When you think of Relief Society and callings you may jump quickly to thinking of serving in the Relief Society presidency, but you would be missing several important callings. These callings may seem small on the surface, but actually do play an important role in helping the Relief Society presidency to complete their tasks. Two of these callings are visiting teaching coordinator and visiting teaching supervisor.
The visiting teaching coordinator is responsible for overseeing the supervisor. She usually sits down with the Relief Society to assign routes. This can be tricky when you think of matching people who want a day route together, and the evening routes. Some sisters can visit teach in the evening, but want to be visited in the day. There are sisters who request not to be visited by other sisters, and it is important to make sure a companionship can work together. She usually will hand out the routes to the sisters as well.
The visiting teaching coordinator is also responsible for reporting the numbers of those taught to the Relief Society President. The visiting teaching supervisors help the coordinator by contacting each companionship and collecting the numbers of who was visited. They will then turn this information into the coordinator who compiles the report. The emphasis on numbers may seem to detract from the spirit of visiting teaching, but in reality if the percentage is below 100 percent, then some sisters were not visited, and so did not receive the blessings associated with visiting teaching.
This may seem like a simple calling, but there is a lot you can do to help encourage the sisters you supervise to complete their visiting teaching. You can email them mid-month to encourage them to set their appointments. I have had people drop off reminder cards or mail them as well. This may help busy sisters remember to schedule their appointments. I had one visiting teaching supervisor who would call me every month, and the months that I had not gone, she would encourage me to do better. She did not make me feel guilty, but rather lifted me up. This helped me to schedule my appointments earlier the next month.
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