Why a blog?

Welcome, primary music leaders of the Iowa City Stake!  I hope all of you are enjoying your calling–the best job in the church!  I’m Marilyn Olson, currently the stake primary music leader for our stake.

As a ward primary music leader for many years in several wards around the country, I experienced a variety of help from my stake music leaders.  Sometimes the ideas and suggestions they sent my way dramatically uplifted and inspired me, and sometimes their instructions were so incompatible with me that they seemed burdensome, tedious, and unusable.  Since I’m now on the stake leader end, I’m eager to be a help rather than a bother.

As I’ve journeyed around the stake the last couple of years for unit conferences and yearly primary sacrament meeting presentations, I’ve seen many of you in action, and admired your work and expertise! Many of you have backgrounds as trained educators and musicians, and a lot of primary experience. Some of you are new to the calling, and perhaps are feeling a trifle overwhelmed. My role as a stake leader is simply to support and encourage you, and provide training for whoever desires it. I don't want to "meddle" with the great things you're already doing.

The once-monthly stake primary music training meetings have been reduced to a few minutes in one yearly auxiliary meeting.  Considering how far-flung our stake is, and the busy lives you all lead, we all agree that having fewer meetings is a great idea.  So how can I help?  The obvious way for me to be useful is to be in contact with each of you from time to time to see if you have needs or questions.  But sadly, the single most horrifying object in my house is my telephone!  So what’s a phone-phobic stake leader to do?  Recently while pondering my useless and ineffective state :)  I was struck with an idea–what about a blog?  A blog! What a great way for primary music leaders in our stake to share ideas and get help!  So let’s try it out, okay?

I intend to post, at least weekly, random teaching ideas that have worked really well for me, and I invite you to join me.  Please comment and share your thoughts, or ask questions.  I encourage you to write up a blog post yourself, and send it to me, with photos or whatever you want.  I’ll post it for you, and we’ll all rejoice.  Let’s help each other out.