I Know My Sheep

Herman always tells me that January and February are, without question, the hardest months for an early morning seminary teacher. It is dark and it is cold every morning, and all of us would just rather stay warm and cozy in our beds than wake up and head to church each day. Last year I didn't really see that since I was a mid-season replacement teacher. Everyone was still jump-started into enthusiasm with the change, so I never really saw the mid winter doldrums. Well, let me tell you, they are out full force now. We are dragging. I mean, we are drrrrrraaaaaaagggggging. But I have some ideas to change things up a bit starting tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes. I have a good little class, and, for the most part, they are happy seminary students who want to be there each day.

But 6 am is EARLY!!!

REALLY early!!!

Well, in the middle of our winter of our discontent I do have a bit of happy news -- the kind of news that reminds me why I get up every single day before the crack of dawn and head to church to teach the youth. Like I say, we are in the middle of winter doldrums, and I can be affected by it as much as the youth. Over winter break I was looking over the attendance records of my class. A third of them were not receiving credit. In order to receive early morning seminary credit all you have to do is show up 80% of the time. That's it. No tests. No quizzes. No participation points. You just have to show up and warm up the seat underneath you. Obviously that isn't the ideal way to head in the direction of true conversion, but as far as credit goes, that's the way it is. So anyway, a third of my class hadn't met that threshold. I needed to encourage them to catch up. They can easily receive credit  for lost classes by completing a makeup assignment that involves reading a block of scriptures and doing some introspective thinking about the principles found in the scriptures. I say easily, but in reality it is like pulling teeth to get anyone to actually turn in makeup work. I remind ... and remind ... and remind ... and remind ... every way I can think of, but I have never gotten any of my students to turn in a makeup assignment. Never.

So, so frustrating.

Well, over Christmas break I got the idea to go do some visits with individual class members who were behind. I planned to sit with them and do a couple of one-on-one lessons with them to get them on the right track. I had six kids lacking credit, so I ranked them according to how far behind they were. (Don't judge me too much about ranking everyone. I had to start somewhere). I would go after the kids who were only slightly behind and continue to work down the line until I got everyone. Seemed like a decent idea.

And here is where the Lord took charge.

One Sunday I was waltzing down the hall during class time, and I noticed one of my seminary parents in a primary room, preparing for her class. In my class ranks Rylie was #5. Only one student had missed more days than her. She has received credit for her freshman and sophomore years, but that was when her older brother was bringing her along. Last year she fell apart and missed a ton of classes. This year she wasn't fairing much better. She was so far away from receiving credit that it didn't even cross my mind that she would be receiving any credit. My plan was just to tell Rylie that we were going to count the previous semesters as the past and just start fresh in January. Forget the failings of before and simply forge on ahead, ending the year strongly. That was my plan. But as I spoke with Rylie's mom I got the impression that I needed to go a different direction.

Rylie is home schooled this year due to health concerns that prevent her from regularly attending school. I found myself offering to drive by her house every day after I dropped all of my kids off at school. We could sit down and do a few lessons together, and I would be able to catch her up on her New Testament assignments in no time at all. I have to admit that when I threw it out there, I didn't really expect Rylie to jump on the opportunity. But she was pumped up when her mom told her what I said. The next day I saw Rylie, and she was ready to get started right away.

Well, we have been working hard all month long. Every school day I teach seminary, run home and drive Team Blau all over the countryside to their four separate schools, and then I head over to Rylie's house where we complete two (and if we are on a roll, three or four) lessons. We breezed right through our makeup lessons on the New Testament, so we decided to keep going and catch Rylie up on her Old Testament lessons. And we are almost caught up. If all goes well, I think that Rylie should have all of her Old Testament makeup lessons done this week, putting her on track for graduation. And when she walks across the stage to receive her diploma, she can know that she really, truly deserves the recognition. We aren't sliding through these lessons with minimal effort. We are taking the time to really study and examine the doctrine in all of the scripture blocks we study together. It isn't as hard as waking up early to get to class, but there is still difficulty because there are no other students to act as a buffer. If an answer was going to come, it had to come from Rylie.

