To clarify what we have talked about in our last post, the missionaries who speak English often are sent to a country where they have to learn a second language. They return home with life-changing spiritual experiences from serving wonderful people, and they return with the gift of an additional language they can use in work opportunities. The General Authorities of the Church have recommended for years that the non-English speaking missionaries should also use their study time to learn English. The Companionship Language Study program was created to assist them to do that. However, most of the non-English speaking missionaries have not made the effort to do that. It is hard; I know.
As one of the earlier posts showed, we are trying to help motivate those missionaries to give the effort. We have gathered stories of missionaries who have done the program and seen important changes take place in their lives. Every two weeks, we give a presentation to the new missionaries who have arrived at the Lima MTC. Julene created a fun, interactive activity that shows them that learning English can be done in a fun way.
However, we have learned that it all starts with the mission president. If he places great emphasis on the missionaries using part of their study time to practice speaking English, it makes a great difference on the young missionaries willingness to try, and to stick with it. They will be the future Church leaders in their home countries. So, this last month we created the following emailed flyer to help encourage the 30 mission presidents in this Area. However, just as we were getting ready to send the flyer, we received an email from the Martinos in the Philippines, to whom we were divinely guided by our friends the Thelers. The Martinos story HAD to be our cover letter to the flyer (all these materials were sent in Spanish and English):
We then sent this 2 page flyer:
We then attached Elder Uchtdorf's challenges and blessings from learning English:
Julene and I have been a great team. She created the Excel document, that automatically totals the test scores in the right hand column. The missions love it! I took some photos and captured web images to create the flyers. The prompting that led me to Elder Uchtdorf's experience with learning English was very clear and undeniable. We are learning completely new lessons about what "having faith" means.
Then last week, the Area Presidency had a strong impression that the way to get greater faithfulness from some members in the Area, was to have families read the Book of Mormon starting right after General Conference. They decided to create a sheet of bookmarks to encourage each family to read daily. I was asked to be the graphic designer.
It all happened incredibly fast, since the Area Presidency has many things to cover before heading to General Conference tomorrow. A sheet of 5 bookmarks, under a message to read the Book of Mormon daily, will go to every family in every ward and branch in the five countries. They will be handed out on Sunday, April 13th. That is hundreds of thousands of sheets being printed. It is a big gamble to go with a volunteer amateur designer. My Heavenly Father is teaching me even greater lessons in learning to rely on Him. Below is what we just finished this afternoon. (We originally created the attached sheet for our family, so you'll have to increase its size to be able to read the information on the sheet.)
Finally, a few of the sites where we live:
Our apartment is the one on the top floor —
The sidewalk in front of our apartment. Hundreds of buses, cars, and dump trucks pass by each day. We have to pass through the "narrow neck" of road (no sidewalk) each day on our way to the Area offices. See the "narrow neck" in Julene's earlier post.
And, a portion of downtown Lima — near a "VERY" large upscale shopping mall.
Well . . . if you've stayed awake this far, don't stop now. Read Julene's post below!
We will try to be better at updating the blog more often.
We love and miss all of you, and hope you are doing very, very well! ! !
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