Singing "Heavenly Father Loves Me" and "God Be With You Till We Meet Again" were both emotional this morning at the Mission devotional. This is the week we say "Goodbye" to another group of missionaries. The longer I am here, the more I am affected, of course. Yet in 5 months, I will be leaving also. The time is now passing quite quickly.
We had a very interesting presentation at the devotional about how our mission, The Family and Church History Headquarters Mission, came to be. I was particularly touched by how this got to be a place that young elders could serve a full-time mission, even if their circumstances prevented them from serving a typical proselyting mission. In 2006 there was a young man who was accepted as a Church Service Missionary to work here at Temple Square. He was not satisfied with the replies to his questions of where he was to be housed, or who would be his companion. He was told he would not have a companion, he could live at home, and he was not required to have a typical missionary schedule.
The young elder proceeded to get an apartment, and he worked not just 16 hours a week, but worked at the Library every day from opening to closing for two years. He protested the lack of a companion, as he explained that he needed the experience of adjusting to living 24/7 with someone. His example showed what such a young elder could do, and we now have nearly 100 young elders serving at any time in this mission. They each have a companion [sometimes two if the numbers require], they live in the same apartment complex that I live in, they get transferred to different zones [there are about 20 zones in the mission], they switch companions, and they work similarly to proselyting missionaries. Each Sunday, each companionship gets the experience of sharing the gospel through teaching us older missionaries from Preach My Gospel. Of course, they are nearly all computer experts, and much of this work just could not get done without them.
At the Trainers meeting I presented three PowerPoints. One of them needs to be reworked, but the other two were well-received. One of them was based on a 1-Minute Training presentation which helped me feel more comfortable with helping guests by teaching them how our website is organized. Within a half hour I was actually helping two guests, one from Germany along with his friend with Italian ancestry--and by following the pattern, each of them found at least one generation back that they had not previously known. I was glad I had the refresher within the hour!
I had a letter from my friend in Missouri today. That was delightful. She reached her goal of indexing 25,000 records! I am so proud of her! Indexing is so important--as evidenced by the success of the two guests I helped today. Way to go, Diane!
Our branch social went nearly an hour later than I had expected, but I still got to talk with my Sweetheart tonight--so despite a somewhat bad attitude as the social dragged on, I was blessed.
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