Jan. 11, 2012

1st Counselor in BYU 166th Ward

In early February of 2006 I received a phone call from BYU asking my wife and I to come over and meet with a Pres. Bowman of the BYU 3^rd Stake.  I had known a number of men in the ward who had served at BYU and always felt sorry for them that they couldn’t attend their home ward. I didn’t know what it involved but was sure that the travel each week would wear on a person after a short while. Tia had attended a ward at BYU but we had never gone to church with her while she was there and only knew that she met in a classroom. So it was with a bit of fear and trepidation that we came over and met with President Bowman. He talked to us for a while and then said that Jim Lundberg of Mapleton had been called to be a Bishop and requested that I serve as a counselor to him. I knew Jim even though he was in a different ward because I was in the Bishopric there when he and his family moved into the ward.

We accepted the call and then he began to tell us that he had served at BYU now going on 8 years but a typical length of service was 3 years in a Bishopric. He told us how he loved serving here and that we too would grow to love it. Our assignment would be with the 166^th ward located in Liberty Square apartments in Provo around 500 East and 500 North.  I didn’t know that Jim had been on the High Council for two years in the Stake and so he was very familiar with the comings and goings of service over here. Well the following week we came to Sacrament Meeting and sat up in the back of the large room where the service was held each week. The Bishopric was all seated down in front unlike the usual up in front like I was use to in the other Bishoprics that I had served in with the Mapleton Stake. The podium was now below most of the students and on the same level as those in the front row. A table divided us from the student where during the week lectures on biology were conducted including the dissecting of mice and other things.

We were sustained and then asked to talk and then after the meeting observed as the students were crying with the release of the old Bishopric. Now we were faced with the daunting task of learning the names of 152 new students who would soon be leaving school for the summer. There was a set of triplets that were members of the ward and they looked so much alike that I just knew I would never know them but by carefully watching what they wore and when their name was called I was soon able to at least get them correct each week. Later I put their pictures on the computer and scrolled back and forth through them until I knew the identifying freckles on their faces that were easy to see and thus easy to keep straight which one was which despite what they wore. Later in fact Lindsay was called as the Relief Society President and we became very close to her. They were the ones who greeted Brittany during the summer term into the ward and made her feel such a special part of the ward. The next two summers were not the same since they had gotten married and were no longer part of the ward and the students didn’t seem to get to know her as well those years.

Well we learned their names long enough to get to love them and then each year in August would start fresh with mostly new students. With my love for photography we would have them come for FHE and do picture sessions with the FHE groups each week. We became lonely in fact when for some reason they wouldn’t be there during some weeks. Then I would photograph them at the ward socials and was able to get to know them that way even better. Then in 2007 I was introduced to Facebook on the internet and began posting the pictures of our events on that website. It has been great also because as the youth would leave at the end of the terms I would still have contact with them. We have had a great time and so when it came time to be released in Jan on the 11^th I  knew that I now felt totally different about service at BYU.

I had opportunities to extend callings and to get to make assignments and was always so grateful for the willingness each would have as they accepted the assignments. I never had to worry about whether the would get done either and grew to love ov 450 students which we were able to get to know in the three years I served in the Bishopric. Marie would always come to church with me as well and she and I both fell in love with each student. Now I have been called into the High Council on Jan 11, 2009 and am greatly loving this call as well since I still see the old ward members and also see them in other wards now too.  It is really neat to be able to continue serving here at BYU and with a ward over whom the Bishop that is serving was once the High Councilor assigned to our ward when I was in the Bishopric.  There are many stories that I can now add to my list and would put them here but then it would be too long to read so I will separate them out.

(Every now and then I rewrite one I had already written but not realized it. Here is the second version of this story.}

BYU 166^th Ward Socials.

The time that I spent in the Bishopric as first counselor to Bishop Jim Lundberg were some of the greatest years of my life. We got to learn, temporarily, the names of nearly 500 students.  I think I will always remember their names and their faces but matching the two parts together when I see them from time to time now just doesn’t happen except for a few that we really got to know well.

Part of the reason that it was so fun was because it wasn’t work to get to know them and it wasn’t work to get them to accept and fulfill their calling. It wasn’t work to get them to give talks in Sacrament meeting and in fact several asked if they could. It wasn’t work to plan socials because they did it themselves. It just wasn’t work to be a part of such great wards. (I say wards because they would have around 90 % turn around each year as the youth would move to other apartments to meet more people and find their eternal partner.)

We had some great socials. Since Bishop lived in a neighborhood with a pool we held most of the opening socials there. Towards the end we were getting a little shy of doing it there because it seemed as though toward the end of each one someone would crack their head on the bottom of the pool getting large cuts from the impact. It was almost a guessing game as to whom it would happen to the next time we planned a social at the pool. We only had four there but that was enough. I believe that we actually did have an accident free event the last time. We also had two socials at a church owned home in left fork of Hobble Creek canyon. Both times they were fun nights filled with games and socializing. I even cooked 8 Dutch Oven cobblers for the first one. (Then learned my lesson.) We had one for Halloween in Payson at a barn and one at Shepherd’s home in Mapleton for an opening social to a summer semester. We held two at the white church in Mapleton, one at a park near BYU in Provo (on my birthday where they brought an ice cream cake for me) and one up Provo canyon where the youth floated the Provo River on tubes. We held several with other wards of which one was a large dance in the Liberty Square clubhouse for Halloween and two were held at a sledding hill in Midway. Again one of them was also held at the pool in Mapleton since both Bishops lived there and the two wards combined memberships were fairly low in number and we had one other social at the pool in Liberty Square. (It was around late summer and a couple of the men wanted to throw me in but luckily for me my camera around my neck prevented the mischief from happening.) Some of the socials were held at the clubhouse on Fast Day where we had meals to break the fast. We also held two or three of them in the Wilkinson Center for Fall semester closing social’s just prior to the break when they would go home for Christmas. We held one at the Mapleton City Park near the white church. The two best though were when we rented a bus and took groups to the Manti Temple for baptisms and endowments in the Manti Temple.

In my collection of images you can find pictures from all of the events and one member commented once to me that they really appreciated my taking the pictures for them. Marie and I had to miss one that was a talent show held in a building at BYU since we were photographing a wedding that night. Other than that one I think we were able to attend every single event that they planned during those three years. I even learned about Facebook and began posting the pictures from each event there after they had occurred so the youth could see the image so that I had taken. Before that they had to wait for a closing social to see a slide show of the images from that semester.