Home Teaching

There is a stray cat that frequents our cul-de-sac. The cat is around so much that my five-year-old grandson, Eli, has become attached to the cat and named it Meow-Meow. The other day Eli was asking his mother where Meow-Meow goes at night and who feeds him and what does he do as he roams from house to house. Mariah kept answering that she didn’t know and finally Eli looked at her and said, “I know, Mom! Meow-Meow is a home teaching cat.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the Mormon culture, the men in each Mormon congregation are assigned to be “Home Teachers” to a few of the families in the congregation. Thus my husband goes with another man to visit two families and two men from the congregation visit us monthly to give us a spiritual message of faith and encouragement and to see if there is anything we need or if they can serve us in any way. In time of need, such as last year when I underwent surgery, our Home Teachers checked on me regularly, prayed for me, and brought treats and messages of love and concern during the entire ordeal not just once each month. In short, home teaching is a marvelous out-pouring of love and a way to serve and care for one another.

To Eli, Meow-Meow was a cat who went from home to home giving love and delight to those he encountered. It was very interesting to me that at his young age, Eli had realized that home teachers do the same thing.