Dear Ones Overseas:
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Ours is not officially over yet, as school doesn't begin until the 14th of January, and people are still vacationing. We also added a few days by saving the creative Christmas bundle we received from the River Heights Ward Young Women for an FHE with Hunter and Morgan, who didn't get back until the night of the 27th. Thank you so much, Young Women! You are awesome!
I was so pre-occupied with other things last entry, I didn't tell you much about our December zone conference. Once the themes had been introduced - Preaching with Boldness, and Following the Spirit - the missionaries divided into zones and given topics such as How to Avoid Getting Bunked (stood up); Rings and Spears (focusing on finding families and priesthood); Contacting with Boldness; Teaching with the Spirit; and so on.
Their task was to find scripture references, prepare to teach the skill, and devise a way to practice it. Throughout the rest of the conference each zone had 25 minutes to demonstrate, and to practice the skill with the other zones, one-on-one. The materials they put together were "speed" entered on some laptops, and when they left the next day, each missionary had a packet of material, including scriptures and suggestions, for each topic. (We are very high tech here.) This format may sound familiar to those of you associated with the Academies...
Since there was a great deal of skill training at the conference, the training this last two weeks has been focused more on Following the Spirit. After zone conferences, Steve and the assistants swing through the zones, where Steve interviews while the assistants do training. This time I have been able to participate, as the boys were gone. We're doing the last few this week. It's been fun to do, not only because I like getting better acquainted with the missionaries in a smaller group, but because I am learning a lot from Elder Johns and Elder Hyatt. The basic format is the same each time, and the section of Preach My Gospel, but with the huge amount of scriptures available to teach this topic, there can be a lot of variation. (And should be, as every district has it's own distinct personality.)
During my section we talk about good "pray-ers" and prayers, and bad ones. There are certain instances that always come up: Enos, and the Rameumptom. But very often the missionaries come up with references I hadn't thought of - and they know the references by heart. Very impressive! (By the way, for a good contrast, check out 3 Nephi 3:20, versus Helaman 6:36.)
And speaking of impressive, we encourage the missionaries to send in conversion stories, and good experiences they have. The following letter came in from Elder Eves and Elder Andriaramalala, after the zone conference:
"For the past 2 months that we have been tracting, we have always started with a prayer on what street to tract. All of our new investigators in these past months have been from tracting. We try to involve the lord as much as possible.
Saturday the 22nd of dec.
After getting bunked from several appointments Elder Andriarimalala and I decided to tract. We said a prayer and asked the Lord for a street to tracked. Right after the prayer we looked at the map. For some reason we thought we should pray again. We were more specific with the lord this time and asked for a street to tract where we could find families that have cars/transport. Well after that prayer we both concluded what road and then went tracting. That day was amazing! We found 4 families with cars to teach. Hopefully this finding story will have a happy ending."
We really have terrific missionaries, who are trying hard to do everything right so they can grow the kingdom!
Our next "big" project is to get the other two districts organized, and start the couples training and coaching. Next month there will be a Couples Seminar in Swaziland where we will work on some of that (among other fun things!).
Love to Everybody!
Grandma/Mom/Sue/Susan/Sister President Mann
ps I have to add this story: we were delayed on our way to training/interviews in KwaMashu. We exited from the freeway onto a 4 lane highway, and had to stop, because a Coke truck had lost some of it's load, turning the corner. All the traffic in all 4 lanes stopped, everyone jumped out of their cars and ran over - to grab as many 2-liter bottles of Fanta Strawberry (and even the plastic carry cases) as they could carry. It was the ladies that seemed the most unusual... Anyway, the slowdown was cleard up amazingly fast!
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