Of Callings and Kayaks text

Well along with a brand new ward comes the calling of all of the auxiliaries. We were visited by a member of our new bishopric and he extended a calling to each of us. It was…exciting, scary, overwhelming, and relieving to finally have some purpose in our ward (at least for me). I think I would have been happy to have any calling they could dish out, anything! I haven’t had a calling for about 11 months now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was going inactive but…it was getting old. When the stake presidency came to split the wards they said that they were doing so at least in part to give more people opportunities to hold callings and to serve. It seems that there inspiration was very applicable to our case. I assure you that when President Hinckley said that every member needs a calling, it was divine inspiration. Soooo…I bet you’re wondering what our callings are. Well I think, actually I know, the Lord saw me sitting on my duff on the back row in Relief Society day dreaming about what we were going to make for supper after church was over and then what we would have for dessert and names for our unborn children and what fun we had the day before…you get my point, and He thought, hmmm, this ought to get her attention! I was called to be the 1st counselor in the Relief Society Presidency. I will let Cody give you insight into his thoughts and feelings when he was called to be the 1st Counselor in the Young Men Presidency.

Our young men’s program is a bit unique. Today there are total of 4 young men in our ward (that we know about). One is inactive, we’ll be working on that. One is moving with his family to Seattle in a couple weeks, not much we can do there. One splits his time between our ward where his father and step mother attend church and his mother’s ward. That means that we will have one to two young men at church every Sunday. There will be more leaders in the young mens program than young men. I guess this is what we get for being so eager to serve and attend every activity—we just wanted friends:)

Yesterday was a fun day. The Hills, our friends who live down the hall and are really cool, invited us to go kayaking or snorkeling with them. I told Cody that there was no way on this green earth that I was going snorkeling and he could go without me. We opted for kayaking. Cody and the Hills went and picked up the kayaks and then couldn’t wait to get out on the water so they went without me (I had a bunch of homework) around 11:30am. At around 3:30 pm they came back and got me and then we all went out again. We rented 2 2-person kayaks at Sport Chalet that you get to keep the whole day. I won’t lie; I was scared. It was so fun though. We stayed in the La Jolla Cove area where there are kelp forests and lots of wildlife. We paddled over to some caves and got a good look at some sea lions basking in the sun. We also saw some sting rays and several types of fish. We then went into the cave and paddled out the back of it which opened up into a narrow cove. We started paddling out the back when several large waves came crashing at us. The Hills were ahead of us and actually turned around to go back through the cave instead of facing those waves but as they were heading back a wave washed them onto a rock where they got stuck. We actually had our kayak turned around and started to follow them when they motioned for us not to come and to just go out to sea. Miraculously we got the kayak turned around before another wave came (if you are sideways when a wave hits you will capsize and capsizing on those rocks would have been painful). We managed to keep the kayak head-on in the waves and get over them and then paddled like mad to get out. The Hills also managed to get off the rock and paddle out as well. It was scary. It was exhilarating.

We also went surfing with the kayaks. Cody and I caught a wave but it pushed us sideways and we ran over a little girl and capsized. I was done with that. The girl was fine. It was my fault I should have done a better job steering. But in the end surfing a wave in a kayak is a lot of fun, its just too bad there are other people in the water. Sometimes I just wish I had my own private beach.