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Question:

I would like some ideas of how you conduct your RS presidency meetings.  Do you hold them each week? How do you stay on track so the meetings don't drag on for longer than necessary? Does your president have an agenda? Do you have reports from your counselors or is it more of an information session where the president is just giving calendaring information? Do you have a list of goals that you try to achieve?  Also, our stake president has suggested that our ward RS presidencies meet with each ward sister in her home at least once during the year.  How do you accomplish this if you have more than 100 sisters in your ward? Any suggestions to these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Bev Forsling

Contributor: Elda
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I believe you should hold a presidency meeting as often as you feel you need it and that will vary. When we were a new presidency and had lots of positions to fill and lots of decisions to make we held meeting every week and sometimes that didn't seem often enough. Now we hold meeting every two or three weeks depending on what we feel we need.  Our bishop and stake president have asked us that whenever we have a meeting, no matter what it is, to discuss and teach the gospel. We start out with a scripture and a spiritual thought of some kind which we discuss and then we have a prayer. The stake president asked us to kneel as we have our prayers, so we do this and it really does help to invite the spirit. The spiritual thought (discuss would really be a better word than thought) usually consists of  a gospel principle in an Ensign article or some other spiritual article that we have been reading. We take turns giving the thought/scripture,  and saying the prayers. I, the president, have an agenda which we pretty well stick to. We try to keep the meeting to the issues and not get side tracked with things that don't pertain to the meeting.  If one of us gets side tracked a bit the others direct us back on track and it works out fine.  Our agenda goes something as follows:  I have this printed up and have a copy for each one.

A.     Scripture/Thought : Name
        Next Mtg.:  Name here (This is so we will know who will do this the next time.)
B.     Opening Prayer:  Name
         Next Mtg.: Name
C.     Minutes from last meeting (At this time we discuss what we had decided at the last meeting and if we met those goals,
         completed our assignments etc.  )
D.     Dates to Remember:  (Then the dates are listed.)
E.     Other Business  (This is when we discuss anything regarding the sisters, problems of any kind other than homemaking or
         lesson, that is discussed later.)
F.      The time is turned over to the first counselor. She discusses any business or concerns that she may have. We listen and
         give our imput.
G.     The time is turned over to the second counselor. She discusses homemaking etc.  just any business and concerns she
         has.  We again listen and give our imput.
H.     The time is then turned over to the secretary for discussion of her business and concerns.
I.      We have a report of the visits we were assigned at the last meeting and make new assignments.

        WE TRY TO MAKE A PERSONAL VISIT TO EACH SISTER IN THE WARD DURING THE YEAR.

We have about 140 sisters in our ward. We don't make our visits as the whole presidency because we feel it is too overwhelming to the sisters to have all four of us come at once. Two of us go together. We devide up how many sisters there are and how many visits we will have to make each week and that is what we do. It just seems to work the best for us to do it that way.

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions e-mail me and I will try to help you.

Hugs,

Elda

We meet each week, with rare exceptions. I feel as a president, that I need it, even just to share what has happened during the week with the rest of the presidency...  it is a shared responsibility and allows a maintenance and a rhythm that keeps things on an even keel.

We meet at 7:00 as partners (two by two), and go do our visits with sisters: new sisters who have just moved in or less-actives get the first priority, then sisters in other organizations, and then the general population of RS sisters. It is effective, and with 160 women in our ward, it is the only way to get around to seeing them all in their homes. We meet back at the church for our meeting from 8:30 - 10:00. We have an agenda, with limited time spent on the calendar and other "logistics". We try to focus more on the people, and how to meet the needs of the sisters through Sunday lessons, homemaking and mid-week activities.

When we had a recent ward boundary change, we conducted "Getting Acquainted Interviews", similar to how we do VT interviews. It was effective in a broad- sweeping way of getting acquainted...  now we are working on the "fine tuning" by seeing them in their homes.

Our RS Pres is really great about our meetings. We have them every first and third Tuesday night. The second Tues is Homemaking and the fourth we reserve for visiting sisters. We divide into twos and try to visit as many as possible during the year- it's hard since at last count we have 197 sisters on our roll, many of whom are inactive. The president has a set agenda. We quickly discuss the upcoming lessons and homemaking plans, as well as any other calendar info, then move on to discussing individual sisters and their needs - usually from what we've found out while visiting. She has been known to set a timer at the meeting to make sure we're not there all night, but it's often ignored. We don't always stick to these guidelines, but we try.

Good luck!

Vickie