The Activity Formerly Known as Enrichment

I totally get the whole idea behind renaming Enrichment.  Calling it a Relief Society Meeting frees me from feeling like I have to plan a whole production where everyone will be edified and leave with lots of handouts and crafts.  The only problem with the name is that it sometimes gets confused with the Sunday RS meeting, or worse people think it will be a really boring activity because it's called a "meeting."  I've started referring to it as "The Activity Formerly Known as Enrichment."

Anyway, I've been in charge of  three of these meetings/activities so far and each of them has been amazing.  How amazing?  Well at each of them I was so involved in having fun that I either forgot to bring my camera or forgot to take pictures with it.  Next month I'm going to delegate the picture taking responsibility to someone.

I still want to record what I did for each of these activities even though I don't have pictures.  Hopefully I can depict everything vividly enough.

First off you have to understand, I live in a branch.  We have members that live in the branch and then we have senior members that live in the stake who are called to serve as missionaries in the branch.  Sacrament Meeting attendance is usually about 50 to 60 people.  Relief Society usually has about 10 to 15 women attending on a good Sunday.  Charlotte and Lydia and another baby are the only children under the age of one that regularly attend church (So everyone knows whose kids are being noisy- mine)  Despite the small size, or maybe because of it I love the branch and honestly never want to leave.  Everyone is really accepting of everyone else.  We've had women come to church in pants before and no one bats an eye.  I could go on and on and tell you lots of amazing stories, but I'll save that for another day.  Today we are talking about Enrichment, I mean Additional RS Meetings.  

August Activity

The first activity I was in charge of was the August Activity.  I had no idea what to do so I sent around a little survey that listed some possible activity ideas.  From the three surveys I got back I determined the sisters wanted to do something involving food.  In a Presidency Meeting (the branch is so small that I don't have a committee) we decided to do a summer cooking night and make food that didn't require actual cooking.  We decided this for two reasons.  1. It was hot, and 2. you can't actually cook food in a church kitchen.  You can only heat up and prepare food.

I picked out three recipes that looked good. One was a chicken salad recipe that we put into pitas. The second was an amazing salad. And the third was a combination of two frozen ice cream dessert recipes (I couldn't decide which was better so I combined them)  The night of the activity we had an unprecedented attendance of 16 people.  And the majority of them were branch members.  We only had 2 Sr missionaries show up.  Everyone worked together to prepare the food and then we all ate while our RS President talked for about 15 minutes about menu planning.

The activity was a success.  Everyone got to know each other better as they chopped vegetables.  Lots of times I heard people say, "here let me show you how to chop that even better."  And the food turned out wonderful.  Plus the recipes were easy enough they could be recreated.  I posted them on our facebook group (which has been great for advertising the events) and several people have told me they've made them.

September Activity

For September the RS Presidency decided to do a Family Home Evening activity. We originally decided to do this because we had some little mason jars in the RS closet and we thought it would be fun to make family home evening idea jars. (We never did make the jars though)  Also having regular Family Home Evenings is one of the things that our Branch President asks of people who get assistance from the church.  Since many people in the branch are just returning to activity we thought it would be a good idea to go over what family home evening is.

College seriously damaged my attention span and so I hate sitting and listening to one person talk.  I feel we get enough of that on Sunday so I always want our additional meetings to be full of things we can do.  I wanted this activity to feel like a hands on Family Home Evening.  At first I though we could all make family home evening charts.  But the test one I made took me 4 hours and Brandon had to help me draw it.  So instead the craft changed to making little fridge magnets.

Of course we did need a little bit of instruction so as a presidency we decided  to have three women share what they do for home evening.  We wanted a single sister, a married sister without children, and a sister with children to share what they did.   The married sister without children was easy to find.  The other two proved difficult.  My first choice for a single sister couldn't come.  My second choice didn't answer the phone.  Finally on a whim I called up a lady who reluctantly said yes.  I told her she could sit while she talked and that she only needed to talk for a minute if that is what she felt comfortable doing.   I never could find a sister with children who was willing to talk about what they did for home evening.

