October 2, 2010

Dear Family and Friends, October 2, 2010

This week was full of many training meetings as we continue on with the leadership training meeting scheduled every other month. First we had a zone leaders’ council where we spent a day with 21 zone leaders and the assistants. It is a time to see if everyone is following through and putting into practice the things we as a mission are learning. The zone leaders go on divisions with the district leaders and the district leaders go on divisions with the members of their districts. It’s is a way of sharing teaching ideas and reporting back to see where we are as a mission. We have some great zone leaders and some newer ones who are learning more and more in this time of increased focus on teaching better. It’s good to get the zone leaders together so they can learn from each other as they share successes and struggles and talk about their zones.

The district leaders and 18 trainers joined in for the next few days of leadership training meetings. We had a total of 73 in those meetings. We spent our time focusing on the doctrine of Christ ,our purpose as missionaries, the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion and revelation through the Book of Mormon. We spent a large amount of time doing practices to improve our skills. It really does help the missionaries when they can spend time role playing to learn how to improve when they are with their investigators. Mark would begin most practice sessions with a role play with some of the elders and then they would discuss it and see how they could have improved it. He and I did one of the role plays also. It’s really interesting to watch all the missionaries jump out of their seats and move around so they can get up closer to see and hear better. We went around and watched as they practiced with each other and we can see improvements happening quickly. The missionary department tells us that teaching skills are the one area that most missionaries are lacking. Most have strong testimonies and desires but they just need more help in their abilities to share what they feel and know with others.

We had a couple beautiful musical numbers by some of the elders during the meetings. It is so nice to hear their beautiful voices. Music here is a little interesting because not many people play the piano so the congregational singing is often without accompaniment. We enjoyed the beautiful music and the spirit it brought to the meeting.

This week we also went to a 5 stake/district combined youth missionary activity. They had a day at the MTC experience where they had put all the youth into districts and had classes and speakers. Mark spoke in the morning meeting about how to be prepared to be a missionary. It was quite a group with probably 300 sixteen to twenty five year old youths and young adults participating. They were all dressed in missionary dress and looked quite impressive. That is the hope of Paraguay for the youth to prepare and serve missions. There was a nice group of returned missionaries who were the teaching staff for the day. It was like the Camp Helaman that is done in our stake back home, but just for one day.

We went out to the airport Friday to meet with the head of security so we could continue to go back by customs to greet our missionaries. They kindly said we could continue which is nice for us. As soon as the new missionaries get off the plane and get in line at customs we can see them and then help direct them to get their luggage together. It helps us and the airport to organize when we have large groups of missionaries who are pretty dazed by the time they get off the plane here in Paraguay. As we were driving home from the airport we drove by an area Mark has been watching every time we go to the airport. He said it looked like it used to be a driving range and this time they had put up the markers and a little tent like building. I’m sure if we ever find time for a preparation day he will want to go hit a few golf balls there. He was pretty excited to see that!

We are enjoying General Conference this weekend. It’s such a wonderful weekend and a great opportunity for the missionaries to share with their investigators the wonderful messages we receive. We hope you all have a great week. We love and miss you all. Mark and Sandy