Overstepping Boundaries

**If you are not LDS, this may not make much sense to you. Sorry about that. I'm sure I'll get back to my dating life soon enough (which shouldn't make sense to anyone).

Part of the boundary split map

Yesterday was apparently a traumatic day in the lives of many northern Virginians. Namely the young (18-30), single, Mormon ones. Yesterday, the boundaries of the Colonial 1st Ward (C1) and the Colonial 2nd Ward (C2) were completely mixed up.

For those of you who may not know, LDS congregations are divided according to geography. So depending on where you live, you are assigned to a specific congregation. Occasionally, a congregation will be too large for the building they meet in and the local church leaders will split the congregation into two or more congregations, if necessary.

I've only every experienced a congregation split once in my life. I was six. And I survived. So I'm assuming this will work out for me as well.

A little historical context:
When I was first moving into the DC area, many people suggested that I live in C1 because it was the "better" ward. My best friend herself was a member of C2, and another close friend was a member of the DC 2nd Ward, so I didn't give a ton of credence to their advice, but I did end up within C1 boundaries because of location. It was about a 30-35 minute commute to my work via metro. So that seemed reasonable to me.

Apparently there has been some feuding between the wards. Depending on who you talked to, I guess many individuals thought that C1 was "cool" or "rich and stuck up" and C2 was "not cool" or more like a "little brother."

We knew some changes were coming because they announced a combined C1 and C2 meeting and said that we'd "find out why" at the meeting, but no sooner. Of course speculation ran rampant. Luckily I don't have enough friends in C1 or C2 to have the need or desire to speculate about the fate of the congregation boundaries, and I didn't really think much about it throughout the week. I also thought, it was unlikely that it would really impact me because I live so close to the church building that it seemed like an "untouchable" location for any real drama to happen. [this is the greatest cliff hanger, right? You just know I was too smug there]

Well, come Sunday afternoon, the moment of truth hit. And it hit some people harder than others. The wards were split more or less down the middle - meaning half of C1 went to C2 and half of C2 went to C1. [this is not exactly accurate because the boundary changes were a little more complicated than that, but the more superfluous happenings don't really matter for the purpose of this story]. I ended up being one street from the dividing line. So yes, I'm going to C2.

Honestly, I don't care too much about switching to C2. I'm more concerned that I now have church at 3pm instead of 11:30. Who wants to go to church at 3pm?

Also, 150 people from C1 are moving to C2, so it'll be a lot of the same stuff. Oh yeah. And I live only a FEW BLOCKS from many of the people that are not moving to C2, so I can still, you know, say hi if I feel like it. I think it's an exciting change and should really make the congregations a little more friendly toward one another. It's good to shake things up once in awhile.

But today, only 24 hours from the announcement, people are trying to SWITCH their housing. Really? One girl emailed the listserv requesting a "housing" swap so she can be in C1. Now, I guess I should give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she's 19 and doesn't have all of the information and she just thinks that of course her house is the only house that will be changing.

But what I really want to say is: "Really? You haven't even moved in yet, so you can't possibly know enough people for it to matter, and you're already freaking out? How shallow and self-centered are you? Why do you even attend church? Did you know that its purpose is not just to have the 'coolest' friends, but you know, it's to worship God and reflect on Jesus Christ?" [I'm really Christlike in my rants, just FYI]

Can we please bring back the spiritual aspect of church in YSA wards? Pretty please?

But do you want to know the ironic thing? My best friend, who resides in C2, got switched to C1, so we're still not in the same congregation. Luckily, I see her about 3x a week regardless of the ward boundary.