Pearls & Perfection Pending

This week has been...different.  It started off with some ridiculous feminist group deciding that men and women should be treated more equally in the LDS church and launching an initiative for women to wear pants to church today.  I was glad to see that my ward choose not to use sacrament meeting as the time or place to draw attention to themselves, but to worship God. Don't misunderstand me.  I like pants.  I wear them almost every day.  I don't care what people wear...to a certain point.  My very favorite investigators and friends on the mission wore pants every week.  There is a man in my ward that wears jeans every week.  Guess what they have going for them?   They are there every week.  I do  think that the way we dress says a lot about what we think of ourselves, others, and the activities in which we are participating.  There are some girls I know that wear really short skirts.  There are some boys that wear real...

Sometimes I feel like my calling at church is lame.  I sit in Sacrament quietly like always, then I move to the primary room and sit at the piano bench for two hours quietly .  I don't even really get a chance to interact with the kids much, let alone other adults.  I feel somewhat socially isolated and like I don't really contribute very much.   But sometimes... Today during sharing time, they talked about how Heavenly Father answers prayers.  They kids learned that Heavenly Father can answer our prayers in our heart or in our mind through the Holy Ghost, through other people who help us or prophets who teach us, or through the scriptures.  I was asked to share an example of a time when I prayed and received an answer to my prayer.  As I thought about it, one memory came to my mind.  That was the only one for awhile.  I planned to share that particular experience.  But as I sat there thinking, numerous memories flooded my mind and I...

I've been thinking about two of my students all weekend. One of them needs serious help with being able to focus. I don't know if he has ADHD or something else. It could be any number of things. All I can see are the behaviors. I can see that he is capable of achieving when he has someone sitting right with him, helping him to stay focused. But the second he is left to his own, he literally cannot focus for more than 15 seconds. I know that the nature of these children is still to please. They want to perform well and they want to feel successful. I truly believe that if he COULD follow my directions, he WOULD. I set up a meeting with his mom and our school counselor for Monday, and I hope we are able to take some steps to help him. The other student I have been thinking about a lot lately is actually in my ward. He is very independent and rarely interacts with the other kids in my class. I don't think it is because he wants to be independent. I think he is c...