Cuckoo for CTR: A Farewell

When Scott and I moved in to our current ward back in May, I was excited for the "fresh start" and the opportunity to meet new people. In all honesty, I was actually excited to receive a new calling - I always look forward to the anticipation and excitement of finding out what the bishop feels we either "need" to do, or where we might be "needed". But I must also confess that I have often struggled over the years to understand the callings I receive and how I might "need" a calling or why I am "needed". In all honesty, it is my pride that often gets in the way of truly accepting the calling on its base merit, but instead questioning, always questioning. In an irony that doesn't escape me, I always seem to be asked to fulfill a calling that requires me to do something eerily similar to my professional job. For example, when Scott and I first started dating, I had just started teaching, we were called to teach a primary class full of munchkin-terrorists. After we were married, despite my telling the Bishop that I had previously served in several "teaching-type" callings, a month later I found myself teaching the teenage-Sunday-school class. And at BYU, after I purposely left my piano skills off of my "personal information" forms, I was called to play the piano in my wards the first three years of my college experience.

So it should come as no surprise that when Scott and I were asked to co-teach the CTR 5 primary class, I was, well, kind of disappointed. I work as a family and children's therapist and found the prospect of not just working with troubled kids 5 days a week, now I was going to work with "troubled" kids 7 days a week (yes, I'm calling 4-year-olds "troubled"). My reluctance was compounded by the fact that Scott works on Sundays and I knew I would be corralling a class of 8-10 kids on my own. I will admit that Scott and I wearily faced the prospect of making pom-pom pets for a lesson on Loving Animals, or glueing and stapling Truth Glasses, on Saturday nights. Equally daunting was knowing that nearly my entire class would declare that they needed to "go potty" at least once during our class. Needless to say, I didn't always "like" what I was doing on Sunday...it sometimes felt like I was running a Christian daycare. But over time their cherubic faces, and hilarious statements wore me down and I had to admit to myself that I had grown to love my "kids". So I give you my top-ten moments from the Fruitland Ward Primary's CTR 5 class:

10) Little William pulling on my skirt and handing me a cheap plastic-jewel earring worn by a fellow classmate: "Teacher, she lost part of her costume." (Not quite sure when we started wearing "costumes" to church).

9) Sean, child of a recent convert, taking the much labored-over Truth Glasses as they were passed out in order to be colored. When I turned around and saw he was not working on coloring I asked where his glasses were and he said matter-of-factly: "I dropped them out the window."

8) Sean, while trying to draw the attention of his classmates, robot-voice-repeating: "Pee-pee, poo-poo," while foaming at the mouth.

7) Scott, on a rare day of being able to help in the class, tried to hustle the kids through finishing up their coloring on a project. William whined, "I'm not done yet," to which Scott replied pointedly, "Well, maybe if you hadn't spent so much time building a sword with your markers, you could have finished earlier." William promptly burst into tears. (Nice touch, right?)

6) Jenny, a frequent vistor to her grandma who lives in the ward, showed-up to primary with lipstick smeared around her mouth, smudged blue eye shadow, and overwhelmingly POWERFUL cheap perfume and asks, "Do you like my make-up, my grandma did it?" "I love it," I replied.

5) Owen refusing to sing during Sharing Time, to which I struck upon an ingenious idea and I prompted him, "How about you sing the next song like Wall-E." I was blessed, the very next song to hear, "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus," in robot-kid-voice.

4) Owen saying to Scott, "Watch me, " and then falling off of his chair.

3) When asking the class why Jesus wouldn't just come back to earth in a perfect form, if He had the power to do so, Dylan replied without hesitation: "Because He wanted them to know it was Him." (So Smart!)

2) After giving the class child-sized CTR reminder bracelets and explaining that they are waterproof, Jessica breathlessly exclaims: "I'm never going to take it off."

1) Owen returned after a two-week family vacation and I reminded him during Sharing Time that he hadn't been in class for awhile and I had missed him. Later, in class while I was teaching the lesson, Owen raised his hand and queried, "Sara?" - "Yes, Owen?" - "I missed you." (You had me at "hello")

And so it is with some sadness I will be released from this calling in the next two weeks, and so I bid a fond adieu to my class:

Sorry, no pictures of Sean, William, Briah, or Jenny were "captured" while in their "natural habitat".