Serving imperfectly

In general, the second counselor in the Relief Society presidency is over the activities during the week, with the first counselor focusing on the Sunday meetings. You have other people you work with, like teachers and music people for Sundays, and the Relief Society activities committee activities during the week.

(I hope all of this lore is interesting, as well as making some of these stories make more sense.)

I mention that because the head of the activities committee moved shortly before an upcoming activity (and shortly before I spoke). The new committee leader had not been called yet.

For that interim, I was in charge. There wasn't too much planning to do, but it felt very important to me to work on inviting more people. We don't get a lot of people at the activities. The ones who come seem to enjoy them, and that's the most important thing, but are there people who would benefit from coming that aren't there?

Anyway, inviting people seemed important. 

Normally my pattern is that there will be announcements and flyers on Sunday, an e-mail announcement two weeks before, a post in the Facebook group one week before, and then one last e-mail the day before. Is that the best way of doing it? I don't know, but it seems like a good amount of reminding without being too much.

This time I also sent cards to some people with flyers in them, and I talked to people and gave them flyers, and I think there was at least one text and one Facebook message to individuals too. What I know for sure is that of those extra steps, three people whom I personally handed flyers to came. Of those three, two of them are always there anyway. Did I sway one person? Probably not.

I mentioned this part in the talk, because if my purpose was to get more people to come to that activity, I failed.

However, if my purpose was to reach out to people to let them know I was thinking of them, or to remind them that these activities exist and attending is an option, or even for me that, "Hey, sometimes you're a little socially awkward and you could use the practice," then maybe I was successful.

It could be all of those.

Like I said, I will want to write more about ministering, but I was talking with one person who ministers to someone who was going through a bout of depression, which has been a recurring problem for her. No matter what she does, the person she is ministering to will still have depression. They can still have depression and know that you thought about them.

We have imperfect means and imperfect knowledge, so our attempts are most likely also going to be imperfect. 

They can still be helpful and beautiful.

Sometimes they can even be exactly right for the need at that time.