Come With Me to Primary

For the last month I've been serving in a new calling at church. After six and a half years as the choir director (minus the two and a half years we were home during COVID), I've handed that role off to someone else. I found out two days after our Christmas concert that I was being released and I spent a decent part of that week bursting into tears. I'm okay now, but I do miss it.

I had to be released because my new job requires a significant amount of my time. In our church the children age eighteen months up to eleven years are in the Primary. These kids spend the second hour of each Sunday singing together and learning about Jesus. They're divided into classes based on their ages and each class has two adult teachers. The seven to eleven year-olds also have mid-week activities twice a month where they work on personal goals they've set, like learning to play pickleball or baking a cake or fixing a bike.

I'm now in charge of the Primary in my congregation. As the president I'm responsible for all the moving parts required to teach the kids each week. I'm also supposed to minister to the kids, their families, and the teachers. It's a lot. I have a really wonderful presidency and am already a huge believer in delegating, so I'm not carrying this work load on my own.

Sundays are a whirlwind. We're the first ward in the building, so we need to set up the chairs and get the Primary room ready. We've had some help, but there was one morning that Sophie and I missed most of the first hour of church because we were setting up chairs. I finally took a picture of the setup this week so I can remember what it's supposed to look like from one week to the next.

We're four weeks in and so far it's going pretty well. We still don't have all the teachers we need (my presidency has been substituting each week) and I've forgotten at least one thing each week, but the kids are doing well and paying attention, so I think that's a win.