Because I've been given my first calling. Enrichment Leader. I know, forecast calls for rain and on.the.run will laugh and say, "Hah! You haven't done anything until you've done monthly enrichment meetings!" While that may be true, I'm still feeling a little in over my head. And truthfully, I'm a little forlorn about not teaching. I've been away just a few months and I'm already missing it. Church has always supplied that outlet in some way or another.
Of course, with me being a member of the Church of the Hallway these days, not having a Sunday calling is actually a pretty great blessing.
Now, the irony of this is the conversation we had last week about the purpose of RS activities. Spiritual or social? Or both? Or is social spiritual? Lots of you weighed in on this and I suppose I will now have to think a lot about these questions.
So now that I've heard your thoughts on the purpose of Enrichment, and church activities in general, I would really like to hear your favorite Enrichment ideas of the past year or so. Give a few sketchy details as well so that if I wanted to re-create them then I could. Also, if you know any websites or blogs with ideas, fill me in.
7 comments:
You have my heartfelt sympathy. No advice on ideas, really. I was on the Enrichment board once, and I always just felt completely out of place. Everyone had these great ideas, and all I could do was sit there and nod my head - well, sometimes I felt the need to knock some sense into people - but mostly, I just sat there, did what I was asked to do, and...learned nothing. Sad, huh? I guess that means it'll be my calling again one of these days... :p
This is something I've been struggling with, since I'm on the Enrichment committee in our ward. I honestly feel kind of annoyed with the activities in our ward because I feel like they have been pretty much just social-type things--i.e. show up, eat, and talk. I feel like we could be doing more, but I'm not sure what exactly. They did have a service auction a while back that I heard was a lot of fun, but I missed it. I think part of the problem is that everyone on the committe is a "young mom", so there isn't a lot of diversity of viewpoints or ideas like there could be otherwise.
my sister and my best friend are also enrichment leaders. i think it is a big calling, even if it is not every month. i like the comment on members of the church of the hallway. isn't that the truth at times. i don't have too many great ideas. i always really like super saturday. and i liked our last enrichment "raiders of the lost arts" where they taught things like pie making, crocheting, and proper table setting. good luck!
I would love to learn about gardening since it is something the prophet has asked us to do. I would especially love to learn about how to grow vegetables in pots since I don't actually have a yard I could do it in. I mean gardening isn't very hard, but I don't do it because I don't have any garden. Then I read how people in South America are trying to follow the prophet and growing tomatoes in pots in their houses so I figured I was just offering up some lame excuse. If you're growing in a pot, why type do you use? Soil? Watering? How much sun? Maybe this is just me and the idea isn't any good. Maybe everyone but me already knows how to do this. Maybe everyone where you live already has a garden, but you did ask so I thought I'd put in my two cents.
Congratulations! Back when I was Enrichment leader (in our Ogden ward) it was right after the format had changed from Homemaking to Enrichment. It was a *very* difficult change for the ladies of my ward. I also seem to remember that we were asked not to do super Saturday which was just as well, because I hated it. I was not very "domestic" in those days and homemaking skills were not my bag. I wanted to have more spiritual lessons with a focus that you couldn't really have in Sunday meetings. We had lots of classes (most of which I can't remember now) and really crappy attendance. I didn't attend most of what I had planned because I was on bedrest for a pregnancy at the time. The ladies said "I can get a lesson on Sunday, I want to visit and do potholders at Enrichment". One thing that really ended up working was we had a Latina in our ward teach a small Spanish lesson at the beginning right after our lesson. Sometimes it waxed rather lengthy, but I think it helped bring the sisters just a little closer together. We had a very high Spanish-speaking population and many of the older sisters knew nothing in Spanish. They wanted to understand each other and didn't know how. This provided a wonderful vehicle.
Anyway, no profound advice, just to get to know the sisters and their needs as a group and individuals. That will help you find activities that they need and maybe some that they want. :-)
One thing my dad used to say when he was YM president was that if he fed the boys, they'd come. So he always bought treats and took them to the activities. If people aren't there, you can't feed them anything--spiritual or otherwise. So sometimes you have to sweeten the activity with the promise of some fun-but-perhaps-less-spiritual stuff with the intent that the spiritual stuff will be there as well. You know?
I guess Sister Beck settled the spiritual vs social question at the broadcast last night: spiritual/service activities will often yield socializing as well, but the opposite isn't necessarily true. Of course, as desmama says, you could sweeten the deal by having both. :)
My favorite Enrichment night lately focused on getting to know our community. There were classes on local restaurants, activities (museums, kid stuff, etc.), shopping, and giving back through service. You could choose to attend any three of the four.
Maggie, I'm trying container gardening outside my apartment, and it's been a lot of trial and error. Some plants do well while others struggle. Maybe I'd have benefited from a class. :)
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