1st Counselor/Nursery Leader

Our ward does not operate like any other ward I've been in except for the wards I served in on my mission. It's probably for that reason that Scott and I often comment to each other about how our current callings remind us of being in the mission field. In one ward on my mission, my companion and I taught the Gospel Principles class and the other sisters taught Primary because we didn't have enough people to cover those callings. Our current ward is in much better shape than that, but still pales in comparison to the wards I grew up in.

For example, when I was still in the YW presidency, we had a president, two counselors, and a secretary. It seems like most wards usually have three teachers assigned to the YWs too. That doesn't sound too bad, right? It just meant that we had to plan the Sunday lessons in addition to the Tuesday night activity. Unfortunately, the other counselor and the secretary usually came to church once a month and to mutual once every three or four months. So then it was just the Pres and me and 20-30 young women. We were doing pretty well considering, until I was released and called into the Primary presidency. That was almost two months ago and poor Hermana Mejia is still essentially doing the YW program by herself.

Now I'm a counselor in the Primary presidency, and our president has decided that she wants the presidency to also be the teachers of the primary (conveniently we only have three primary classes and the nursery). It just so happens that I was assigned to be over the nursery. So I'm now in the nursery every week except the second Sunday when I do sharing time in the Primary. I haven't particularly cared for this arrangement, mostly because I feel like I have no idea what's going on in the Primary. Last time I did sharing time, I totally messed up the schedule because I just didn't know what was supposed to happen when.

Things in the nursery have also been a little rocky at times. The current nursery leader is an older lady who seems to be a convert. I get the impression that she hasn't had much experience in the church outside of the nursery, where she has apparently been for at least the last five years. She hasn't been in the habit of teaching a lesson or doing singing time, and that is something that the President really wanted me to change. So over the last several weeks, I have been trying to acclimate our nursery kids (and the nursery leader) to class time, singing time, etc. Some of the low points of my time in nursery include the day that the nursery leader got mad at me for not besandole (greeting her with a kiss) the week before, the lesson where none of the kids stayed in their chairs or paid attention, and the singing time when the nursery leader commented about how bored the kids seemed to a parent that was in there. I had a streak of several weeks when I went home from church and cried on my bed.

Last week was my first week where I felt like things went pretty well. The Primary chorister asked me to fill in for her at the last minute, so I decided to teach my lesson and do nursery singing time in between the Primary singing times. The Primary singing times went pretty well (except I don't know the Spanish words that well yet), but nursery is where I felt really encouraged. Our lesson was on trees, plants, and flowers. I kept it short and simple, and I brought an apple to show them the seeds inside. That was a big hit! I cut it towards the end of the lesson and all the kids were still eating their apple slices by the time I was done. All four kids sitting in their chairs, munching quietly on a slice of apple - what a heavenly sight! Singing time was also our best yet. For the last few weeks I've been working on some visual aids for nursery singing time and I finally had some ready to use last Sunday. Our nursery kids don't really even talk yet, so singing is asking too much. Here are the things I used to help the kids participate in singing time:

• I made some little stars for them to hold up during "I Am Like A Star"
• I made a dad, mom, brother, and sister to hold up during "We Are A Happy Family".
• I topped some popsicle sticks with foam stars and wrote each of their names on one. They love getting to picking a name.
• I made little fishes that I taped to a blue piece of cardstock. Each fish has the name of a song we'll sing. Once a child's popsicle stick is picked, they get to come up and pick a fish off the board.
• I made a CD with just the songs that I wanted to use for nursery on it (I wrote the track number next to the song name on the back of each fish and I recently added the page number in the children's songbook because I usually need to see the words in Spanish).
• Musical instruments. Our stake gave us a set of musical instruments last week and it was a hit. Scott passed them out to the kids when we were singing "Sharing a toy is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do".
• My husband. Scott was nice enough to come help me in the nursery after he was done with his resposibilities in YM. He was a big help!

