Sunbeams!

 It has been hard for me to believe everyone who has called this place "Laradise" these last 9 months. haha...it's beautiful they said, lots of great country. Well, there is loooots of country for sure and the summer is finally starting to show it's head, but almost 10 months of cold weather...I do NOT call that paradise. 

None the less, the people here have definitely surprised me. I absolutely LOVE our Snowy Range Ward Family. Our first Sunday in this ward it felt like home, which was an enormous blessing. I am in charge of music (no surprise there) but I received a new calling not too long ago to teach the Sunbeams class, ages 3-4yrs. I was pretty nervous because our Sunbeams are notoriously rowdy, as far as I heard, and they had been through at least 3 or 4 teachers in the past 9 months or so. Past teachers = a bunch of freakin pansies! These kids are as normal as little people go. Yes, it's hard to get them to listen sometimes, and some Sunday's all you do is say a few things about animals and Jesus and call it good...glorified babysitting. :) But seriously, they are great. I have loved watching them interact with each other. They aren't afraid of cooties, or others germs for that matter, they accept all of their classmates as playmates, they aren't judgmental or gossipy, they aren't worried about if "little boy" holds "other little boys" hand, others will think they are gay or when little girl is playing with or eating her dress (I laugh every time ahha) you can see her panties. It doesn't matter to them. That's probably mostly because they are still super little and no one else would think things like that of little kids, but the pure nature of these children, albeit the tantrums can be fun, is astounding.  They are taught about judgmental things, and about cooties, and caring about what others think...the adversary seems to influence everything from the time we are super little. We some how begin to learn to look inward at ourselves to solve problems instead of looking upward towards our Heavenly Father. It's so easy to see the pure love of Christ in them. Even our rowdy ones are naturally kind and fun, even though sometimes its hard to see it over the immense tantrums.
I am overly grateful to see them every week and until now I didn't realize the kind of influence that they have had over me. Definitely for the better!