All This Time

We have come to a conclusion about which ward we want to attend.  The debate was between the new-married-student ward and the family ward.  Our first week on Briar avenue we attended the family ward.  We showed up a few minutes late and the only seats  available were in the back, about the half-court line in the gym.  Sacrament was fun, noisy, entertaining, and littered with cute cute kids that we couldn't stop admiring.  During Sunday school, ol' Brother Riddle threw down a doctrine-rich lesson about the natural man that was interesting to say the least.  For the past year we have attended sunday school with kids our own age with good insights and interesting perspectives, but everyone was dealing with basically the same issues: school, relationships, work, dating, etc.  At the time it was great, but where we are now it seemed so homogenous.  So, sunday school was a nice change of pace with Brother Riddle, to say the least.

We then attended the student-married ward last week and it was also very interesting.  When we showed up to 8:30am for church, there were about ten other couples in attendance.  The opening hymn was really soft and it just felt weird.  It just felt like something was missing.  It didn't quite feel like church.  Maybe it's because there were so few people there, or maybe it's because we simply didn't know a soul and there wasn't really a strong sense of fellowship, but nonetheless, something was missing.  As the meetings progressed, though, the student-married ward grew on us and by the end of the third hour we didn't really know where we wanted to go.  Lauren and I had never consistently attended or experienced either kind of ward since being married and it was a tougher decision than we had anticipated.

Despite our dual stupor of thought concerning the question of where to attend, even after much thoughtful and heartfelt prayer, we decided to go to the family ward again and just try it out, not really commit, but give it another chance.  As we sat in sacrament (in front of the McClure family, another Medford connection) we felt more and more comfortable.  Our feelings of comfort increased while attending the Bishop's marriage and family relations class.  Finally, Relief Society and Priesthood were the icing on the cake that helped us feel that the family ward was the right place.  Some of the main pro's that we felt were that if this is the ward where we might want to have our first baby, the family ward seemed a better fit.  Also, the comments, insight, and perspective people have in the family ward is so much more broad and deep.  Nothing against the people in the student-married ward, but as one of our friends pointed out today, it's kind of like being in a singles ward, but with couples, and now the couples all make friends and do things similar to the singles ward, except you have a partner to do it with.  The broad range of age and experience in the family ward lends opportunities for us to become friends people who are so different from us and learn things from them that we couldn't otherwise learn in the other ward.  Hopefully it turns out to be all we hope it will be, and if we participate and are friendly, we're sure it will.