sweet release

Today I was released from a calling that took a chunk of my life for the last five years.  I spent the last week reminiscing.  This is from one of the 5 stake 11 year old campouts we hosted.  

Here is from our Stake daddy daughter dance last year.  We hosted four of those. 

Every year we host a scout leader training day with the stake young men that we call "Little Philmont".

This is one of my sweetest memories.  We felt inspired to form a stake children choir for stake conference.  The kids provided all the music for two sessions of stake conference (2 hours each).  We thought we were crazy when we first thought if it.  So did the Stake Presidency.  But you would never believe how well behaved those kids were!   They were angels and we felt like it was one of the most terrific experiences we had as a Stake Primary.  This is a copy of what was published in the friend about it.

Here is a family pic from one of the daddy daughter dances.  Brent was taking Kiki and Reagan and Jensen tagged along to help us out.

Over the five years I had 4 counselors and three secretaries.  Each of them was a joy to work with.  This is with Teri Perkes (2nd C.) - me - Christi Kovach (1st C.) - and Dianne Brown (sec).  I will always love these great ladies.

It wasn't all hard work and no play.  We had some fun along the way too.

Christi was my first counselor through the entire time and I will forever hold her close as one of the greatest friendships I have had the experience of knowing.  We have committed to go to the temple once a quarter together so we can keep in touch. That is pretty amazing considering our time together started with me praying over a list of 1200 names of women for a counselor and feeling so inspired to call her without knowing her or anything about her or having even laid eyes on her.  Heavenly Father really knows what he is doing.

All of the current presidency (sorry I don't have a pic of Shandi the current 2nd counselor, she is as cute as a button) went to the temple and lunch one last time on Friday and I gave a little memento and note to each of them to remind them of our time together and the chance we had to labor for the little children of our stake. 

 Here is to those callings that sssstttttttrrrrreeeeeettttttcccccchhhhh us.  

It's been a great ride. 

 I have learned a lot and made some terrific friends.  

Now off I go to plan our Stake Trek.....  Heaven help me.