February 19, 2011

Dear Family and Friends, February 19, 2011

Monday this week began with the preparations for zone conferences which began Tuesday. The office elders and assistants have many things to do to get the building reading for the day and arrange for the feeding of everyone and make sure everything else needed is ready to go. We also welcomed a new office elder to begin training last week. Elder Fowers is being trained by Elder Smith as the office elder in charge of keeping records and reports. He is learning well and has very big shoes to fill! Elder Smith has been wonderful as he keeps up with all of President’s requests.

We try to use the power of the missionaries to move supplies and deliver packages so we can keep costs in check also. Elder Sellers the office administrator works hard to be organized so everything goes where it needs to go. All of the zones that are closer in to Asuncion come into the church in Herrera which is next to the mission office for their conferences. As they leave he has everything ready for them to take back to their areas. Zones 1-6 had their conferences Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

It is always good to see all of the missionaries at zone conferences. It is a wonderful time to come together to learn and share and grow as missionaries. We focused on three of the fundamental lessons from Preach My Gospel, revelation through the Book of Mormon, revelation through prayer and how to begin a lesson. We had some good discussions and lots of practices. Each practice session began with examples of how to do the practices and then evaluations as to how we can improve or what was done well. Some of the time Mark and I participated in the example practice and other times the assistants of other missionaries did the example practice. We then split the missionaries into small groups of 3 or 4 to practice what they had learned. We really learn a lot as we practice. We can receive revelation for our investigators and also revelation as to ways we can improve our teaching methods.

We also had invited some stake presidents to speak and share how we as missionaries can work better with members in missionary work. They taught well and shared some great insights for us all.

I taught about the help that is available to us as missionaries when we work hard. I talked about a motto our stake had years ago that was “We Do Hard Things”. Missions are hard but we learn and grow as we apply ourselves to the work. There are so many scriptures that teach us of the way the Lord helps those who are trying to do his will.

Mark taught about the atonement, encouraging each one of us to strengthen our understanding and use of it so we can teach it better. He taught using the analogy of refining gold. He spoke of the things we go through in life that refine us. He had some great slides that showed the process as the impurities were burned out of the rocks showing the final result of the shining gold. As he talked about the point when all of the impurities were gone and the gold remained as shiny as a mirror it really brought to my mind a scripture. I thought of the scripture that asks if we can see the image of the Savior in our countenance. As we go through experiences as missionaries and in life in general we need to keep in mind the end result. We want to be better people because of the experiences we are having. How wonderful that we know the Savior understands and has felt everything we are feeling. Because of that we can, through the gift of repentance change and improve and become refined as people. What a great message we have to share with people!

As we were with our missionaries this week our love for them continues to increase. We saw new missionaries trying so hard to understand the language. We saw new leaders working hard to learn their new responsibilities. We saw missionaries taking notes and sharing wonderful comments. We saw missionaries sharing favorite scriptures to use to teach certain principles to investigators. We felt a growing maturity among the missionaries as they take their callings as missionaries into their hearts and try to improve and reach more people. We are grateful for the richness of our lives because of the experiences we are having here. We know these missionaries will hold a special place in our hearts forever! We are grateful our family is supporting us so well as we are here serving! We hope you all have a great week!

Love, Mark and Sandy