Howdy From a New Ward

As many of you know, our ward (or church congregation) was dissolved in September. We were divided geographically between two other wards. We’d been in the same ward for 20 years, so it’s a big change, but we’ve always known it was a possibility. 

I thought I’d do a little write up about how it’s going. I loved my old ward, and I love my new ward, so my purpose is not to declare which is best, but I will say, they are quite different! Maybe this will be a boring read for most of you, but it’s good for my personal journaling, and lots of my readers are from “the other side” of my old ward, and I’m genuinely interested in how they are doing in their new ward, so they might be curious about us over here, too.

Our new ward is in another building, so now when we head to church each week, we turn right instead of left. Our “new” building is quite old (I continue to believe that it pre-dates Noah and survived the flood). It has chalkboards, which I don’t think I’m ever going to be okay with. All I can think about in class is the white powder all over the teachers’ clothes (especially those dry clean only suits). One cool thing about our building is that it has windows in the chapel. They are up by the ceiling, so all we can see out of them is tree tops and sky, but the natural light is nice. I also like that we no longer have to pass through a busy intersection to get to church. For the past few weeks, most of the primary kids and youth have walked home together, and I love that they can do that.

Our primary and youth are really small, which is kind of a bummer, but at the same time, it allows everyone to have a little more attention. I think our old ward had the perfect amount of youth - not so many that they could easily get lost or forgotten, but not so few that attendance at activities became a big issue. There are only two priests in our ward now, and Nicky is the only one there a lot of the time. All of the youth attend the same Sunday School class, which will be interesting next year if they keep Nicky (17), Daisy (14), and Zoe (11) in the same class. 

Our ward has a lot of elderly members. On the first week, the chapel seemed so empty, and I realized it’s because so many of our congregation are empty nesters. Six households can fit on a single bench, so even though there are a lot of families in our ward, they don’t take up a lot of seating space because they are mostly families of two. On our first week, Eva leaned over to me and said, “Wow! There are a lot of grandmas and grandpas at this church!”

Speaking of grandmas and grandpas, Scotty’s mom and step-dad are in our ward. Not only that, they are the Relief Society and Elders Quorum president. My mother-in-law told me she would not turn in my name for a calling because she didn’t want to make me mad. I never mentioned it to her, but I wished I could teach Relief Society. I just hoped that wherever I ended up would be inspired by the Lord and not affected by any family biases. Scotty got swooped into Young Men the very first week. A few weeks later, I got called in to meet with a member of the bishopric. The counselor I met with hemmed and hawed for a minute because he couldn’t remember what calling he was supposed to extend to me. Finally he looked at his notes on his iPad. I felt like Harry Potter with the sorting hat (“Not Young Women! Not Slytherin!”).

I was completely thrown off when I was called to be a Relief Society teacher (“Gryffindor!”) My mother-in-law told me she stayed out of it, and her counselors requested me. I won’t teach very often because there are four of us. I’ve never had a calling that was this much… non-work. 

(How will I cope with the chalk boards?)

It’s really strange to be in a ward that has enough people to fill callings. We have an activities committee just for Elders Quorum, and there’s a funeral committee. There are extra people all over the place, and so many people without callings yet. 

The other day my kids asked, “When will we get our keys to the new church?” After continuing the conversation, I learned that my kids thought everyone gets keys to the church. That’s when I realized that, save for about six months, either Scotty or me has been in a church calling that came with church keys for our kids’ entire lives. They’ve never known life without keys! So they were a little shocked to find out that we won’t be getting any.

I kind of hoped that as we transitioned to a new ward that we’d get a few weeks to just chill, but that wasn’t case. I was asked to sub in nursery our first week, and we’ve already had to say the prayers in sacrament meeting. I had my ministering assignments within the first week, and we had to clean the church our third week. 

We had our first ward activity last weekend - a chili cook off. There was so much food! It was actually kind of stressful to pick a few chilis to try (next time I’m bringing a muffin tin so I can try 12 chilis at once). But it was a nice event and well-attended. 

My kids have all had different feelings about the new ward. Daisy has struggled the most. A few of her closest friends are in the other ward. Zoe and Eva have been okay. They seem to enjoy primary and their bi-weekly activities. Nicky hasn’t complained at all - so I don’t know if he’s doing well or if he just isn’t telling us. 

Overall, things are good, but I think we are going to feel displaced for a while. We are very “welcomed,” but the ward doesn’t quite feel like it’s “ours” yet. It seems like we’re long-term visitors. We’ll get there.