I think our little nursery kids are starting to get hang of these nursery songs, and I'm starting to get the hang of how to make them fun for them. My mom helped me realize that at that age it's not really about singing the songs as much as participating in the songs.

Easter Birthdays Come But Once A Lifetime . . .

My birthday falls on Easter this year, which has never happened before and apparently will not happen again in my lifetime. The following is a fun email my mom wrote to me about this:

I saw another article in the paper yesterday about how rare it is for Easter to fall on your birthday. This should be a very special birthday for you, undoubtedly the only time Easter will fall on your birthday in your lifetime. Note the following quote from the Deseret News:

"Sunday will mark the earliest Easter the world has experienced in 95 years, and unless human life expectancy improves immensely, nobody alive today will see another Easter this early in the year.

March 22 is the first date on which Easter can be celebrated, and March 23 is the second-earliest. The last time March 22 hosted the holiday was in 1818, according to an online calculator posted by the U.S. Naval Observatory at aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/easter.php. A chart for recent years is also at the observatory's site: aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.php.

A laborious check by the Deseret Morning News of all dates for Easter from 1800 through 2160 confirms that the next time Easter will be this early in the year is 2160.The check also turned up these Easter tidbits: The earliest it has been observed in the past 70 years was March 24, 1940, and March 26, 1989; Easter fell on March 23 in the years 1845, 1856, and 1913."

I hope you find this information scintillating and exciting, the kind you can't wait to share.

Well, mom, I did find the information scintillating and exciting, and exactly of the nature that I would enjoy sharing with others on my blog. In response to my mom's original email message, one of my brothers replied and told me I needed to update my blog. So, here you go Joey! ;) Honestly, I think Joey, Sabrina, and Scott are the only people who have ever even seen my blog, probably because it's not all that interesting to read about YW activities or VLOOKUP functions in Excel. Yawn! So, to my three fans (I know it's a stretch to call you "fans"), thank you for still looking at my blog occasionally even though it's rather dull.

As for my birthday being on Easter, I'm not really sure how Easter birthdays are best celebrated. Here are a few of my ideas:

• Instead of an Easter egg hunt, have a birthday present hunt.
• Have a bunny or egg shaped birthday cake.
• Have egg salad sandwiches for birthday dinner.
• Have Scott dress up like the Easter bunny.
• Make my nieces wear their new Easter dresses to my birthday party.
• Name my first born daughter Easter.
• Change my last name to include the word, "egg", oh wait, I've already done that.

Well, it seems like I'm well on my way to maximizing the Easter fun. If you have any other suggestions, let me know. Only four more days . . .

The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done . . . with a VLOOKUP

I'm only putting this on my blog on the off chance that somebody someday googles this topic (and not to prove that I'm exceptionally nerdy).

How to get Excel to look up information from identical tables on different tabs/worksheets
(I'm not going to explain how VLOOKUPs work, so if you've never used one this probably won't make any sense)

Just so we're on the same page, here's the basic VLOOKUP formula:
=VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,col_index_num,[range_lookup])

Here's the problem (in simplified terms):
I have ten different companies that I'll need to get information for when preparing state tax returns. I wanted a summary worksheet in Excel to automatically fill in a company's information for any particular state just by typing that information (state and company) into two cells at the top of the worksheet. It was really easy to include a cell reference in the lookup_value part of the formula. What really had me stumped was figuring out how to get the table_array portion to work the same way.

The answer is two-fold:

FIRST - In Excel, you can select a range of cells and give it a name (like “CO1”) by going to the Insert menu, Name, Define. Once the name for that range is defined, Excel will know what you're referring to when you use that name in a formula. So you could get a VLOOKUP to work just by typing in =VLOOKUP($B$2,CO1,2,FALSE) and it knows to look for whatever value is in cell B2 in the CO1 range and return the value in column 2. That's the first half of the solution.

