We had the most wonderful Visiting Teaching Conference last year. It was called “It’s A Jungle Out There.”
To prepare the sisters for the event and to catch their attention, we had a big poster with a big cartoon Toucan we named “Tookie,” and every Sunday we put up a different message without letting them know that the event was the Visiting Teacher Conference, like: It’s Jungle out there and never stops raining. Please bring your umbrella. We always included the date. We prepared everything with the Tookie cartoon as a theme, we had magnets to give out to the sisters which read “Don’t Forget Visiting Teaching.”
We decorated the Relief Society Room with big banana trees and other rain forest plants, origami monkeys and lions, a big Tookie on the door, and leaves hanging from the ceiling. We had jungle sounds in the background. We made safari hats for the sisters decorated with the Tookie. We had only tropical foods for the dinner, drinks with straws with little monkeys and as a center piece, an origami lagoon with hippos and other animals.
We also prepared a booklet with Visiting Teaching guidelines and ideas. We had a musical number with the Music of the song New York, New York, but with real funny Visiting Teacher lyrics and had some sisters which we called the “Junglettes” singing and dancing the song like the famous Rockettes dancers of the Radio City Music Hall.
We spoke on the following topics.
About the little miracles that happen when you do your Visiting Teacher. For that the 1st counselor used the music from “The Prince of Egypt” called “Miracles.” Then we had a sister speak on “How to Be of Service to our Sisters,” and the second counselor on “How to Be an Effective Visiting Teacher” and the President (me) on the theme of the conference “It’s Jungle Out There.” I talked on how the indigenous peoples in the South American jungles always do all their work, hunting and fishing in groups and explained the sisters that they did that because there are too many dangers in the Jungle and they have to stick together to help each other, for protection and safety. The same way with us sisters we have to stick together to help and protect each other.
With each talk, we gave away something to remind the sisters about it. We also have a very talented sister that wrote a poem for the Visiting Teachers which we made as book marker. We had a final quick workshop on things you can do to take your sisters, and they took their little craft with them to give away.
The conference was such a success that even sisters from other wards wanted to know what we did. We had such a strong spirit and the attendance was about 85% of our Visiting Teachers. We are already planning for our next one which will be during the spring time.
Carmen Lopez
Posted by John in Visiting Teaching, VT-Leader Resources
