Hello Face, Meet Your New Best Friends.

Mary Kay Soothing Eye Gel
for my tired eyes

Concealer
for the obvious

Targeted Eye
Revitalizer
to shrink
undereye bags
(hopefully)

Why would my eyes be in great need of a pile of creams and gels to fight undereye baggage?  I am the newest early morning seminary teacher for the St. Robert area.  I will be teaching fifteen youth who are mostly juniors and seniors as they come to learn about the Old Testament at 6 am every day before school.  That's right.  6 am!  I am not a morning person.  I have never been a morning person.  For the first two years that Laney attended seminary I would get up early to drive her there, but I never showered and got dressed for the day.  I would wake up ten minutes before we had to go, throw on a pair of sweats, and head out.  But as a teacher I have to get up, shower, and get dressed in church dress so I can be prepared to start teaching on time.  I'll have to wake up each school day around 4:45 or so.  I have never, ever, woken up like that on a daily basis.  The thought of that fills me with a bit of horror.  And yet my girls have been doing this all year.  Laney has been doing this for the last three years.  And so have their teachers.  So why should I whine about doing the same thing?  

The reality is that the early morning schedule is only one of the things that completely freaks me out about this calling.  The biggest thing that worries me is my own imperfections.  This calling is for me to teach the youth gospel principles from the scriptures, and I have never been a huge scriptorian.  Herman can pull scriptures from memory that fit almost any situation he encounters.  He can find a story in the scriptures that can relate to any life dilemma that might come his way.  I cannot do that.  I know that having that sort of knowledge of the scriptures is not necessary to fulfilling this calling, but it sure wouldn't hurt too much.  Yesterday I headed to Springfield to attend my first seminary training meeting (which was awesome by the way!).  One of the teachers did this activity where she handed us a sheet of paper with five life situations that a youth might be facing, and we were supposed to come up with an different story from the OT that could help this youth find an answer to his/her problem.  We were given five minutes to write down our answers.  I seriously just sat and stared at my paper.  The other teachers who were there had the advantage of having taught the OT since the beginning of the school year.  I am a mid-season replacement, so I didn't have the advantage of a semester of teaching/learning behind me.  No.  I felt like a complete moron.  I'm not sure that I have really studied the OT in years.  I sat there in my seat praying that no one would call on me.  I got by without problems, thank goodness.  So I have some catching up to do.  Luckily, I'm a pretty fast learner.  As long as the youth have a bit of patience with me, we'll get by okay.  It isn't about how much we know; it's about being able to use the scriptures to find the answers to our questions, and I can definitely do that.

The biggest advantage I have in this calling is my marriage to Herman.  Herman is a seminary enthusiast, to say it mildly.  He has loved everything about seminary for the past twelve years at least.  I have heard him talk about teaching theory for every one of those twelve years.  I have heard all of the seminary talks that he constantly listened to for years.  I understand the theory of teaching seminary.  Now I have to see if I can transfer that into practice.  It is a blessing to have been able to talk to him about all of my fears, and he has calmed a lot of them.

I keep writing a lot about my feelings about this and then going back and deleting it all.  It is hard to really describe all that is floating around in my head.  The bottom line is that my experiences in the past have given me a firm testimony in the ability of the Lord to take things that seem impossible and make them possible.  I know that even though I have significant weaknesses that I bring to this calling, He can make those weaknesses into strengths.  I know that.  This morning I was preparing my primary lesson, and I came across this scripture from the Book of Mormon:

And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will. (WofM 1:7)

This really touched me for some reason.  In this verse Mormon is talking about adding Nephi's plates to his record.  He didn't know why he was asked to do this, but he trusted that it would all work out because the Lord asked him to do it.  I feel the same way.  I may not exactly know why I would be called to do this, but I have faith that the Lord will make it work.

I am a bit sad that I won't be heading up Girls Camp any more, and I'm sad that I also will not be teaching my nine year-olds on Sundays or working with the 8-12 year old girls on Tuesday nights.  This morning poor Katie cried and cried because she didn't want me to be released as her teacher, but I was able to talk to her about how the Church is organized and how we all eventually get released from our callings so that we have the opportunity to grow with new challenges and opportunities.  This is my new challenge for the next few years, perhaps.

So . . . no more late nights.  I'll have to adapt.  But I think this will work out okay.  I hope.  I just hope I don't drive any of the youth too crazy.  Tomorrow is the beginning.  Fingers crossed!