My Oprah Moment

I always sound like a broken record, but the past three weeks have been quite a blurr.  We learned so much at our Mission President Seminar and we wanted to get all of the information to our missionaries as quickly as possible.  At the Seminar they kept talking about how our missionaries' purpose is to Preach the Gospel by the spirit, and our purpose as Mission President and wife is to help and show our missionaries HOW to fulfill their purpose.  We realized that we are pretty good at the 30,000 foot level.  We are pretty good at teaching the what and the why, but we haven't been as good at teaching the How.  We are up to about 178 missionaries in the mission and it is increasingly difficult to get to each and every one of them and to help them as much we would like to.  We feel like Zone Conferences are great, but we are teaching to the masses, and when we do individual interviews, we have 10 minutes with each one, which isn't quite enough time to get into a lot of the Hows. And so we decided to try something different this transfer after praying and thinking about all we learned at our Seminar.  We decided to hold what we have called Zone Interviews.  We have gone to each zone (we still have three to do this week) and we have met with them for 2 hours.  The zones range in size from 10 missionaries, to our largest with 22.  It has been really great.  We have been able to give them actual tips on how to do things, from effective contacting, to testifying of the Book of Mormon, using the Book of Mormon in contacts, finding the questions of the soul that people have, inviting people to church, testifying in personal ways, not robotic ways and more.  Scott and I have done role plays for them and with them and had them critique us and let us know what we can do better, and then we invite them to do role plays with us.  We have had each zone send in questions that they need help with and we go down their questions and try to find ways to help them with each question.  The interesting thing is that even though our mission is relatively small, each zone has had questions that are specific to their areas and zones and it has been interesting to see how different their questions are, just based on the zones and the locations they are in. It has been really fun for us, and I think fun and helpful for the missionaries.  Being with them in a less formal setting and letting them see our personalities and having fun learning and helping them has been really great.  We are hearing a lot of positive feedback as they try to implement what we all learned together and that has been great.  

Another big takeaway from our seminar and the biggest change is a new policy put in place by our Area Presidency concerning eating with members.  Elder Kevin Pearson, who is the area president over the North America West, and North America North West areas, gave us a directive that we hope will enable missionaries to be out finding in their areas more during the prime time hours of 5-7 p.m.  Missionaries will be eating in their apartments on Monday through Friday at 4:00 p.m.  They will be able to eat with members on Saturdays and Sundays. The hope is that they can be out finding and teaching during those hours and be in member's homes from 8-9 p.m. when it's harder to fill those hours.  This will get our missionaries in member's homes as spiritual leaders and get members more involved actively participating with us.  Elder Pearson did this when he was a Mission President in Tacoma Washington and their baptisms increased.  

This has been rolled out to the members in the area through their Stake Presidents, and to the missionaries at Zone Conferences from us.  In order to help them, we decided to get a crock pot for each apartment and I decided to make a cookbook to go with each crock pot.  We had about 10 days from the MP Seminar to our Zone Conference, with 8 of the zone interviews slipped in there, to purchase 85 crockpots and to collect and compile and print and put together that many cookbooks as well.  It was a bit of an undertaking, but it all worked out.  

This was President Hymas' office the day of the Crock Pot delivery.  We were a little worried about how the missionaries would react to the news that they were on their own for most of their meals.  We did increase the amount of money they get each month to cover the added cost.  We could see so many advantages, including that they could eat healthier and have more control over their portion sizes and what they eat.  Those with allergies, like gluten, nuts, vegetarians, etc can now control their diets better. Also, they will learn how to meal plan, to budget and be prepared for life after the mission when they don't have a dinner appointment every night at 5:00.  I told them their wives and husbands are going to be so lucky that they learned how to cook! They can also have a little more down time to rest during their dinner time, they will also be seen more as spiritual leaders, rather than young adults to be fed.  But we knew we had to present it in the best, most positive way possible.  Scott always says "In the absence of information we assume the worst." We wanted to give them the best information we could.  So, we planned carefully.  

I trained first and my training was taken from a quote my mom used to always say, "If you've missed the joy, you've missed it all".  I talked about choosing happiness by learning from the pattern of the people of Captain Moroni's time.  In Alma 50 it tells us that there was never a happier time since the days of Nephi than in the time of Captain Moroni.  So we looked before and after that verse to see what they did to make it possible for them to be happy in less than ideal circumstances. 

Scott followed with a training entitled, "Murmur Not" and talked about how no one has ever left the church without first murmuring about something. He talked about the 3 and the 8 witnesses and what happened to each of them, along with examples of murmuring throughout the Book of Mormon.  One interesting one was found in 3 Nephi when the people started murmuring about the name of the Church.  It was a little too close to what we witnessed as President Nelson has reemphasized the name of the Church in our day.  

