New Church callings

As I approach age 75, I now have two Aaronic Priesthood-Scouting callings, 11 year old Scout leader in the ward, and First Counselor in the Stake Young Mens Presidency. Is this extraordinary, or what?

The latter seems to be coming with a directive to lead out in strengthening Venturing in our stake.

The whole process of these calls has taken 2 ½ months and I don’t fully understand the goings on behind the scenes that finally resulted in extending both of these callings. It started with my being asked to lead the 11 year old scouts in our ward in late January. I was sustained in Sacrament Meeting and set apart. That evening, Wendy and I attended a rehearsal for a stake choir that was going to sing in Stake Conference the next week. Sitting in the choir seats, the row behind where I was sitting was empty and at the last minute President Blair, the youth counselor in the Stake Presidency, and his wife, came in to sing and took seats immediate behind me. When the practice ended, I turned to say “Hello” and he said something like, “I feel impressed that I need to talk something over with you.” We found an empty classroom, and he revealed that the Stake Young Mens presidency needed to change its counselors and that its President had requested that I serve in one of these positions. The motivation behind the request was that I could be give leadership to help our stake improve its ward Venturing programs. However, our ward Bishop had refused to let me go because they had just installed me in the 11 year old scout leader position. He asked me if I thought I could do both, to talk it over with Wendy, and get back to him.

So we talked and my sense of wanting to work with Venturing in this capacity was very strong, so I concluded that if working with both programs was necessary to be able to receive the Stake calling, I would try to do both. I felt like this proposal would go noplace without some softening of the position on the part of our bishopric, so I talked the whole matter over with my good friend Lynn Hunter, the youth counselor in our Bishopric, and then the two of us talked with Bishop West. In those discussions I emphasized my strong desire to be able to utilize my long Venturing experience in this way and my willingness to try to do both callings. I took over two months for it all to get sorted out, but Tuesday evening President Blair extended to me the YM Counselor call (with no release as 11 year old leader). He apologized for how long this took to work through, and told me that he had gotten in some trouble over what he did in January in informing me about the “turned down” call and that the Stake President had had him apologize to Bishop West for the irregularities. He didn’t seem too remorseful about his actions, however, and I am taking this whole business as indicating that the Hand of the Lord was involved in the process, and looking forward to making a difference in the training and preparation of the young men of our stake.