Category: Church

Ward conferences 2021

screenshot from our YouTube video

The stake presidency and I made a video for children to watch during ward conferences this year. I wrote here a few months ago when we recorded it that I forgot to put on my shoes. 🤦 Leadership via Zoom and YouTube requires a lot of ego strength because it’s rare to get any feedback. On this last day of ward conference season, I am grateful to have witnessed the efforts from church leaders to help every person feel loved.

One Sunday a few months ago, I knocked on a door of a Primary leader on the day of her ward conference. Inside the house, children scurried to the door and I could hear their voices. “Mom! It’s the Primary president!” I was in a mask. This was not a family I knew. But the little girl had watched the video and could recognize me. One promise given to me when I was set apart in this calling was that children would feel the Savior’s love through my ministering. As ward conferences come to an end, and I have not been able to minister face to face with the children this year, I hope there are many who recognized the Savior’s love in our little video for them. I will probably never know, but that’s the way it is with most service. You stretch, try, and trust, then repeat. And sometimes you rush to the goal and forget to put on your shoes.

another screenshot of the video we made for the children

Things we do when we anticipate a goodbye

Tim spoke in church and it was the longest I have heard his voice in years. He keeps it all to himself, the humor, the insights, the excellence. Some people just don’t show a need for approval, and he is the most independent person I have ever known. In only one class has he asked for help. Even when we were homeschooling, he would take his work to his room and do it alone. I came home from church and took a personal video of the recording of church services so I can hear his voice and his testimony whenever I need it, and I hugged him up and told him how proud I am of him.

Richard went on a trip to Moab with friends over the weekend, and our dog, traumatized by the separation, found a place in his suitcase as he unpacked on Saturday night.

We all self-soothe in some way about anticipated separations. I make a recording and the dog tries to stow away. I have found 3 gray hairs during my life so far. All have happened around the time of high school graduations.

Spring Break?

Spring Break happened, but we didn’t travel. I put miles on the car going back and forth to shuttle Mark to be with cousins. I finally visited an antique mall in Springville and purchased some beautiful plates there. I sewed with friends one afternoon, and I think that I drove our cross-country-road-trip-conversation about funerals.

I spoke in a leadership meeting at stake conference, which is a rare opportunity, so I dedicated each morning of Spring Break to writing and practicing my delivery. When the meeting was over, I rested on the couch and didn’t move for a long time. Richard watched a miniseries, The Woman in White with me. He worked in the yard all weekend.

Daniel enlisted Paige to illustrate something for a biology project. Tim worked so much on his landscaping job that we rarely saw him. Two more of us received a vaccine for COVID-19.

Our dog has ailments, then rallies.

Today everyone is back to routines: school, work, music, etc. but I am lagging. On Mondays you usually find me at my best, but I need a rest from the “break” we had last week from routine.

179 years old

As I drove past the church parking lot on an errand, I saw that my neighbor wrestled to manage a plastic tablecloth in the wind. The balloons, color coordinated for a Relief Society birthday party, knocked around perilously, and I wondered if they would still be there when the outdoor-socially-distanced-grab-a-cupcake-and-visit safely-party began. When I arrived twenty minutes later, there were just a few women, masked and shivering along the sidewalk, enduring the cold for connection. A sister I love noticed me and held my arm and inquired, for real, how I was doing. Later, another sister said she heard I had been through a hard time. Then she listened, just listened.

I had to leave quickly, but I am glad for the ten or fifteen minutes I shared with my friends. I know that in those minutes, two friends gave something vital to me. I was the only one there with church keys, so I was able to open the building for the women to take shelter from the wind. As I write this, I remember what Mark said when I told him the story, “Mom, you and your Relief Society hijinks.” Beyond the “rebellion” of a few women sheltering inside the church during a pandemic in order to talk for a few minutes, I would say Relief Society has always been about helping women and families come inside from the wind. Happy birthday, Relief Society.

2020 photo album

Richard is on the 9th or 10th day of his bout with COVID-19. We don’t know where he was exposed. The illness has a new character each day, but his oxygen levels have been fine, so I am grateful for that. He has stayed isolated from us, and no one else at home has tested positive. The worry I have felt is a small thing compared to what others have gone through with this illness so I hesitate to even mention it. I will say that although Richard’s case can be termed as “mild” and he has not complained, this is a different kind of illness and unpleasant at best.

What is helping us get through quarantine? Entertainment. Empathy from an employee of the attendance office at the high school. Dedicated teachers who make education happen. Surprises left on our porch from friends. Sunsets. For me, it helps to have routines I can do without thinking and something to look forward to each day. On Tuesday, it was the arrival of our 2020 photo book. I wrote before that creating this album helped me see that 2020 was a great year for the Ross family. God gives us eyes to see sometimes.

Join me for YouTube church tomorrow

As far as I can tell, they leave the meeting up on YouTube for a while after the meeting, so you can watch at your convenience. If you do watch, I hope you will let me know. I will be speaking to just a few people and a camera. As a young friend said as he spoke to the camera from the pulpit, “I never thought I would be a televangelist!” 😁

Join us for church online if you like

Daniel has been asked to speak in church on Sunday, Oct 11 at 9 am, Utah time. Church is now live-streamed via YouTube, so as different and new as this seems, I am inviting you to tune in to our sacrament meeting tomorrow. (Link to the channel included beneath picture)

Daniel will be giving a brief report on his mission and a gospel message.

Mark will be speaking, too.

I don’t know how long this link will work, but this was the meeting: (link no longer works)

https://youtu.be/IymgXDkpJJA

Press forward

Mark’s general conference block tower
The message of President Russell M Nelson was to let God prevail in our lives.

Recently, I took some time to begin our photo book for 2020. With so much canceled, I expected the photo book to be thin and a bit depressing. But friends, it just wasn’t that at all. What a beautiful year we have had so far, despite all, and maybe because of all.

Two pillars of the year for our family are our church’s general conferences in April and October. This year, perhaps more than any other, I have needed extra assurances that God is in control and speaks to His children to help them. So, with familiar rhythms of family time, block towers being built with monkeys at the pinnacle, we listen to church leaders and continue to press forward through the mist. (1 Nephi 8:24, 30)

To read or view the words of prophets, apostles, and other church leaders from general conference, you can follow this link.