Substitute Teaching Has Never Been So Rewarding

Last Monday we substitute taught in Sister Broadhead's early-morning seminary class. The lesson was Doctrine and Covenants 93.

Their meeting place is a 30-minute drive from our apartment, so we were on our way by 5:15 a.m.  It was cold, dark, and the roads were 
a little slick from snowfall the night before.

Once there and set up (including shoveling the walk to the door), we put on a Bible video to invite the spirit as the students began arriving.  The feeling was

incredible - very similar to the feeling we've experienced when

arriving at the temple at 4:30 a.m.  Something very significant happens and lives are being shaped.  (The greater the sacrifice, the greater the blessings.)  What a privilege to have the opportunity to experience this for ourselves!  We always come away uplifted after visiting these classes.  

Elder Holland expressed well how we feel about 
the men and women who daily fill this assignment: 

In the spirit of that, may I take a moment to thank the growing number of you who have accepted callings to serve CES in so many ways and in so many parts of the world. . . . Perhaps none in that vast team deserve our awe and our appreciation more than early-morning seminary teachers. Dear friends, there is a throne in heaven for you! Year after year (decade after decade for some of you!) you prepare through the night, set the alarm for the morning, groan when it goes off, and then either drive somewhere in the dark or welcome into your living room a pajama-clad, uncombed, sleep-dazed cadre of students. What a holy work you do, and what a shield of faith you and your predecessors have given to now two-thirds of a century of early-morning seminary students. And never underestimate what those students are hearing and feeling, in spite of appearances. Bless you and bless them for one of the remarkable examples of devotion demonstrated in this Church—a program that unfailingly impresses leaders and parents and administrators of other faiths who know of early-morning seminary. (CES Broadcast, February 2015)