I lived with 3 new girls, 2 other sophomores and a freshman and we were civil but I never really became friends with them.  Two of them changed apartments for the following semester, leaving me with the other girl who was always at her boyfriend's.  Add to this my being in a private room with a dash of cliquish activity from my ward and needless to say I had a lot of quiet reflection time to myself.** 

All that alone time worked wonders on my grades as I prepared to apply to the Athletic Training program, let me tell you (3.81 semester GPA that winter compared to the 3.2 semesters before lol). Something else it did was allow me to develop my relationship with my Heavenly Father and Savior.  Never before had I started out being so emotionally and physically alone, and it became pressingly apparent to me that I was to sink or learn to swim. 

So I swam.

But I had some help.  The Lord was very kind and very mindful of me that year and I saw His hand in my life almost everyday thanks to some cueing from my mother.  She told me in an email one day that I should look for something good every day, even if it was just seeing something amusing, enjoying a particular flower on campus, or getting to view a sunset on my way home. 

My way home....

Lots of things happened on my way home from campus, one of favorites involved one of my Home Teachers during the Winter semester.  Barrett Edwards was one of THEE guys to know in the ward at the time.  We had two Elders Quorums and he was the president of one of them, he was tall, handsome, had money and drove a 300 series BMW while in college. Yeah.  Barrett was released from his presidency position before Winter semester and in due course became my Home Teacher along with his roommate Jason Hunter.  Barrett and Jason came to visit me every month and were amazingly dilligent about doing so.  Both of them were Mac enthusiasts, so we had something in common there as well, but the thing about Barrett that's stuck with me all of these years were the rides home he gave me.  On certain days when I had my even Beginning Athletic Training course that ran into the evening, I'd be walking home at dusk and at least twice a month on those days Barrett would be driving home the same way.  I'd be 75 yards from the entrance to our apt complex and he'd hail me down and give me a ride that short distance, simply because it was getting dark and cold outside.

For an out-of-place 20 year old, you can probably imagine what that meant to me.   (nostalgic smirk)  Barrett helped me to see more clearly what a genuine servant of the Lord can be, especially one who conducts himself with full purpose of heart - what a Home and Visiting Teacher should be. 

Just some thoughts I had on a Sunday...




**Barrett Edwards was not the only God-send friend I had in that apt complex or ward by any means.  There were some very genuinely good people there, and heaven knows I found them (Laurie, Jamie, Arienne, Jessica, Starlee, Scott, Amber amongst others).