Tuesday, February 6, 2018

About my blog.

October 22, 2017

Our family has attended the Capitol Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the last 8 years since we moved to Maryland. It's our church family. In October 2017, my husband was called to serve as the Branch President of the ASL branch that meets in downtown DC. The Branch President serves as the main pastor for the congregation for a few years. It's a lay position - he keeps his job and ministers on evenings and weekends. This means a lot of things to our family:

  • Changing our church congregation, leaving behind our friends from one ward and going to church with other friends in the branch.It means leaving behind our responsibilities and service projects we were working on and accepting new ones. Basically, it's just like moving, but without having to pack our stuff :)
  • A call to sacrifice for the Lord. Serving as a Branch President is a weighty calling, and it requires time and emotional investment. Marriner accepted that responsibility, and the rest of us prepared to get used to not seeing Dad so much for the next few years.
  • An urgent need to learn a language that we're currently at about survival level in.

Any of these three things would be a big deal, but all three of them together have created a lot of emotions in all of us (except for maybe Baby Jane, whose only sacrifice will be missing her 1:00 nap on Sundays, since the branch meets in the afternoon.)

There have been so many faith-promoting experiences in the last few weeks, I've felt a need to record some of them, so this is my attempt.


ps - now go back to my very first post, so you can read everything in chronological order!

pps - If you are planning to visit the branch and have some trepidation about what it will be like, read this post: Visiting the Branch

3 comments:

  1. I have loved reading your experiences with the branch/ home/ family/ husband, etc. I read all the posts on your other page first, and I found myself thinking I must have done something right when you were young, because you're a marvelous person now. I'm so grateful for your spirit, I found myself deeply touched on occasion. I also feel vindicated, as some of the stories felt awfully familiar. Thanks for setting this up for me. It also is cool, because not all these stories end up in the letters you send out weekly. Yay! More laughs from the Merrill family!

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    1. Thanks, Mom! Re: feeling vindicated - that was the post about Ellis being grateful for piano lessons. I don't even have to ask, I know :)

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