August 11, 2011

Today I made final preparations for the training meetings set for this afternoon. Our three missionaries going home to the states came into the office this morning for final preparations. They were scheduled to catch the bus at 3pm today to travel to Nadi and then take a 10pm flight to Los Angeles. I went over some items I had prepared for the Zone Leader Training Council set for tomorrow with the assistants and got some input to change those items. We were going to make history today. We were going to give out DVD players to the trainers of new missionaries. This was to start the new Church policy that will place a DVD player with every companionship and charge them to watch only approved DVDs to be used for training and preparation to teach. They are not to use the DVD player to teach investigators or members. Generally speaking they should not take the DVD player out of the flat (apartment) with the exception of those missionaries who live in one flat on the weekend and at different locations during the proselyting week. We received some 70 or 80 DVD players in the mail and realized as we received them that we needed 70 or 80 copies of the missionary training DVDs “The District” and “The District 2”. We ordered them right away.

This morning was a little hectic for the assistants as they were scrambling to figure out how to make copies of “The District” for the three trainer/trainee companionships that would be here this afternoon. We have about a dozen copies of “The District 2” but only about 3 copies of “The District”. They were also responsible to get the missionaries who were finishing their missions to the bus before 3pm and yet try to attend as much as possible of the training meetings we were having this afternoon so they could train another companionship in Nadi on Saturday. The training meetings went well this afternoon. The first meeting was just over 90 minutes and trained the trainers on the new 12-week New Missionary Training Program. This is a Church wide program that prescribes some additional study time and an order of study to help prepare the new missionaries to be well trained missionaries. We are very excited about this new program and chose who we felt would be our best trainers to begin this new era in the Fiji Suva Mission. The second meeting was a 90 minute meeting with the trainers and the new missionaries where we went over the details of the program and charged them to be outstanding examples for this inaugural group of trainees. They all seemed to receive the charge with energy and a desire to do well. Even though I felt quite drained after the 3+ hours of training where I shouldered the full load, Jan and I went back over to the mission office to work for about another hour and a half before coming back for dinner. During the evening I worked on the spreadsheets I had shown the assistants earlier that day in order to be able to use them in the Zone Leader Training Council scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9am. I finalized the schedule for our visit to New Caledonia be reviewing the proposed schedule from the Senior Zone Leaders and sending them back my approval and provided them with answers to several questions. Jan and I finished the evening talking about how complicated it seemed to be to be able to keep track of the comings and goings of all the missionaries. We receive missionaries from the Provo MTC and the New Zealand MTC. The New Zealand MTC is much smaller and keeps missionaries for only 3 weeks where the Provo MTC keeps missionaries bound for Vanuatu for 2 weeks, those bound for either Fiji or New Caledonia stay for 8 weeks. We also have missionaries leaving from districts in our mission assigned to come back to our mission where I have to be able to set them apart before they go and then we receive them when they are done with the MTC experience. We have missionaries leaving from districts in our mission assigned to go to other missions. I set them apart before they go and, in some cases, if there are visa issues where they are going to serve, we have to figure out where we could assign them serve in our mission while they are awaiting their visas. Now the MTC in New Zealand is asking to train them and then send them back to us to serve while awaiting visas. This adds another travel complication. We also have missionaries who are coming home to districts within our mission where I am to receive them back as their home “stake president”. Of course we also have missionaries finishing their missions here that we have to coordinate their departure. Since we have 3 countries where missionaries serve we also have the complication of bringing missionaries in from New Caledonia and Vanuatu, bringing them to Suva for the final interviews and farewell wishes, and then coordinating their departures from Fiji (usually Nadi) to various parts of the world. It is truly a complicated web of ins and outs. We will survive.