I was sustained as Relief Society President today

For those of you who are LDS, you understand the implications.

It’s a huge job with a lot of responsibilities.

Add to that that there aren’t a lot of local sisters who are properly trained to teach Relief Society classes properly, or a whole host of other things, and I’ve really got my work cut out for me.

Please note that I’m not criticizing the local people. I’m not. I understand – as much as I can – where they’re coming from. Most of them have been members of the church for less than a few years, some of them for mere months. Not that many have spent more than a decade as members of the church – in fact, that’s rather rare. And when you haven’t been a member of the church that long, and you haven’t seen how a well-run Relief Society works, then how can you possibly try to emulate it?

You can’t.You do the best you can with what you know, and they’ve done a pretty good job. But we can do better, and that means that I’m responsible for seeing that they’re taught properly.

I need to show them how it’s done.

For those of you who aren’t members of the LDS church, let me explain a little bit.

Relief Society is the women’s organization. In the Relief Society, we have a meeting every Sunday, same as Sunday School and Sacrament Meeting. At the same time as Relief Society, the men will be in Priesthood, the young women will be in Young Women’s, and the children will be in Primary.

We also are supposed to hold Homemaking once a month. Plus we’re responsible for visiting teaching.

In the ideal world, two women are companions and will visit teach the women they’ve been assigned. The purpose behind visiting teaching is to deliver a spiritual message to the sister and to make sure that the needs of the sister are being met. If the needs are not being met, then they do what they can – provide support, lend a listening ear, be friends, whatever they can – but when the woman needs more than they are able to provide, they refer that woman to the Relief Society Presidency or the Bishopric or Branch Presidency. Basically, make sure that no one falls through the cracks and everyone’s taken care of.

As the Relief Society President, I’m the one who makes sure that all that works smoothly.

At this point, it isn’t. It needs work.

Having said that, I get two counsellors – one for Education, who oversees the lessons on Sundays plus the music, and the other for Homemaking. I get everything else.

I don’t have counsellors yet. I’m going it alone at the moment.

Author: LMAshton
Howdy! I'm a beginner artist, hobbyist photographer, kitchen witch, wanderer by nature, and hermit introvert. This is my blog feed. You can find my fediverse posts at https://a.farook.org/Laurie.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.