Gospel Love, Shirley

Several years ago my family received a letter from an older lady in our ward which she signed, Gospel Love, Shirley. We have since joked about this and we've never been quite sure what she meant by "gospel love". I have, however, witnessed a few things in church that may fall under this category of love.

For example, Cole love's his primary teacher, Sis. Pew. Every week he sits next to her and lays his head on her lap. She is very sweet to him. The last two weeks have been hard for him because she has been out of town. In fact, on Sunday when Sis. Stebbing was doing an amazing job with a sharing time about temples, she asked the group a question and when she called on Cole (he had been raising his hand nearly the entire time) he responded, "Where is Sister Pew?" (Cole love's making comments in primary and we have had to institute a rule that he can only raise his hand three times during sharing and singing time.)

There is a lot of love in Cole's entire Sunbeam class. There are twin boys in his class who are sure to hug Cole before they leave and last week they all took turns kissing each other on the lips! Something that was so fun for me to watch was when Cole was sitting next to a little girl in his class, Jayne, and he looked over at her and made kind of an inquisitive look at her braid and then started playing with it. She just kept looking forward at the teacher and didn't seem to mind.

Maybe the most accurate example of "Gospel Love" happened this last Sunday when I was released as primary pianist. The primary chorister, Sis. Stebbing, said at the end of singing time that she had a special song for the kids to sing. She explained to the kids that it was my last Sunday in primary and that Cole and I would be moving in a couple weeks. She began to cry and I only mention this because of how much her crying meant to me. She is a lady I have admired for a long, long time and I was completely, I guess...shocked that she cared about me like that. The song she had the kids sing was "I Love to See the Temple" only the words were changed to "We love you Sister Larson, we love to hear you play..." etc. I felt so honored that she took time to do that for me. I really gospel love her!