Refrigerator art

I've had nearly five years post-college to experience why family wards rule and singles wards drool.

Just a few examples:

- The callings. Goodbye hymn book organizer, hello Boy Scouts. More work? uh, yeah. More rewarding? uh, yeah.

- The lessons. It's so great when you can use the end of class to tie everything back to the Atonement rather than how to find your eternal companion.

- The social scene. Nothing wrong with a little catching up with friends between classes, talking about "the big game," etc., etc. But when catching up shifts to flirting, set-ups and DTRs (and you have no skillz with the lady folk), it's much harder to get you worship on.

- The noise. Most people think they'd really like complete and total silence during sacrament meeting. It's nice for a week or two, but then it gets weird. Church was meant for 16-year-olds to fumble their way through the sacrament prayers, babies to scream a little, kids to whisper a little too loud and primary music from the other ward to fill the air.

Speaking of primary and kids ...

One of my home teachers has an adorable little girl. Last week the Young Men and Young Women took over sharing time in primary, and this angel (who's never met me) points me out and says "You're my daddy's friend." So cute.

Yesterday after sacrament meeting, she comes over and hands me a piece of paper with a drawing on it. I take a quick look, tell her its beautiful and try and hand it back to her. She keeps her hands at her side, smiles, sways back and forth for a second and walks away without taking the picture. I take a closer look at the writing in yellow crayon to discover "Brother Rob Wiler" on top, realize this picture is for me, and get lost in awe.

Never before has being a complete and total sap felt so right.

I'm pretty sure this is a picture of me (in red) sharing my testimony at the pulpit (green) during sacrament meeting yesterday (which, BTW, I started with possibly one of the best opening-line, quick-wit jokes in fast and testimony meeting history that didn't interrupt the Spirit one iota). The faces and names at the bottom are her family, who typically sit in the front row.

For those of you who get 1,000 of these a day from your little ones and start to get a little tired of it, tell your kids to make them for the single losers in your ward. Trust me, they'll volunteer to babysit for free any night you need 'em.