Feeling Defeated

There is an interesting series of events happening in my neck of the woods that has me feeling a bit defeated. This time, however, it is not the school board (they are already so disappointing that they can't make me feel any worse than they already have). This time, it involves church.

Before I start on my rant, please understand that I have a very strong testimony. I believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. I believe the Book of Mormon and the Bible to be the word of God. I believe in modern-day prophets and apostles. I firmly believe in eternal families- and the love of that thought alone is cause enough to never leave the Mormon faith.

But that doesn't mean I can't get annoyed at certain things sometimes.

Here's the brief low-down: I have been serving on the Public Affairs committee of our church. Basically, our job is to break down barriers and build relationships with political leaders, other churches, and the community. It's a perfect calling for me right now as I enjoy all of those things. It also allows me to be in charge of our stake blog, which has been a lot of fun because I get to see all the good that is happening in our stake.

We also try to help a new church initiative called Just Serve. This program links members of our faith as well as those outside of our faith with community service opportunities- something I am very passionate about.

Community service has been, in my very strong opinion, a major concern in our area. Pretty much all of the service projects we do- including roughly 95% of Eagle Scout projects- are donating items. We collect socks, toothpaste, eye glasses, and anything else that is very easy to collect without having to do any actual work or actual service. This has been the case ever since we moved here 6 years ago.

In my ward (congregation) I have been able to convince the ward to go to a food bank and volunteer our time.

I have spent hours upon hours researching various projects.

Recently I came up with two ideas:

1) Organizing our teenagers to do various service projects in the area. There are 10 wards in our stake (geographic region). Each ward could be assigned a month to do one service project- so one service project a year. We would then invite the youth from other churches to join us- thus building relationships with other churches. NOT to proselyte, just to serve.

This idea stems from one of our apostles, Elder Holland, visiting the pastor of one of the major churches in the area. In this meeting, he apparently said to the pastor, "We are very worried about the youth of today- not just in our church, but in the world. I believe service will help them."

It fits with Public Affairs because it would build relationships with the other churches in our area- as well as, of course, providing needed service to our community.

2) Our ward wants to have an on-going service project that we can do on a monthly or on a bi-monthly basis. This is for Just Serve. There are rather specific criteria for this project, and it is very hard to find something that fits. The other night I remembered that there is a women's shelter in the area. We have done service for them in the past. The location of the shelter is secret, but we can make dinners or cookies or scarves for them and donate them through their main office.

I thought- why not serve them? It fits all the criteria. We can divide the different groups (Relief Society, Laurels, Mia Maids, Beehives, Cub Scouts, Activity Day Girls, etc) and they can make dinner or something for them for an activity once a year. With all the different groups, we could provide them dinner about every other month.

Please note: The  only other idea for service that has been brought up is doing yard work for our rich neighbors to make sure they meet HOA standards and that our property values stay high. Not exactly useful service.

Or, of course, there is always buying socks to donate.

Every meeting I attend-without fail- I am the only person with service ideas. I'm not joking. When I first mentioned a ward activity at the food bank (this was about 4 years ago), several people said they didn't want to do it- too far, too cold, not quite right. We agreed that everybody would research project ideas and we could decide at the next meeting what we would do. Not one person came up with any other idea, so by default the food bank won.

Tonight I went to a meeting. Both of my ideas were squashed.

Why? Because a service project once a year for the youth takes too much away from our families, and the missionaries can't go to the women's shelter so it doesn't quite fit into the teeny, tiny box that the leaders of our local church have set up for service guidelines.

I'm so frustrated! I have spent hours upon hours trying to find meaningful service opportunities, but it seems the people here don't want to ever do anything meaningful. They just want to spend a little money and forget about it. They don't want to actually serve people.

I have had a teenager trying to get his Eagle Scout tell me that he just wanted "the easiest project he could find." I once had the young men's president ask me for service ideas because they wanted to do a service project in three days. I spent an hour writing down dozens of different projects and the contact information of those in charge. What did they do? Bought pizza and watched a movie.

There are serious problems and great opportunities that we could do- things like decorating cookies with children at a local homeless shelter, sorting food at food banks, painting over graffiti in downtown Denver, or dozens of other things. We could really get out in the community to help others.

But, no. Instead, we come up with every excuse known to man to come up with ways NOT to serve.

The leader of Public Affairs said at our meeting tonight, "We need to not worry so much about administering, but instead on ministering."

Um....HELLO! That is exactly what happens every time we turn down a service idea for silly reasons like the missionaries not being able to attend.

Perhaps you think I am over reacting, and maybe I am. But I have been fighting this battle for six years, and it's really frustrating to have all of your ideas turned down again and again and again.

If I get asked to donate toothpaste ONE. MORE. TIME. I might spontaneously combust with anger. I so hate where we live sometimes (most of the time).

I'm truly ready to throw in the towel.