Visiting Teachers

Many years ago I lived in a ward with a family where the wife died from cancer leaving a young family for her husband to care for.  The father asked to have visiting teachers assigned to him to teach him how to cook, clean, shop, do little girls’ hair and a whole host of things that he needed to learn in order to serve his family.  The process worked well and after a few months he was able to do what he needed to do independently.  I’m impressed that he recognized that he needed to learn some things, knew he could turn to the good women of his ward and was humble enough to ask for help.  Visiting Teaching has blessed my life in many ways just like it did for this man and his family, and for some reason I have always liked Visiting Teaching. Even when I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to be a Visiting Teacher and yes, I know that’s a little odd but I have always felt drawn to it.  I like the one on one connection, I like getting to know other women in a more personal way.  I like discussing gospel principles and having time to go into more depth with the topic, and I have noticed that I leave feeling the Spirit more and it lingers with me for the day.  I like having women for whom I feel a responsibility to care for, to pray for and to think about their needs and ways I can serve them.  I have been inspired by the women I visit with, have learned from them and have felt their strength as they go through hard times with faith.  Whenever I have met women in the various wards I have lived in who I didn’t particularly like, either I ended up being their Visiting Teacher or they were mine and it didn’t take long before I realized how wrong I had been in my judgement.  Because of this I have learned to be less judgmental and to give people the benefit of the doubt more, and to realize I’m not seeing the whole person in the limited setting of a few hours at church.  I have not always had women who were easy to visit and even then I learned more about the struggles of mental health or being less active and serving when it wasn’t easy.  And just as I have been blessed by being a Visiting Teacher I have been blessed by having Visiting Teachers who have listened to me, taught me more about the gospel of Jesus Christ and been my friends. The new focus now is ministering-really focusing on the needs of the women I visit.  What an inspired program!  Recently I was working in a ward service project involving the cleaning up of yards of people in our neighborhood.  While I was raking up weeds, one of the home owners came out and upon seeing many women working alongside the men commented “it seems that women can be ministers too.”  I sincerely replied “they always have been.”