So, you have a calling in Nursery! Is that a good thing
or a bad thing? Two hours with very young children who are still
learning to talk, walk and well other things. Sometimes you feel
like you’re stuck there all on your own, miles away from help. The
minutes drag along. You’re missing out on the learning and
fellowship in Sunday School or Relief Society. But, do you realize
how special and important a calling in Nursery is?
You are one of the first adults many of these young children learn
to trust other than their parents. You are helping them learn the
gospel and to pray. You are helping them learn to work in a group
and sit quietly for the lesson. This helps to prepare them for
Primary and elementary school. But, I think most importantly you
have an opportunity to love.
Read this August 1986 Ensign article! You can be a Sis. Franz
to the children in your nursery class!! Pray for the help and guidance you need
in your calling. Pray for each child individually and then just love
the children and love your calling.
A Call to the Nursery
It is Sunday morning, and I am taping a huge yellow sun to the
wall. It is not at all reflective of my mood. We have just moved into a new
ward, and no time has been wasted in getting new callings. I say “new,” but I
use the term loosely. The nursery is anything but new to me.
I made careful note of my years of nursery service on the
information sheet I filled out for the bishop. I also noted my abilities in
homemaking, compassionate service, teaching, welfare, sewing, cooking, home
beautification, and any other Relief Society-related task I could think of. It
didn’t work.
What am I doing here? With three preschoolers to care for every
day, the last thing I need is the responsibility for a dozen more every Sunday.
Now I look at the list of children who will soon be clamoring
into my classroom, fifteen little strangers to teach for nearly two hours.
Tired even before starting, I sit.
Except for the yellow sun and a few other pictures I’ve taped to
the walls, this nursery looks familiar. Not like the last ward’s nursery or the
one before, but one long ago. Suddenly I am there, and feelings rush back like
warm, familiar friends. And all of them revolve around Sister Frantz, a large
German woman with dark hair and smiling eyes. In my mind, she was the nursery.
I remember going to the church one Sunday night with my father.
While he went to his meeting, I ran down the dim gray hallway to visit Sister
Frantz. I was stunned to find the door hanging open and lights off. I had
thought she lived there. True, there wasn’t a bed or even an easy chair in the
room, but such logistics rarely enter into childhood reasoning. Despite my
father’s reassurance, I was worried. And it wasn’t until the following Tuesday
morning when Relief Society nursery reconvened and she was back that I found
relief.
Sister Frantz was born in East Germany. My mother later told me
of her narrow escape to America with only her daughter and a few possessions.
All I knew as a child was the tender lady who represented security in the
nursery.
I visualize her sitting roundly on a folding chair, two lucky
children perched on her ample lap while the rest of us held a finger or sleeve
or hem, all wanting to be close. With less than adequate mastery of the English
language in our two or three years, I’m not sure how we ever managed to wade
through Sister Frantz’s quick German accent. It didn’t seem to matter.
In her clear, robust voice, she sang the Primary songs,
interspersed with German and American folk tunes. I was well into my third year
of Primary before it occurred to me that “When It’s Springtime in the Rockies”
did not appear in the hymnbook. That explained the blank look I always received
when the chorister allowed me to name my favorite song.
My favorite story was also decided in Sister Frantz’s
nursery—Noah and the ark. She paired us up and marched us happily into her own
crude representation of an ark, a circle of chairs. There we sat, making our
animal chortles while the rains descended and the floods came. Perhaps that is
why for so long I pictured Noah as jolly and round-faced, always cheerful in
his adversity and, of course, German.
“Jesus loves you,” she would say. “He vill alvays vatch over
you.” And something told me that here was the voice of experience. How could
Sister Frantz be wrong about love? She was so good at it.
She sat on the floor with us and watched and cheered as we
stacked perilous towers of blocks. And when they reached their ultimate
tottering height, she designated one of us (how fortunate to be chosen!) to
knock them down.
Praying was a special privilege. It meant standing close to
Sister Frantz, her soft arm around our shoulders. Even if we vaguely knew the
gist of praying, we always asked for her help. There we stood cuddled in,
imitating her gentle words and accent, feeling the comforting warmth of prayer.
Not until today did it occur to me that Sister Frantz, steady
and solid, was missing Relief Society to be with us. She, who had missed out on
Primary and Junior Sunday School and MIA, who had missed the benefits of
fellowship for most of her life, was now stranded with fifteen children. If
anyone ever had a case for forfeiting her turn in the nursery, it was Sister
Frantz. Yet there seemed to be no place she would rather have been.
In that bleak cinderblock room, she distilled on us the joyous
gospel beginnings she hadn’t had. Though most of the stories have disappeared
from memory, her fervor remains bright and inspiring these twenty-five years
later.
The children file in now, small and timid. They look longingly
as parents disappear. Then their round, uncertain eyes turn to me. My mind is
filled with Sister Frantz. I gather the children close, and I am one of them.
“I’m so glad you’re here with me,” I say, “and I love you.” I
look at each of them, and they step closer.
“Now, who will help me?” I stand, and most of them are by my
side. “We’re going to do something wonderful today.”
Carefully, happily, we assemble a circle of chairs.
Love,
Sis Simbeck
