Pay back

I have a good calling in my singles ward over here in Hawaii. I was called just two weeks after I arrived to be the Enrichment Night Leader (now known as Relief society night coordinator). It’s certainly not the hardest calling, but it still takes a good amount of effort and planning. Well tuesday night was relief society night for the month of February and I planned an activity that I thought would be great. We were going to make little bags of candy with encouraging notes tied to them saying things like “Jesus loves you”, “I love you”, “You are special”, etc, and send them to an orphanage in Burundi, Africa (I’m part of the African club... they have connections).

Anywho, during the past couple weeks I have made a few trips to Wal Mart and food land to buy chocolate, take back chocolate, buy non perishable candy, buy little bags and ties, get all the card stock and cut them into 100 pieces and hole punch everyone of them and buy a bunch of pens. Finally I was all ready for the night and I went around to a few of the floors on my house a couple minutes before, making sure all the girls remembered it was relief society night and I got a few promising moans and questionable looks. I started my journey down to campus a little late, so I was expecting a fairly large group to be waiting for me seeing as I was the one who had all the supplies and instructions. We have 110 girls in our relief society.... there were 4 girls waiting for me on a bench. We waited a little longer and one more girl showed up, but notta one after that. Not even anyone from the presidency showed up. Awesome. The girls that did come were really sweet however, and we had a good time and got everything done which mostly the point of the night, but it still hurt to not have that support... and I still went home and cried. haha. Now I’m not saying I’m mad or disappointed in anyone, I’ve certainly done my share of “studying” and “spending time with family” when it came time for meetings or activities I was supposed to go to, and I understand that it’s midterms week and a lot of girls might not have even heard about it! All I’m saying is it was a real good slap in the face and really put in perspective how important it is to show support and attend your meetings whenever possible. This was not the biggest activity ever planned, but there was a lot of thought, time and energy put into it (which is probably my fault-I tend to think I can do everything on my own and not have any help) so it would have been nice to have some support. At least the kiddies in Africa will be happy :) Maybe next month....