Visiting Teaching

I've never had much of a testimony of visiting teaching. I don't remember my mom ever having visiting teachers come over while growing up and I've never really had regular visiting teachers myself. I know that this doesn't excuse me from doing my own visiting teaching, but for many years it was my reasoning for not doing it. That all changed this year. Just after the first of the year our ward held a "visiting teaching conference" and new assignments were handed out. Being new in the ward, I didn't know my visiting teaching companion, and only recognized one name on the list of sisters that we were to visit. After the conference, my companion sought me out and introduced herself, for some reason, at that moment I confessed my lack of enthusiasm towards visiting teaching. To my surprise, she confessed similar feelings, so we decided right then and there that we would motivate each other to get it done, and we have. For various reasons, we haven't been able to visit every sister on our list every month, but we've at least tried and through that process I have come to love my visiting teaching companion and the sisters that we visit. I look forward to those monthly visits. Erik actually finds the name visiting teaching very fitting for what we do each month, we visit first for almost an hour each month, and then we teach for the last few minutes.

Not only have I been blessed with a wonderful companion and sisters to visit, I also have been blessed with wonderful visiting teachers. Unfortunately, due to lifes circumstances, one of my visiting teachers wasn't always able to make the appointments and has recently moved away, but I enjoyed her company when she could make it, and I'm looking forward to meeting my new visiting teacher (I'm SO glad that my other visiting teacher wasn't changed).

On Sunday I was reminded of how wonderful these women are and how much they have helped me. In Relief Society, we were talking about baptism and how one of our baptismal covenants was to "lift one anothers burdens". The question was asked as to how we can do that, and someone mentioned through visiting teaching. I truly believe this is the case. Even though we don't spend much time teaching the lessons assigned each month, I feel that it's in the visiting that we lift one anothers burdens. It is through those visits that we get to know one another a little better and realize that we are all daughters of our Heavenly Father, it is in those visits that we learn of one anothers burden's and that is when those loads are lifted. I know that each one of these wonderful sisters has helped to lighten my load, and to them I will always be grateful.