SECOND - The second problem was that I really wanted whoever was using the summary worksheet to be able to just type in the company abbreviation and have Excel know which tab to look at in the workbook, but Excel didn’t like just having a plain old cell reference in the “Table_Array” field of the function. I scoured the Help menu and the Internet and finally found someone who recommended using the INDIRECT function in a similar situation. Here's how I was ultimately able to get it to work: =VLOOKUP($B$2,INDIRECT($B$1),2,FALSE). I still have no idea what the INDIRECT function is intended to do, but it got the formula to work the way I wanted it to and that’s all I cared about.

You should note that this worked for me because all of the tabs of company information were identical, if yours aren't identical it could cause some problems.

My Release

In a shocking turn of events, I was released from my calling in the YW yesterday and called to be the 1st counselor in the Primary Presidency. Asi es la vida (that's life). So my blog of ideas for YW activities has been cut down in the prime of life. ;)

Music Basics

Last Tuesday we had a music class for mutual because many of our young women haven't had any formal music training. I wanted to help them understand the church hymns better, so I made a copy of "Soy un hijo de Dios" (in English, "I am a child of God"). I made an accompanying worksheet by cutting out various music symbols from the song and taping them onto a separate piece of paper. I then numbered each symbol and had them look for each symbol on their copy of the song (see the link below). It was a fun activity, and it helped them actually notice what the different symbols were.

We discussed what the various symbols mean and then transitioned into some basics of directing music. I found it really helpful to first define what a measure is and point it out within the song that we were already using as an example. This helped to explain that 4/4 and 3/4 indicate how many beats are in each measure. My favorite part of this mutual was that the young women had an "ah-ha" moment at this point. They finally started to understand the purpose of conducting the music and the meaning of the patterns used to do it.

http://melissaeggertsen.googlepages.com/MusicWorksheet.pdf

NOTE: The website http://www.enchantedlearning.com/music/ is also a good place to find some basic music worksheets.

Johnny Lingo

For the first part of our activity last night, we watched Johnny Lingo. Most of our young women hadn't seen it before and that made it more interesting to watch than I expected. I enjoyed seeing their reactions to the movie. They were kind of anxious to see what was going to happen and kept asking me questions during the movie to calm their curiosity. They also got pretty upset and annoyed when everyone kept calling Mahana ugly and making fun of her.

Here are some of the topics we discussed as a group after the movie:

• Was Mahana always beautiful? What made her beautiful?
• Why did everyone think she was ugly?
• Why did Johnny Lingo pay eight cows for Mahana?
• What helped Mahana see her own worth?

There was a little speculation among the girls as to whether or not Johnny switched girls while he was on the "honeymoon" but I don't think that's a very likely scenario. ;)

I think the main message of Johnny Lingo is that what mattered most was what Mahana thought of herself. Her father treated her like dirt, so that's how she saw herself. Johnny Lingo treated her with love, and she came to see herself as someone worth loving. I thought it was a good movie to watch with the YW because it illustrates the importance of seeing your own individual worth and the impact of treating others with love and respect.

For the second part of our activity, we wrote cards to the missionaries in our ward. We used plain white paper and let the girls decorate it with stickers and pens. Nothing too fancy, but hopefully our missionaries will appreciate the gesture.

NOTE: I have to say that I've seen Johnny Lingo dozens of times and this time I was surprised at some of the story line: buying wives, selling daughters, Mahana's father threatening to come after her with a stick, etc. I probably just noticed it because I was worried the YW might take the wrong message away from it. I liked having a brief discussion together after watching it because I could make sure that they got the right message from the movie.

Service Activity with the Missionaries

Last night we had a fun activity helping the missionaries in our ward create calendars. It's a project they are going to introduce on Sunday to encourage the ward members to seek out missionary opportunities over the next three weeks. One of the sister missionaries split the youth up into companionships and gave each companionship an assignment. I liked that because a lot of our youth are fairly new to the church and their families haven't sent anyone on a mission yet, so it gave them a glimpse into one aspect of mission life.

At one point during the activity one of the young women told me that she was tired. I asked her, "Do you know what missionaries do when they feel tired?" "What?" "They keep working anyway."