Seminary in Cambridge

…Previous Church assignment: Ward Executive Secretary

With all my Church Education heritage, and after the preceding year’s sweet experience in Menlo Park, I approached another Seminary assignment with some enthusiasm.

How bad could it be? I loved Cambridge and the Cambridge Ward, and my students were to include the kids of some of my oldest friends and principal heroes: Dennis and Kurt van Uitert, sons of Bert and LuAnne, and Ken and David Packer, sons of Boyd and Donna,¹ and others.

I didn’t even mind that the CES bureaucrats didn't get around to sending me an appointment letter until nearly the end of the school year. Trust they paid me, as promised; can’t remember what we spent it on; wasn’t much of an issue.

Well, it was dreadful.

I try to blame my failure on a palpable undercurrent of dislike among the students, but they made it clear that they didn’t think much of me as a teacher. I was surely no Sam Daines. I’ve remained active in the Church for over half a century since then. I’ve held a fairly remarkable variety of responsible positions; some have even involved teaching. Nobody has seen fit to ask me to teach Seminary again. Nor, frankly, have I wished they would. Guess I needed this experience, if only to head off any future misguided ambitions in that direction.

…Next Church assignment: Full-time Missionary

¹He was New England Mission President then.

Seminary

1967-68:

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