The Easiest Hard Thing To Do

The easiest hard thing to do—to explain the nuts and bolts for coordinating a home teaching visit is about as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich. Take party “A”, the peanut butter, and put it together with party “B”, the jam, keep it all together and enjoy between two slices of bread. The recipe for home teaching is taking party A, the Johnson family, and put it together with party B, the home teachers, and keeping them together within the fabric of gospel living. Easy right? Home teaching is one of the more important programs of the church, shouldn’t we all be happy that it requires so little of us? Home teaching companionships generally have 2-3 families to visit, and visits don’t need to be longer than 15 minutes, the frequency is monthly, and the message is prepared for you in the church’s monthly edition of the Ensign. Further, we’ve all been blest with the advantages of present technology; gadgets that help us schedule and organize our lives, as well as do things quicker. Still with all of these advantages in our corner, it is human for all of us to shirk this responsibility from time to time. Yes, I just used the word ‘shirk’. Home teaching took on a different light for me once I moved out on my own; both in giving visits and being visited. It meant more for me to receive a home teaching visit from someone with the same busy schedule that I had. I was blest to also have opportunities to pay visits to families ranging on a spectrum of ‘needing and enjoying the visit’ to ‘not so excited for the home teachers’. Regardless of the family’s reception of the monthly visit, I’ve tried to make my preparation the same each month which has always given me an opportunity to bear testimony of various principles of the gospel. It’s always nice to study the gospel individually; however, combining individual study and sharing what you’ve learned with others goes together as good as peanut butter and jelly. Crunchy peanut butter of course.