My family gave me grief when I moved home and decided I wanted a break from singles' ward. To be honest, it wasn't so much that I don't like singles' wards as it was that I really wanted to have some fun in a family ward. I like my family's ward, especially in more recent years. Besides the adults that I've grown to love on short trips home, there are opportunities that you don't get in a singles' ward. Like callings in primary. Yup, they called me to watch a group of ankle-biters ages four going on five. There were ten of them on a full day. They figured they needed two of us for purposes of wrestling them into reverence, so I had a team teacher.
In case you were wondering, the best kind of gossip comes from primary. Whether it's finding out that there is shoe-throwing going on in the house, or the kind of language older siblings are using when a sunbeam cries out "I'm tired of this crap!" right in the middle of share-time, there is always a story.
There were a wide range of kids in our class. One that asked straight off whether or not I'd remembered snack, a drama queen who cried when leaving her mom, the sweet little ones who were content to sit next to you and lean their head against your shoulder, and the spit fire who-- ever obstinant-- would smack her gum loudly to get your attention.
A couple weeks ago, the aforementioned spit fire was sitting on my lap after showing how reverent she could be. Turning around to look at me, and serious as the child ever was, she told me "I trust you." She turned back around to sing loudly with the music director while that sunk in. Throughout my experience first babysitting, then in daycare work and also in nannying I've found that the heaviest responsibility a person can shoulder is to hold the trust of a child. To have such an innocent person tell you they trust you is a great responsibility.
I realized while I thought about what this primary child had just told me that someone else trusted me too. My Heavenly Father. I'm grateful I had the chance to teach primary. Children have a way of keeping things in perspective that seems to get lost amid the social life of a singles' ward.
