Unless I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m carrying boxes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m probably not actually helping anybody. There may be a few other possibilities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done a bit of one-off paleography and amateur locksmithing as service a few times, and I seem to be a reasonably talented wallpaper remover, but apart from that, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a whole lot I can do to help people with their problems.<\/p>\n
As an elders quorum president, occasionally I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hear that Brother X hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been to church in a while, or that Sister Y is having personal difficulties. People want to know what ideas I have for helping them.<\/p>\n
The truth is that I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help them. I can assign home teachers to Brother X and make him feel welcome when he comes and look for a chance for him to serve, but if Brother X doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to come to church, and if he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to pick up the phone when I call, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a lot I can do about it. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an adult, and he has enough experience to know what he should be doing. If he still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to come to church, my options are limited.<\/p>\n
Likewise, I can assign home teachers to Sister Y and welcome her to church and encourage her to attend regularly, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not all that good at repairing the effects of disastrous choices made over the space of decades. Sister Y needs to keep receiving the help of competent professionals, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not one. Talking to me doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help her in the way she needs.<\/p>\n
But the Zs, though, are a different matter. Sometimes the Zs are moving to a new town, far from friends and family members. Sometimes they just need to move into a new apartment in town, and the decades spent in their old home have led them to underestimate how much work goes into moving. <\/p>\n
I can help the Zs. I only have to get a bunch of healthy adults together for a few hours, carry heavy boxes and furniture, and then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m done. If the Zs are really in over their heads, after a few hours I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll look for a way to send them off, maybe to pick up snacks and drinks. Then the elders can start ripping the full cupboards off the walls and carrying them and their contents to the moving truck wholesale. By the time the Zs get back, the apartment is bare, one way or another. The Zs had a problem, we helped them, and now the problem is solved. The End.<\/p>\n
There are good and bad ways to help people move. Advance preparation and organization are important, and you can expect most people to take responsibility for a lot of things on their own. It hasn’t come up so far, but I won’t let anyone fuss at the elders. If people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t satisfied with the job the elders quorum movers are doing, that can best be expressed by saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thank you for your help, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll finish the rest on my own.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OK if some quorum members can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently missed a couple moves myself. More than a few times when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve moved in the past, having just one extra guy there to help carry a few thing too heavy for one person was all that we really needed.<\/p>\n
But the elders quorum is supposed to help people every so often. Unless the elders are sharing their professional expertise\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich, for most of us, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t needed all that frequently\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor, alternatively, carrying heavy objects, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how much service we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re actually providing. So please, let me know if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re moving into my ward, ideally before the Sunday preceding the move. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll work something out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unless I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m carrying boxes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m probably not actually helping anybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}