Last week brought Visiting Teaching Interviews. For sisters in our ward, the process involved the following steps:

1. Signing up (a few weeks in advance) for a designated time during the evening
2. Arriving at the church at said time
3. Having a personal interview with a member of the Relief Society presidency
4. Eating soup

My time was 7:20, and I found that I didn’t have to wait too long for my interview, which by chance (I think) was with the Relief Society president. The interview itself is simply a “How’s-It-Going” kind of check-in, to see if assignments are working out, or if perhaps changes need to be made. I can’t imagine what kind of a nightmare it must be to organize something as intricate as visiting teaching assignments for any ward, so cheers to whoever’s doing that.

The first part of the interview with the Relief Society president was, of course, to talk about my own visiting teaching assignment. I’m assigned to three women: the first is a dream (a friendly and welcoming woman, really easy to be and associate with), the second is someone I’ve never met, and the third is someone who does not want anything to do with the church. I serve her by giving her what she wants – I never visit her.

During the second part of the interview I reported that I’m really pleased with my visiting teachers. They don’t pay me a visit every month, which is great for me, because to be honest, at this stage of my life to schedule a visit is kind of an interruption. But they do keep in touch with me, and I feel that they care about me, and I feel like I could call upon them should the need arise. And isn’t that what visiting teaching is all about?

Sometimes I wonder if I should be assigned to be my neighbor’s visiting teacher. She and I talk every day, our kids are best friends, we babysit for one another, and we are the first people the other will call when needing anything. If I was her visiting teacher, my assignment would be done simply by how we live…but I don’t think that’s the point, either. Is part of the intention of visiting teaching to get women to interact with those with whom they wouldn’t normally spend time?

I think back to a time when I was still in the season of my life of being pregnant, nursing, buying multiple sizes of diapers at one time, etc., and my visiting teachers were two women in their seventies. I’d welcome them into my home and they’d take their place in my living room and discuss how wonderful it is to be a grandmother. I’d smile and sit and wait for their lesson, and then they’d leave. I love those women, but I had a really difficult time trying to understand why they were assigned to me. Never would I call upon them to help me out with any practical help at that stage in my life: babysitting? They could barely walk up the steps to my front door. Carpool? No way. But I did gain something from them, which is a little bit of an understanding of how it feels to be elderly (and in some cases invisible) – a perspective I wouldn’t have learned about had my visits consisted of chatting with girlfriends in a similar stage of life to my own.

The night after our ward visiting teaching interviews, I found myself at an event on the opposite side of town from where I live; my husband was at a separate event in another city, and my oldest daughter was at her weekly mutual activity, leaving my second-oldest daughter to be the babysitter for her younger siblings for the evening. When I answered a phone call from home, I was greeted by a near-hysterical babysitting daughter; it seems that my 5-year-old son had dialed 9-1-1, and now all parties were terrified of getting a visit from a police officer. Immediately, I knew what to do: I phoned my visiting teacher. I don’t know what she had on her own agenda that evening, but my request for her to go to my house to comfort my children became her priority. When I finally did arrive home that evening, my kids were calm and eager to tell me about how Sister S. came over and read books and helped them feel better. That night, my testimony of visiting teaching went from ‘meh’ to ‘I want to go to there.’

What are your experiences with visiting teaching or home teaching? Do you see it as a chore? Do you enjoy your assignments? Do you see blessings from visiting, or from being visited?