“And ye visited me”

[image error]

Most women in the church have participated in the visiting teaching program. As a teacher or as a teachee, most of us have had some experiences with it. I have had seasons when i was a good visiting teacher, a bad visiting teacher, and plenty of months when i was a “deliver a treat on the last day of the month” visiting teacher. I have made some amazing friends through the program. It encourages individual service and relationships, which can be a great blessing for us and our sisters.

I think visiting teaching offers us opportunities for Christlike growth by giving us a duty towards people not of our own choosing. Fulfilling that duty moves the stranger, the other, into a fellow striving saint, and possibly into a friend or even a sister. It also serves a very practical purpose to help the relief society president and the ward council better know how to meet the needs of members of the ward.

Visiting teacher is a role that all adult women have an opportunity to accept. We don’t prepare our young women for that potentially transformative experience.

As we increasingly witness the exodus of young members from the church, we must try to prepare our youth for meaningful participation in the gospel. Young men home teach as junior companions, learning to make appointments, deliver a message, and hopefully, to serve and love people outside their families. This can be seen as training them to become missionaries. When young women transition to singles wards they are thrust into visiting teaching callings that they may well have no experience with. Young women may have heard their mothers speak about visiting teaching, but they likely have never observed a visit. YSA wards can be a church environment where many young people feel both superfluous (so much turnover, so few callings available) and isolated. Visiting teaching could provide opportunities to both serve and be served, leading to better relationships with both fellow ward members and the gospel.

While we are on the subject, I wonder why VT only visit women, instead of families.

Do you think junior visiting teachers would work? Is there another way to nurture our younger sisters in the gospel? Do we invest in developing our younger sisters at all, either as future missionaries or as future leaders?