Monday was free day. I cleaned, sent a note out to friends in desperation, and applied for some jobs online. (Nothing has come of that.) I went visiting teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week and really enjoyed the opportunity to visit with those sisters. Although I really enjoy spending time with my visiting teaching companion, I really enjoy having the opportunity to visit the sisters alone every now and then. It's so nice to be able to have them all to myself! I feel like they teach me and help me more than I could ever help them, and it's funny that the lesson was sort of about that very thing.
We all need each other in order to be successful visiting teachers. I had an "Aha!" moment while visiting one of the sisters that confirmed that this is true. I can't be a successful visiting teacher unless the sisters I visit allow me to come visit them and share with me any needs they have. However, I have to visit them enough to build a friendship with them so that they honestly feel like I care and that they feel comfortable sharing with me. We all help each other to be successful at visiting teaching. It's hard for me to describe how how I felt that day, but I think it was finally confirmed to me that visiting teaching is truly a divinely inspired program. I used to think, "Yeah, yeah, I know we're supposed to go visiting teaching, and I know we're supposed to make friends, blah blah blah. But I just don't feel like I have a place in this. I'm no good at this."
Since attending this ward, I have had amazing visiting teachers show me by example what visiting teaching is all about. They've since moved on to other wards, or visiting other sisters, but I'll never forget their loving example of what it means to love, serve and just be friends with their sisters. I have some amazing sisters on my route and I look forward to visiting them. I really really do! They are all amazing women.
Not only are the women that I visit amazing women, but there are just some other fantastic families in this ward. They have opened their arms to our little family, although I think that that is totally thanks to Lily's cuteness than anything we have done, but they have truly taken us in. I never ever ever felt that I was a part of a ward family until we moved here. Not even in my home ward.
One of my friends let me babysit her little girl for a little while to earn a little extra money. Another friend paid me way too much to help her out at her home, and another Christmas Angel in superhero fashion helped us out anonymously at church yesterday. There is way too much generosity in our ward, and though I will never be able to pay it back, I hope one day I can pay it forward to another young family when we are in a position to do so. So what looked as if it was going to be a very-scary-not-knowing-how-we-are-going-to-survive (ok, that's dramatic, maybe we'll survive but will we get evicted? get our lights turned off? eat?) turned into we-barely-made-it-but-we-still-made-it sort of week thanks to some very amazing people in our lives. It's not quite over yet, but it looks like we will be okay for the next two days until Robbie gets paid again. And hopefully, there will be a babysitting job coming my way that will help us out a little, or at least help me to feel like I am doing all I can to help our family.
I love this heartfelt post. I never really appreciated visiting teaching until I moved into my current ward. I feel like I am really friends with the girl I teach.
ReplyDeleteI also know what it is like to struggle every month. You are not alone! The Lord will bless you. Good luck finding jobs!
PS I play the cello and piano and I love to find other musicians in the blogging world!
I hope you are able to get a job soon! Money is such a stressful thing. I love that you and Robbie are able to have such a strong relationship during this time when money can become a really divisive thing in a marriage.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the sweet notes. I am starting to learn the difference between wants and needs during this time. Our needs are truly all met, maybe not in the way that we'd like them to be, but they are met. It's kind of a hard thing to be going through right now, but when I think about it, I'm reminded of that saying where if we all through our problems in a huge pile and saw everyone else's, we'd snatch our own problems right back up and run away as fast as we could! At least, I keep telling myself this to help myself feel better.
ReplyDeleteI love this post Kristi! I just found your blog & I am loving out it. I miss my ward in Denham & needed a friendly boost because this ward has been difficult & I needed this to light a fire under me or maybe within me to inspire how I've always loved visiting teaching. Awesome, awesome :)
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