New Relief Society Presidency

Our Secretary moved out of our Ward at the beginning of March (We miss you sweet Morgan)! And it has taken us this long to get a picture of the new group......and at the end of this month our 1st Counselor will be moving. I am glad we got a picture for my personal history before she left....so better late than never!

The 1st Counselor is the 2nd one from the right (the tall skinny one - she has had 3 boys too and still is that skinny!). Before she was in the RS Presidency she was the Young Women's President and was Allison's YW's president when Allison was a Senior, not sure about the Junior year but definitely her Senior year in High School! As you can guess I was always really worried about Allison's time because she was involved in EVERYTHING and Senior year is the worst.....

My best memory of Sarah, is at the end of Allison's Senior year when everything is going full force with theatre, choir, banquets, awards, tests, auditioning for colleges etc.... she asked Allison to teach the combined YW/RS lesson in May I think and when she called to ask this, Allison wasn't there so I was taking the message and my Mom radar went up and I said something to the effect that Allison was extremely busy at this time and I didn't think she realized how much pressure she was under! Luckily Sarah persisted in asking Allison and I had a few minutes to take a step back from all the whirlwind of activities and realized that our family has never turned down an assignment unless there was just no way, and I needed to let Allison, who we had raised and taught all these correct principles to, make that decision.

Allison excepted the assignment to give the lesson and it was beautiful and I believe it was on answer to prayer or listening to the spirit or something like that. Allison of course did an amazing job and it was really wonderful to hear her testimony about answer to prayers! When everyone was coming up to me afterwards to to tell me what an amazing job Allison did on the lesson Sarah came up and not only told me how great Allison did, but said something along the lines of, I knew that this was a time in her life that she would be having to make BIG life decisions and that this would be a good reminder for her to depend on and listen to answer to prayer!

And at that time Allison was having a huge debate over which college to go to..... whether to go to Sam Houston and know that she could be in shows and have more exposure in a smaller college and hope that she would be able to get to the Institute programs once and awhile and Church.....because the music theatre program there would have demanded a lot of her time on Sunday and basically every night of the week.

Or to go to BYU and hope that she would eventually make it into the major that she wanted to be in and be one of thousands of talented people and maybe never be recognized for her talent! But would be an amazing place for her to be spiritually!

Now this may seem like a simple answer....but you have to remember this is the girl that was always front and center on stage in High School, recognized with all kinds of awards etc.... and dreamed of being on Broadway some day! So it was a tough decision and maybe a real test of her testimony! I know we were all relieved when she decided to go with BYU (I'm sure only because of answer to prayer and her accepting that answer).

And she has done awesome at BYU, changed her mind about needing to be on Broadway (not that I don't think she could have done it.....because I do believe she could have) has picked doing something she loves (theatre education) that she can make a living doing if she needs to/wants to. And met an amazing young man that loves her and supports her and will help her get back to her Heavenly Father......all because she listened to the spirit and went to BYU! And probably all because Sarah, listening to the spirit asked Allison to teach a lesson for RS at the very busiest time of her life! I'm so glad that I stepped back and didn't let the "protective mama" stop this from happening and let Allison decide if she wanted to (of course she chose the better part) and she was able to find the Lord's path for her life! She is so happy and I love Sarah for being the kind of YW leader that she was!

I also will miss getting to see Sarah in action in our Presidency meetings. Just recently I am trying to take a page from her example and do better myself on something. I have just started and it will take some practice! But I hope I can do it with persistence, because I do believe I will be a better person/leader because of it!

You will be so very missed Sarah and your cute little family....but we will all be better people for having known you!