I can't really just let this go without putting something here. It's been a truly wonderful experience to serve in the YSA (Young Single Adult - 18-30 yrs.) 3rd Ward. We served there for about 4.5 (2017-2021) years. We went in thinking it would be for about 3 years and came out wishing it wouldn't end. It's been so great to serve with amazing senior leaders and to rub shoulders with so many also amazing young people throughout these few years. I can honestly say, this has been my favorite of all church callings so far. I did not go in thinking I would like it very much at all. I'm used to working with kindergartners, cub scouts and serving in Primary as the main things in my daily and church life. I just couldn't really see myself liking the 18-31 age group all that much. But, in this I was very wrong. This calling has been to us like a mission. We left our home ward and were completely immersed in this on Sundays, Mondays and other times as well. We had the wonderful experience of seeing some of these young people make huge life changes - become active and worthy to serve and to move forward in good ways in their lives. We've loved them, cried for them, celebrated with them, and had so much fun with them. For me, it meant coming out of my shell and with Paul being the first people to greet and welcome them when they came to church. We served as ward clerk and ward "clerkette" aka member coordinator. When we went in for our calling interview they actually gave us two options: Paul could be a high councilman and I could be some kind of very undefined "member coordinator" or Paul could be the ward clerk and I could still be the undefined "member coordinator". After all the years of me basically following him through scouting, I decided it was time for him to let me choose instead of him and be just getting the calling because he was so good at it that I should be too. Well, in this case, after we talked about it, he was willing to give in to my wishes. As I said, the member coordinator calling is sort of a made up thing that you just have to figure out. It is nowhere in the handbook. People have come up with an idea of what it could be, kind of a liaison between the home stake area that our YSA ward drew from and the YSA ward. Well, to do that, there needed to be the other half of that team from the home stake, and they never called anybody to do that. The lady whose place I took had nothing at all to tell me about what my responsibilities would be. Her husband pretty much did it all and she "cooked" a lot for the many gatherings. The calling of ward clerk, was made for me, in many ways. I always liked being the Primary secretary, wished I could be the RS secretary. Paul is such a people person! He shined at that part of the calling and I was good at the background part of this calling - the record keeping, and together we just loved being with, cooking for, partying with and serving however we were needed to. This truly became a shared calling and was like a mission in that way. It was very much a working together and using each of our best talents to bless the ward. I feel like that is what made us good at this. And it helped other people with the calling, especially the women who felt like they were there because their husband was called and they didn't really have anything much to do. We shared with them how we shared this calling and many have told us how that helped them. I felt needed and useful and busy in the work. Paul will always be everyone's favorite. I'm just not the people person he is, but nevertheless, I felt loved and appreciated here more than I ever have in any other calling. Just as an additional note. We should have been released at the release of the last bishopric we thought, but they surprised us at the release "party" by saying we were staying in with the new bishopric. I think that's because Covid-19 was just getting started among other reasons there may have been. That proved to be the hardest part of our service time there. It was so hard to get to know people when we were not meeting in person, meeting wearing masks, and not able to have activities other than church. We were just now fully getting back to activities in the summer of 2021 with some of our first summertime combined with other wards FHEs and sacrament meetings. It's a good time for the new people to be called. They would have had a much harder time with the Covid-19 restrictions coming in with no background knowledge of any of the young people or leadership.
We served with 3 different bishoprics:
Craig Booth, Ted Spilsbury, Hans Hafen
Alan Orchard, Ted Spilsbury, Lee Scott
Jeffrey Tuscano, Wayne Stucki, Dave Kinzie
We need to give special thanks to Stan Plew - the ward clerk before us, for always being so willing to help us while we got going in the first place. Also, lots of thank to the Stake Clerk, Bro. Dean Losee. He was always wonderful to work with also.
I made a memory book of pictures from all the years we served. That will be where I put the rest of them instead of here. And this photo is in memory of Dr./Bishop Craig Booth who we served with first and who is now deceased. He is a one-of-a-kind guy and it was lots of fun to serve with him and Maureen and the other bishopric members we started out working with in 2017.
