What do I love most about my ward? – 19 July 2016 – ShellyB

Today we had an activity all about journal keeping for mutual. It was great! We all shared some ideas about different ways of keeping a journal. I must be honest, journal keeping was not my favorite pastime, in fact, I hadn’t kept a journal for years sadly! Thankfully I now have my blog, this is my way of keeping a journal now and I am loving it and I am beginning to catch a glimpse of the importance of keeping records.

As part of the activity we each randomly picked a piece of paper that had a question on it that we should answer and include it as an entry in our journals.

The question I picked was: What do you love most about your ward and why? It was exactly right for me because I love my ward completely!

I attended the Krugersdorp 1st Ward in the Roodepoort, South Africa Stake. I started attending this ward about 2 years ago when I moved from Benoni to Krugersdorp. I found the bishops contact details and called him up, I spoke to his wife and she was so friendly, that night the bishop came around to the house to meet with us and introduce himself. He arranged for a member that lived in the same street as us to show us the way to the chapel that Sunday.

As we walked into church not knowing a single person there we were overwhelmed with the warmth and welcoming we got! A young man (Dallin Swarts) was at the door, he greeted us with the biggest smile I had ever seen, shook each of our hands with such vigour and welcomed us as if we were his long last best friends. The hugs, hand shakes and smiles just kept coming! For the whole three hours I didn’t only feel welcomed but I felt loved and at home! It was a truly remarkable experience!

It wasn’t long after that sunday that we were invited to lunch with the Harris family (Clifford, Henita, Catherine, David & Paul) and then out of the blue got a phone call from the gate it was Piet & Susan Heydenrych, they had baked some biscuits and wanted to drop them off with us. I felt unreal to me, I was a stranger in the town and yet within two weeks my circle of friends grew to the largest it had ever been!

Now some may say that’s all well and good because you are a “new face” and will expect the welcome to die down, in some way I myself was expecting that but I was so wrong! Two years later and I still feel just as welcomed and at home as I did the first day I walked through those doors, more in fact, each of the members have become a part of my family, they all hold a place in my heart that can’t be replaced!

What I love about my ward is the people, the feeling of family you get not just on Sundays but every day of the week. There is no respecter of persons, there are no “cliques”, from the moment they meet you, you become part of them.

I am currently serving in the Young Women programme as the 1st counsellor (Mia-Maid Advisor), with Rebecca Van Zyl as president and Tumi Sithole as 2nd counsellor. I love my calling, I love the girls, they are all “my girls”! I am amazed at their spirits and their conviction to live and share the gospel! I am so proud of each and every one of them!