Demetria was assigned to do some sort of clean up with the stage her opera group used (I think they had to repaint it too or something), so she told me to go on to church without her and she'd go later in the day. She was gone for a couple hours and got back about forty-five minutes after I did.
I got a text from Jeff saying he scored 50/50 on our math exam. I only scored 48. I must have made a mistake with my graphs, because we did all the rest together. I guess we'll see!
I got a text from Jeff saying he scored 50/50 on our math exam. I only scored 48. I must have made a mistake with my graphs, because we did all the rest together. I guess we'll see!
The coordinators and supervisors had all planned to stay after church a few minutes because our duties have been really unclear up until now and we wanted to talk things out. We still met after, but in relief society, they distributed visit teaching information to the supervisors and had us read off the names of those in our district. Then people would come up and take a slip that tells them their companion as well as contact information for the people they're assigned to visit. Demetria and I are partners again, but we have new people to teach now.
That made me feel guilty because we had made plans to visit our person a long time ago, and it was supposed to happen this weekend. Then Demetria told me she and our person had worked it out and we were planning to meet next weekend. Oh, okay. I don't know what we'll do now, though. At least this person is someone Demetria knew back in Arizona, which makes it less awkward.
The weird thing is, they didn't do this last semester. They just had everyone come up and grab their slip and sent us off without explaining any duties. I don't think anyone in District 1 knew they were supposed to contact me when they did their visiting teaching. I certainly had no clue what I was supposed to do. I didn't even have a list of people in my district. We didn't get our assignments until right before finals week, and so many people moved out straight after that.
Personally, the entire concept of visiting teaching seems a little silly to me. We all teach each other the same lesson that we've already taught to someone else. I liked the story that was shared today - maybe from a conference talk - about a month when the assignment was to pray about and find a conference talk to share with the people we're supposed to visit. Why can't we always do that? That makes a lot more sense to me than teaching the same little clip to three people each month and then going home to have someone tell it to you, and then it would push us to review old conference talks, which I admittedly don't do much. Maybe I just don't have the right attitude about visiting teaching.
Anyway, lots of people weren't there, so I was told to make sure everyone gets theirs. Here are my leftover slips:
After I got home, I divided the stack into people who live in each building, as well as the people who didn't have their building listed (though some had their apartment number). I texted the five people who didn't have a building, introducing myself as their district supervisor whom they should contact when they finish their visiting teaching, and was soon given replies that most of them had moved away and wanted to be taken off the list. Oh.
I did have one person who dropped by to pick her slip up, though. Then I went around knocking on doors and handing the remaining slips out. Bad idea to do that on Super Bowl weekend, maybe. I had hoped to get them all done, but after doing my building, I called it quits. There are simply too many people who aren't even in the ward anymore. For instance, I had two slips for the room next door to mine where Shantal, who went to high school and did the veterinary science program at JATC with me, lives. She came out of the laundry room just as I was about to knock on her door, and told me that she didn't have any roommates by those names. This is her second semester, so these names are at least a year old. Oh.
I was able to deliver a few slips to people on the fourth floor, but things got even trickier when I went downstairs. Some rooms I didn't knock on because they were obviously for boys, and other people didn't answer when I knocked, and perhaps had gone out to enjoy the Super Bowl at someone else's place (though it wasn't on when I was making my rounds).
I feel like someone should have already taken these people off the list, and unfortunately it's probably my job to figure out who isn't here anymore (But shouldn't these guys have transferred their records to their new ward by now? Shouldn't that be a sign that we should take them off our list?) I texted one of the coordinators with the names of people who had texted me back, but eventually gave up because there are too many people missing. I'll talk to her after church next week, I guess. Supposedly this is an easy calling once these papers are all passed out, but right now, it's not very fun.
To my surprise, one of the names I have - not merely as someone to be taught, but someone who is supposed to do visits - is the RA from my floor. The same RA who made it pretty obvious she isn't LDS and wants nothing to do with this religion. I wonder if this is information from last year, or if she's just recently joined the Church. Either way, I'm not really looking forward to having this conversation. I went all the way down to her door, then turned around because it sounded like she had people over for the Super Bowl. Maybe I'll wait until she comes around to take roll. I don't think she's done it since school started up again, so it should be any day now. How do you say, "Hey, I'm your supervisor and [despite your nosering and our previous conversations] I have you on my list for visiting teachers... What's that about?"
I also got a call from one of my home teachers today, and invited them to pay a visit Tuesday evening. Demetria watched the Super Bowl, I think ("for the commercials", she said), but I didn't bother with it. It's rare I have a weekend where I don't have to worry about homework, and I was determined to take advantage of it. I got a lot of writing done, and some research about places, plants, and accents and dialects too (Maine, specifically). I wonder if there's a class I could take in a future semester about accents. That sounds like useful information for an author to know.