If graduation were the ultimate goal, then (Hurray!) we were doing great. But I have to say that I have noticed even better blessings from this experience than a slip of paper at the end of the term. It has been amazing to see the transformation in Rylie. She had been a seminary student who dragged herself into class twenty to thirty minutes late each day ... if she even showed up at all. Once she was there, she would open her scriptures and follow along, but she would freeze if I ever asked her a direct question. She just couldn't answer it, no matter how simple the question would be. She had absolutely no confidence in her own spiritual insights. But as we talked one-on-one I could see that she had lots of experiences and ideas that were relevant to the things we were studying. After a bit of coaxing at the beginning she began to see that in herself as well. She started to read the scriptures with confidence, and during class she was even raising her hand and offering comments unbidden. AND she was showing up every single day on time. It was amazing! Rylie has been transformed. As an added bonus, I feel like I have been able to form a special bond with Rylie. I even told her my Angel Moroni story! I haven't told anyone that story outside of my family. And sorry. I'm not going to tell it here. Let's just say that it involved a warm summer evening, a lightening bug, and a young girl with childlike faith in direct revelation opportunities. I can't say more than that. Let's just say that it is a hilarious story that I can't bear to share with anyone. Except my family ... and Rylie.

I was talking about this a bit to her mom, and Tami told me that Rylie is the type of girl who gets easily frustrated if a task is before her that seems too difficult. With seminary it seemed to her as if there was no chance for her to ever catch up, so she just gave up. It was like she was six feet under water, and she saw no way to get back to the surface, so she just stopped swimming. When I started working with her, all of the sudden she saw the chance to make it back. And she grabbed it with both hands. Just showing her that she had potential was all that it took to get her back on track.

Last week I was ending our time together, and I told her that she only had about a week of makeup left to complete. She was super happy, and she looked at me and said, "I'm your seminary miracle, aren't I, Sister Blau?" Maybe. ... Yes. Yes, I think she is. But for me, I think that she is more of an example of how the Lord loves ALL of us, individually. He knows who we are, and He knows what we need. And in Rylie's case, He knew exactly what she needed to get back on the right track, not just in seminary, but in life. Rylie's favorite story that we read as we did our makeup assignments was the story of Jesus as the good Shepherd found in John, Chapter 10. She loved learning about how shepherds care for their flock and how that related to how the Savior cares for us. Today she got up in church and bore her testimony about how grateful she was for a teacher who went after the lost sheep and gave her a chance to succeed. Awwwww! That right there made all of my winter blues melt right away.

Unless someone out there can develop technology that will allow me to clone myself two or three times over, I don't think that I can do this for every single one of my students. I just don't have enough hours in the day, and by the end of my service all that would be left of Sister Blau would be a giant puddle of goo, undulating on my front porch. No one wants to see that. And, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure that the approach I took with Rylie would be the best thing for every student. I will need to find the best way to make a difference in their lives, and it will probably vary with each one of them. What I do know is that this was exactly what the Lord wanted me to do for Rylie. It was exactly what Rylie needed at this time in her life. I love the chance this calling gives me to see how well the Lord knows each of us. And how much He LOVES us. Such a sweet tender blessing in the midst of a sometimes difficult calling.

So, tomorrow I continue. Herman loves to say that seminary is a marathon, not a sprint. It isn't about hitting a home run every single time, but it is about constantly pushing forward, knowing that in the end it is going to make a difference.

But, I have to admit ... sometimes I feel like my teaching days go a lot more like this:

"It ain't an easy job, but when you bring a herd into town, and you ain't lost a one of 'em ... ain't a feeling like it in the world."

'Nuff said.

MY MONDAY UPDATE:  Rylie had a crazy bad last week. Crazy bad. I won't go into detail, but it was just bad. Today I stopped by her house after dropping the fam off at school, and she told me a wonderful experience she had. She told me how she had been so upset and angry last week. She left home to stay with a friend. She didn't come to seminary. I didn't meet with her at all. Things were not going so well. But she told me today that in the middle of the week she had an experience where she looked over the way that she had been feeling during this past month as we have been studying the scriptures together. She thought about how much she missed going to seminary when she wasn't there. And she thought about how much she really missed and valued her family. She knew that she needed to make a course correction. So she made one. She told me today how grateful she was for those feelings she has discovered through studying the scriptures because it gave her a solid foundation to turn toward when she realized that things were not feeling quite right with her life last week. She said that the experience was like her own personal Road to Damascus experience. So, you know what? Maybe this intensive week of Rylie training and scripture study had nothing to do with getting seminary credit for graduation. Maybe it was just the Lord's way of preparing Rylie both mentally and spiritually so that she could face this trial and have the right tools to get her where the Lord wanted her to be. Who knows? I'm just happy to have had the chance to see another example of the Lord's tender mercies in the world around me. Life is good.