Russell has a nice discussion on who we should ask for priesthood blessings and on what occasions over at Times and Seasons. It reminds me of something I have occasionally done with new home teaching families.
The home teaching visit script generally begins with “So, how is your family this month?” and end with “So, is there anything we can do for you?” The answers are usually perfunctory: “We’re fine,” and “No, not that I can think of.”
I have often found in my own life that my home teachers are fairly low on the list of people I turn to when I have need of assistance, often because they are very busy people, and I have friends with more free time, and whom I am more comfortable asking. However, I also feel like home teaching would work a lot better if we all served each other as home teachers outside of our monthly visits.
One problem is getting beyond the feeling that asking your home teacher to do something for you is a major imposition, rather than an opportunity for service. To get around this, I have sometimes asked my new home teaching families at the end of my first visit to think of something I can do for them in the next month, trivial or not. Often this requires quite a bit of follow up, as families are either reluctant to do so, or simply can’t think of anything for me to do. By insisting on providing some kind of service, I make it clear that I welcome opportunities to do so, and get past the initial awkwardness that may prevent the family from asking me in the future to assist them in some way.
One family in particular asked me to serve by giving the father a blessing. After that, priesthood blessings became a fairly regular part of myservice to them. I think that initial offer to do something for that family encouraged them to think of me when they were in need of a blessing (my assigned companion at the time was hard to catch up with, so there was a lot of me and a random companion, in case you’re wondering why I say ‘me’ instead of ‘we’).
A complete aside: My current home teachers are a radiation oncologist and a child psychiatrist. The first time they visited and asked if there was anything they could do for us, my response was, “I sure hope not!”