Church Callings

Roughly 6 months ago I was called to do the bulletin board next to the Bishop's office. Admittedly, when I first got the call I wasn't very excited about it. Yes, I love to do crafty things and knew I could make it fun and cute, but I was hoping for something that would keep me a little busier. See, for the last year I had felt out of commission. I have the most miserably sick pregnancies, then was put on bed rest, then had a c-section and baby in the NCU for a few weeks, then had a premie at home on oxygen, and then had two kids to adjust to. Leading up to that time I had two church callings, Nick and I taught the Marriage and Family Relations class and the Family History class (a calling we had for maybe a year and a half to two years), and I was the chorister for the Relief Society. Unfortunately, I was less than committed to these callings because of where my life was. Instead I just carried a LOT of guilt that I wasn't upholding my callings the way I wanted and knew I should.

By the time I felt like my world had started to normalize and I could get back to treating my callings like they were mine, I didn't know how to take them back over. It was turned over to the pianist to choose the music in Relief Society until I was up to doing it again and Nick had been teaching our class solo for so long that it felt weird to just jump in and start helping. I felt like everyone thought of me as a slacker so I didn't know how to say, okay, I'm ready to pick up the slack now.

I'm always prayerful about my callings, although usually it's when I know a new calling is coming so I start reminding my Heavenly Father of all the callings I don't want! Ha! But I decided I needed to be prayerful about how I could either take these callings back over or receive something new altogether so I could have a place in the ward again. One Sunday morning I sent my sister a text telling her that I really wanted a new calling because I found myself dreading Sundays more than while I was pregnant and that's saying something! Then wouldn't you know, at church that same day my Bishop gave me a new calling.

Sadly, I was a little disappointed to receive the call. And honestly, I don't even know what my official title is with this calling. I was finally ready to have a place in the ward again and make up for all the slacking I did. And then I was called to decorate the bulletin board. Really? The last time the bulletin board had been updated was roughly a year and a half ago. Shasta was on the board and she was barely a year old; so yes, it desperately needed to be done, but once it was done, then what? Just hang out for six months until I decide it needs updated again? That's hardly a calling that fulfills my need to be a participating member of the ward.

Of course I accepted the call and I've tried not to feel like this calling was given to me because they didn't know what else to do with me. They couldn't have me in a calling that I would neglect since that's my recent history. Instead I've looked at it as giving me a win. The board hadn't been updated for a year and a half so pretty much anything I did to it was an improvement! And I've definitely tried to go above and beyond.

We attend a Married Student Ward. What that means is our ward is made up of married college students, most of which are newlyweds without kids and then a few of us who do have kids. And of the 9 or so kids in the ward, Shasta is the oldest child. Literally. We don't have primary children or a Young Men/Young Women program. We have nursery. And once children reach primary age those families typically move into a family ward because our ward isn't set up to accommodate those children.

Anyway, because of the set up of our ward we have a lot of turnover. People are always moving in and moving out when they graduate or choose to start attending a family ward. Plus our ward feeds to apartment and townhome living. Temporary homes. Nobody plans on being where they are for the rest of their lives. It's just a starting block until we're ready for the next phase of our journey. Because of this it's hard to keep up with all the new faces and feeling connected to the people in the ward so I decided I wanted the bulletin board to help with that.

So I made a "Family Tree". 

Before I put acorns on all the pictures with their names.

I wanted it to be easy to learn each others names without always having to ask and it definitely helped with that. Not everyone in the ward made it up on the board because it was surprisingly hard to get pictures of everyone, but it still served its purpose well. I was surprised how many people appreciated what I had done and actually communicated to me that they enjoy looking at the board.

I left the board that way through the winter, but decided I wanted it to reflect spring so I turned it into a blossom tree.

I still have more pictures to add that I haven't printed yet. And I want to add flowers to the bottom.

I literally hand painted 265 flowers to make this tree. I didn't end up using all of them, but I didn't want to start hanging them and realize I didn't have enough so I wanted to be over prepared. 

I tried to make it look 3-D by bending the flower petals and grass. And I added butterflies to all the pictures that are also 3-D.

I also added another element to the board this time that I'm super excited about. I had all the families in the ward (well, as many as I've been able to track down so far), write down a random fact about their family that makes anyone reading it think, hmmm, I need to know the rest of the story. The idea is that it creates icebreakers for the ward members. We've been in the ward for over 4 years and it's hard to constantly introduce yourself and ask and answer the same basic get-to-know-you questions (How long have you been married? Where did you meet? Are you going to school? What are you studying? Where do you work?) By having these random facts on the board, I'm hoping it will inspire people to go up to other families and say, "So, I read this fact about you and I'm dying to know what that's all about..." and hopefully help everyone get to know each other beyond all those getting-to-know-you questions. This will be the first Sunday with it up, so we'll see how it goes.

"Nick proposed to Sara on the theatre stage at the Conference Center in Salt Lake"

Some of the examples I gave the ward about Nick and me to help them brainstorm their own were:
"Nick grew up in Bountiful, UT, I grew up in Gilbert, AZ, and we met in Nauvoo, IL"
"Our wedding cake for our Open House had a cake topper Temple made out of Legos and a Lego Train moving around the cake with a Lego bride and groom riding on it"
"We have a hand crafted scrapbook in our home called "Fecal Matters" and every year Nick makes an elaborate birthday cake for himself!" (This one was to show if they couldn't think of something as a couple then they could write something that represented each of them).

I also added quotes to the board about family being more than just blood and making every Sunday a family reunion. I really do hope it will help our ward become more united and outgoing. And although I would still like a 2nd calling in addition to this one, I guess I'll just keep changing the board regularly to give me something to do! When I first received this calling I asked the Bishop what my budget was and he said, "for you, anything". If only he knew what that meant...! I have a lot of ideas outside of keeping up with the tree theme, but for now I want to get that ward "family" idea plastered in our brains. We call our ward a student ward and because of it we lose that "family ward" connotation. Who knew a calling as simple as being in charge of the ward bulletin board could put me on a mission to help bring our ward closer together!