Lifelong learning

August 5, 2009
Buried somewhere in the magazine basket amongst the Better Home & Garden magazines, the camera's how-to-manual (which I finished reading but still don't know how to take a good picture yet), photo albums, and the TOH magazines is the Ensign. I admit, I hardly ever read the entire magazine from cover to cover, like I know I should. Heck, most of the time I don't even remember where I put it so I tend to frantically search the house 30 minutes before my visiting teaching appointments, which I don't even make...Carol does...every single month. Carol is an older lady who I affectionately referred to as the "Visiting Teaching Nazi" for a few months because she knew I struggled to do my visiting teaching every month and I'm pretty sure self-assigned herself to me to teach me how it should be done. Rain, snow, sleet, or shine Carol goes each month with or without me. I'd probably never tell her this but I'm thankful she has drug me reluctantly around the ward meeting new ladies. This month is it was my turn to give the lesson so I flipped to the V.T. message and read all the thoughts about lifelong learning - both secular and spiritual. Then I flipped to the an article about being a stay-at-home mom again. Seemed to be sending two different messages to me but then I thought about my friend Kami. I basically steal all her good ideas and really admire her. She worked with me for several years then quit to stay at home with her three boys. She is constantly learning new things, and for someone who tends to think about learning and education as only a college degree, I have been so amazed at how she continues to grow and develop. She's taken photography classes, Photoshop classes, learned how to bake bread, garden, and raise chickens. It never really dawned on me how important it is to develop talents and "mom/wifish" talents at that. Sure I want to be good at mom/wife stuff like cooking, sewing, gardening, baking, etc but I have never put as much effort into it as I have with school. I think the real reason I secretly enjoy visiting teaching is because I always get more out of the lessons than I know the sisters we visit do. I guess my last round of college was just the beginning of my education on this earth. Hopefully, though none of my future learning endeavors require a midterm!