Mini Zone Conferences

Last week we held a series of mini zone conferences. We began in British Columbia on Tuesday, then did the rest of the southern zones on Tuesday in Lethbridge, then came back up to Calgary and did two different conferences with them on Thursday and Friday. It was a great week. We have our regularly scheduled full zone conferences coming up in September, but we just felt there were things we wanted to train on and help our missionaries with before then. So, we scheduled these, and we are so glad we did. We trained on and discussed 'Finding People to Teach', which is the biggest challenge all of our missionaries have. We spoke about finding through our members in the wards, and also finding on our own, and the main point is asking Heavenly Father for help in this area. There is a phrase in Preach My Gospel which states, 'finding through the spirit is as important as teaching by the spirit'. So, we emphasized the importance of going to the Lord to find out where to go--even in visiting members, and less active members. We also discussed our visits with members and taught the importance of teaching simple, powerful lessons with the spirit to build their faith and meet their needs. And then to help them prayerfully consider who they know that would be interested in and benefit from this wonderful message we have to share. We also trained on keeping all of our lessons short. We want to have our lessons no longer than 20-30 minutes. As we do this, we feel that everyone, investigators, members, anyone, will be more receptive. And we have already seen miracles from this! Steve just let me read one letter from an elder that spoke of how after the training they were contacting a man they had been trying to reach for a long time and when they finally got him on the phone and asked if they could come teach him, his first response was, 'no'. But then the elder said, 'we only have 20 minutes'. The man then said, '20 minutes? The last missionaries took over an hour. If you can do 20 minutes you can come right now.' So they went over, and now he is an investigator and they have a return appointment to teach another lesson. The elder is so excited!
We are really trying to refocus on Preach My Gospel and all that it teaches. It is such an inspired manual. We really don't need any other training than what it contains. We just need to study and apply it! So, we were happy with our mini zone conferences, and felt they went well and were beneficial and motivating for our missionaries. We want so much for all of the missionaries to find more people to teach. They are so happy when they can teach--we know there are more people out there for us to find, if we will work hard and have the faith to find them. We are so grateful for their desire to serve. It really is a phenomenal thing to think about that these missionaries leave everything behind and come out here to do hard work! You have to admire them so much. They truly have good hearts, and want to bring people to Christ. We love them so much.