new callings

First of all, we did attend the 4:30 session on Saturday as planned. We forgot the family names and were running late so we didn't have time to go back and get them. But we'll do them later this week. We hope that everyone was there. Our temple accomplishment was that we stayed awake. We were pretty tired from getting up rather early to help Sarah and Taylor move before we went to the temple. "Stay awake" is not our usual temple experience, so I don't feel bad when it comes up occasionally, especially since the sleepiness was triggered by a good cause.

And while we're talking about the temple - I'm going to take a sec here to make a plug for monthly temple attendance at the MINIMUM. Even Mindy and Jason, who live 2 or 3 hours from a temple. This is something Adam and I feel really strongly about - attendance in the DC temple, in general, is plummeting. It makes me so sad every time we go to the temple and we're thanked for coming, or we get some other comment from temple workers about how sessions are being closed because no one showed up at all. Adam and I set our goal for the year to be monthly attendance - in January when we went to a session with only 5 people, we immediately changed that goal to WEEKLY. We live less than 10 miles from the temple - no excuse for us. We haven't quite made it every week yet, but we've gone 6 times in 3 months, including the winter closure in that time. We've heard some talk in our ward about how to get temple attendance up, but that's all it is so far - just talk. I'm racking my brain to figure out how I can help with this in our ward, but I'm coming up blank so far. I hope that everyone enjoyed the temple yesterday, and that you all will make more of an effort to attend regularly.

Our new callings are ward missionaries. I'm still teaching Gospel Essentials, and this kinda expands my stewardship to include stuff I was doing anyway. Now I don't feel like I'm shooting off my mouth with making suggestions. Adam was released as assistant ward clerk. He's not doing much different either, because he's the home teacher for 2 of the 3 new converts in the ward and would be helping teach their new member lessons anyway. We were called before church yesterday, sustained in sacrament meeting, and set apart after church.