What I'm Doing At Church

 Before I get to the meat of this post, I want to preface it by telling you about  a problem I have.   

It's something I've struggled with my whole life and I thought I'd outgrow it someday, but, alas, I have not.   

I have a deep-seated desire to not be normal....but not so abnormal that I'm too weird.  I just want to be  original and a little unexpected.  You know, totally an easy balance.     

That  may or may not make you laugh based on how well you know me, but it perhaps does explain a little of my quirkiness.  

So, if you were to peek at my LDS Tools right now, you'd see I have three callings....

One of those callings was extended to me by a member of the bishopric, the other two I volunteered for. If you've been following along here for very long, you know that making church programs  is something that makes me super happy.  It's not work to me; it's something I just weirdly enjoy doing and consider a creative outlet for myself.   And it's good that I don't usually have to lobby too hard to get this job, since it's not one that's in high demand! 😁  

I try really hard to make the programs beautiful, informative, and unique--though the church copier often leaves them looking less beautiful than I'd prefer.  Here is a glimpse at the inside of this week's, though I admit, it was an off week for me because I'm working on a different (much smaller screened) computer than usual.  

I am very proud of my back page, which spotlights all the missionaries serving from our ward!  

So every week I create these paper programs, update an online ward bulletin, where I include many more details about the items mentioned, and create a kids' activity sheet to go with the Come, Follow Me lesson for that week that gets handed out in sacrament meeting.  All in all, I probably spend 3-5 hours on all this in a week  and mostly love every minute of it....though it's not my favorite thing when I'm traveling.  

My other calling is *still* Relief Society Activity Coordinator (going on almost 2 years now).   It's  a calling I struggle with, but I'm doing the best I can with it.  We had a few month lull without an activity, because of some stake and other Relief Society things that I had nothing to do with, and I think that lull got me out of my routine and made this last activity  a little extra hard to plan.  I had the hardest time lighting a fire to get buy-in from the sisters on it and I literally had 5 baby pictures collected for it two days before.  So when sending out my last minute email (something I do at least once a week for the online ward bulletin), I wanted to make it more than just a boring old email.   Here's what I ended up sending....

Somehow my goofy email worked and I got 24 more baby pictures in the two days before the activity started.  The turn-out was great...

The food (prepared by a member of my committee) was  delicious and beautiful! 

And people loved the baby picture game!  I had them hanging up like this, making them a gathering place in the room. 

I made worksheets  and had copies for everyone, so they could guess.   It was such a fun conversation starter and I loved watching all the sisters discuss among themselves who was who.   Totally a hit! 

Apparently I made my picture too easy and people guessed me right away...

So that's me right now.  Just plugging away, doing my thing, and {mostly} loving every minute.