He then explained the new policy and he was amazing.  He explained it in a way that they completely understood the benefits and the opportunities that were going to be theirs because of it.  When he announced that everyone was getting a crockpot and a cookbook they were so darling.  He had me come up and explain everything and that is when I had my Oprah Moment.  My cute daughter in law, upon hearing what we were doing, said, "You are going to be like Oprah" and I totally went with that.  I told them I felt like Oprah and then as I pointed at all of them said "You get a crockpot, and you get a crockpot, everyone is leaving here with a crockpot!!!"  They were absolutely darling about it.  What 18-25 year olds get SO excited about a crockpot and a simple cookbook?  Ours did and I absolutely love them for it.  They have definitely caught the vision and it is going to be awesome.  The cutest thing is that the first Monday that they started cooking for themselves I got several pictures that they sent to me of their crockpot meals.  One companionship sent a picture and wrote "Thanks for the crockpot, Oprah!"  

Look how excited they were at the end of Zone conference as the crockpot distribution began

Here are pictures of our three days of Zone Conferences

Wednesday, November 14: Elk Grove, East Sacramento, Sacramento, and Cordova Zones

Elk Grove Zone

East Sacramento Zone

Sacramento Zone

Cordova Zone

Thursday, November 15: North Sacramento, Carmichael, Folsom, and El Dorado Zones

North Sacramento Zone

Carmichael Zone

Folsom Zone

El Dorado Zone

Friday, November 16: Lodi, Stockton and Manteca Zones

Lodi Zone

Stockton Zone

Manteca Zone

We also had to say goodbye to some really wonderful missionaries in the past few weeks.  Sister Romney and Sister Lewis have been here for a year and they have worked tirelessly in the North Sacramento Zone.  They have been a light to all who know them, and such a great example to me of putting the Lord first.  I think it would be terrifying to put in mission papers as a single senior sister and just trust that the Lord will put you in the right place, with the right person. They don't have transfers or companion changes and they have been just terrific.  We will certainly miss them. We had a dinner at our home with all of the Senior missionaries as we wished them well in their next adventures. 

We were also blessed for the past 3 months to have two sisters serve here who are assigned to the Temple Square Mission.  They get to go to a mission in the field for a few transfers and we got lucky enough to get Sister Crane and Sister Dossett.  Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of us with Sister Dossett (they left right during our zone conference and so we didn't get to take them to the airport, even though we called their mission president and asked him to let them stay.  He quickly said "I love you, but NO!") We can see why he wanted them back. We loved having them here.  This is a picture of us with Sister Crane right before she left.

We had a really special visit from two of our former missionaries, Elder Thomas and Sister Koller.  They are soon to be married to each other, which we are thrilled about, and Sister Koller asked Scott to give her a father's blessing before they got married, which was really special.  We loved having them visit and so wish we could be at their sealing, but feel so blessed to have been able to spend an evening with them in our home. 

We have been heartbroken about the devastating Camp Fire that was just about 90 miles north of us.  So many people lost their homes and lives and it is almost incomprehensible to hear about the losses.  Our hearts go out to all involved.  We didn't have any fires in our mission, but we did get a lot of smoke from the fires.  It seemed to settle in the valleys here and stayed for a good long time.  We were carefully monitoring the air quality and on a few days it was dangerously high.  We cautioned our missionaries, especially those with asthma or other respiratory issues, and we gave out masks at our Zone Conferences to those who needed them most.  Bad air can't keep our missionaries down, as you can see from these pictures.

After our final Zone Conference, which was in Stockton, so a good drive away, we grabbed a bite to eat with our assistants.  We left, and they stayed to contact a family that was eating near us.  I love seeing our missionaries try to share the gospel with everyone they see.  I had to snap this picture through the window, it's not great quality, but I love it.

Finally, I had a really sweet experience that reminded me why we are really here.  Sometimes the load seems really heavy and we have so many things to do, it's hard to keep up with it all.  But I was able to sit and talk with a fairly new sister for a while and she was feeling all of the new missionary feelings, and was a little homesick and a little blue.  I told her that I know I'm not her mother, but I'm happy to be her substitute mom and so I asked her what she would want to talk about if she were talking to her mom.  We had a good talk, and then I asked her what I could do to help her.  She said what she missed the most was just being able to go to her mom, to cry and have her mom hold her for a while.  She said, "it's been a while since I was able to just have a good cry". So I said "Ok, stand up, that's what we are going to do" So we stood right there and I hugged her tight and she just cried and cried.  She held on to me with all her might and we stood like that for a good 5 minutes.  When she composed herself she whispered "You're a really good substitute mom".  Then I started crying.  It was a sweet moment and it made me again, so grateful to be here to have these experiences with these wonderful missionaries that we love so much.