The Mission President Seminar

Earlier this week we had the privilege of attending the Mission President Seminar for the South America South Area.  The seminar was held under the direction of Elder Ballard with Elder Rasband as the senior member of the presidency of the seventy. 

 

 

 

 We were also taught by members of our Area Presidency.

 

 

 

 We were all inspired by each of those who taught us and shared their testimonies.  Elder Ballard opened by saying things like that we were meeting in the name of the Lord.  This is his church.  We are here to help you in any way we can.  We are a team.  We ask Heavenly Father to bless us and to bless you so that the work of the Lord can go forth and that you will be able to have more success in each of your missions.

  

 He taught about the Hastening of the Work of Salvation and about finding a more excellent way.  He counselled us to look at going forward and not dwelling on the things that have happened in the past.  We were to look at the roadblocks in our way.  

 This was their challenge to us:
We are not asking everyone to do everything. We are simply asking all members to pray, knowing that if every member, young and old, will reach out to just "one" during each trimester, tens of thousands will feel the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful gift to the Savior on hastening the work of salvation.

 

It is a great blessing to belong to a church with such inspired leaders.

Another blessing for us is that Elder Ballard brought two of his daughters to help care for his wife.  His daughter Tammy  is our good friend and it was so good to spend time with her!

 

We learned so much from the other Mission Presidents and their wives.  It was just great to be together!

 

 

  

 

 

Santiago Chile!

We were excited when it was announced that the Mission President Seminar was to be in Santiago Chile.  We had visited Santiago in 2005 when we visited Chile with our daughter Jamie and her husband Rich and their little son Kaden.  Jamie had served a mission in the northern part of Chile and we were going back to visit!  When we arrived in Santiago in 2005 we found that the temple was being remodeled and we weren't able to go to a session.  Now we were looking forward to that session even more since there is not a temple within our mission and it has been some time since we have been able to enjoy going to the temple.

 

 

When we arrived at the temple we were greeted by some wonderful people!  Elder Castillo, Elder Salinas and Hermana Arcos were there to welcome us!  What a special treat!  Elder Castillo also introduced us to someone special in his life!!!  They had all been  missionaries with us in the Argentina Neuquén Mission and it was so good to see them!

 

 

We were also able to see Hermana Rivera serving there in the Santiago mission near the temple. She is from the Roca Stake here in our mission.  We had met her as she was preparing for her mission. It was good to see her and see that she is doing great!

 

 

There was special program that been arranged for us and we were even more excited to see it when we found out that Hermana Arcos would be playing her flute as a part of it!

 

 

We enjoyed the traditional music and dancing!

 

 

When we talked to Hermana Arcos after the program we learned that her mother was working in the temple that day.  It was wonderful to be able to meet her as we did a temple session. 

 

They even had a session for those of us who wanted to attend one in English so the temple visit was even better than I had dreamed of! 

What a special Day! 

Leadership Council

Our wonderful Sister Leader Trainers and Amazing Zone Leaders

Two of our Sister Leader Trainers did a great presentation about Intercambios.  This is also called divisions in some missions.  This is when the Zone Leaders, District Leaders and Sister Leader Trainers spend a day with the companionships in their groups.  They do this every transfer!  The Sisters talked about the things to do before, during and after the Intercambios to make them more effective.

I talked about ways to gain the confidence of the members.  I used some of the ideas that Elder Asbell, a senior missionary in the mission, shared at our last Zone Conference in the Esquel Zone.  Then three groups did some demonstrations to illustrate the things we discussed.  We learned about importance of using our time wisely when we are with members,  getting referrals and reporting back to those who give the referral, and how to organize missionaries to leave the church clean after we as missionaries use it for any reason so the members don't need to clean up after us!   There is a big difference between having the members like us as missionaries and if they have confidence in us to refer their friends to us to teach!

The Assistants used some of their hidden talents to teach us!

One of the things President Lovell talked about was the importance of keeping commitments.  He also asked one of our Sister Leader Trainers to share an insight that she had about keeping commitments. This included the importance of us as missionaries learning to keep commitments along with the importance of the investigators keeping their commitments.

Our Sister Leader Trainers

Our Zone Leaders