Brandon's New Calling As 1st Counselor

AnnMarie wrote: Just to let you know, Brandon was just called as 1st Counselor in the bishopric in our newly organized 12th ward in the stake.  In fact, we have two new wards and all the other wards were rearranged because of the over-abundance of members when the Church dissolved the BYU married student wards.  Which means, all the wards will have very few youth in them to accommodate the new members.  I have had kids crying since the meeting at 6:00 p.m.  Kyle will only have 5 YM in our new ward, and Megan will have 15 YW.  But the leaders will work on creatively combining the youth for mutual and scouts.  Rachel's best friend on the corner is in a different ward, so she is really sad, too. 

 

We went to Brandon's setting apart at 8:30 p.m. by the stake presidency, and there were so many people there because all but one of the twelve bishoprics needed to be revamped.  They were setting up different wards in different rooms and then rotating through all of them to set the men apart.  The stake president was so kind to my family at the setting apart and said in front of everyone in the room that he knew of no better family in the entire church than the Howard family.  That was quite an undeserved compliment, but it did make my kids feel a lot better about the need for them to step up to the plate in this new ward and be good leaders.  Because I am a stake leader I still have my calling for now, which is probably good because I will have a lot of new YW presidents to train in the coming weeks.

 

Love you all,

AnnMarie

Myrna wrote: I do remember when I had a roomful of crying children as well. When the Benders, Harmons and Ealeys were all in a different ward from the one we were now in. Dad went from being Bishop of the First Ward to Bishop of the Second Ward between Saturday night and Sunday morning.