The night of the activity I set up the RS room like a living room. I put chairs into groups of 4 so they were like couches.  I had a CD playing hymns in the back ground.  I brought my test family home evening chart and had everyone's name who was participating listed on it.  We had twelve people show up, but of those twelve only one was a Sr missionary.

The people speaking each did a great job.  The single sister who had been reluctant to talk talked for about 10 minutes.  She later told me that she told the Branch President she didn't want to do any speaking or praying in church, and then I called her and she said yes.  A few weeks ago she also spoke in Sacrament Meeting and gave a great talk - there wasn't a dry eye in the congregation.  The other sister did a good job too.  After they were done speaking everyone - without prompting - started sharing what they do/have done for home evening.  It was great.

The craft and treats went well too.  I had planned to play games, but everyone just enjoyed talking so we didn't bother with those.  It was another success.

October Activity


I actually had this idea years ago in my married student ward, but geographically it wouldn't have worked there.  Since everyone in my branch lives in the same apartment complex and the street next to it I figured this would work out great.  My idea was to do a Parade of Apartment Homes and go from home to home to get decorating ideas and learn more about each other.  When I presented the idea to the rest of the presidency they thought we should also do a progressive dinner as we went from house to house.  I wasn't too excited about coordinating food as well as homes, but I figured I'd do it any way.

As the activity got closer we decided to nix the progressive dinner in favor of a dinner at the end.  We thought about having the dinner out on the grounds of our apartment complex.  Then I realized we were planning an activity for OCTOBER.  And the weather was probably going to get cold.  I asked our leasing office if we could reserve the clubhouse and they said yes.  All I had to do was write a check for a cleaning deposit.  If we left the clubhouse clean then the property manager would just shred the check.

I'm glad we had the sense to get rid of the progressive part of the dinner.  I was having a hard time finding people who were willing to show off their apartments.  Some were busy, some didn't think their apartments were good enough, and some I just couldn't get a hold of.  I decided that my apartment would be the one that we would start off at, because I knew that I wouldn't cancel.

As of Monday night I had five apartments on the list.  As of Tuesday night I had three. I was bummed about the two last minute cancellations, and I started to worry the activity would be a flop.  I didn't need to worry. The activity ended up with record attendance.  We had 20 people total show up.  (Four of them were guys but they helped set up the clubhouse and carry the food over so I figure they count.  Plus they were able to socialize and get to know each other better.)

The three apartments were really fun to visit. I had fun showing off my apt (By the way I love visitors - come visit me)  The second house was all decked out for Halloween and was really cool.  I never would have guessed that sister was so into Halloween.  She's in the Primary Presidency so many of the RS sisters didn't even know who she was. The third sister has a husband who is really into wood work.  She showed a lot of the cool furniture that he's made.  She's new in the branch so this was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know her.  I wish the other two people had been able to show their homes. I was especially looking forward to everyone meeting an inactive sister who moved in about two months ago, and who has done the cutest job painting her apartment.  However, I was glad that we were able to get to know the two sisters who did show off their homes.

We stayed at each apartment about 15 minutes and then we went to the clubhouse.  Where we had tables and chairs and food set up. Each of the presidency spouses had made a lasagna.  I'd made a salad and bought rolls.  I'd delegated dessert.  (Next time I'll delegate all the food)  Dinner was delicious and every one enjoyed talking.  The clubhouse had really comfortable couches so people sat around after they ate and just kept talking and talking and talking.  Six Sr missionaries came (I'd gone to one of their meetings and let them know that just because we were focusing on Branch members didn't mean we didn't love them) and they were so fun to socialize with.  The Sr Missionaries are such a blessing to have in the branch.  I consider many of them to be my good friends.

After the activity I sat down and did my traditional assessment.  I listed all the good things and all the bad things and things we could do better.  I only had three things that I considered bad (cancellations and some other stuff)  This was the best activity so far.  I can't wait for next month.