To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,
We hope you each felt edified in your recent zone meetings. We are certain that as we exhaust every effort to get our investigators to church and plan for them to have an edifying experience, we will gain a stronger testimony of the way attending church can help our investigators progress in the gospel. We are also certain that if we learn to teach more effectively we will find a much greater ability to bring many souls into the safety of covenants. We hope that you will take the opportunity this week to prayerfully study chapter 10 of Preach My Gospel to identify how we can individually improve our teaching skill further. In particular, please consider the exercises at the end of the chapter for personal and companionship study (p. 193-194).
As I have listened to many of you role play "how to end teaching," I have been reminded of the things TV show producers have learned over the years. Their success is determined not just by how many people "tune in", but more importantly by how many people continue to tune in. They have learned that one great episode doesn't make them successful, but rather that they need to captivate their audience to return to watch. One of the ways they do this is to show "scenes" from the next episode at the conclusion of the current one. We could learn a lot from them. Often at the end of lessons we simply say, "we'd like to return in 2 or 3 days" but we never give them "scenes" about the things we'd like to share so they don't have great motivation to have us return. For example, at the end of the first lesson, we can say:
"we are so grateful for the time you have taken to hear this important message and for the Spirit we have felt together. We would like to come back in 2 or 3 days to share with you some answers to life's greatest questions that we now understand because Christ's church is on the earth. Questions like, where did we come from before we were born, why are we here and what awaits us when we die. This knowledge will bring greater hope and happiness that anything else you can do. Which day would work best?"
We promise that as you plan to give them something to look forward to and to do those things we outlined in last weeks letter, you will have much greater success in getting back in with those you have worked so diligently to find.
We love you each and are inspired by your faithful service!
Love,
President and Sister Mortensen
We had Mission Leadership Council last week and enjoyed a great meeting. It's such an edifying experience counseling with these inspired leaders. We love the way they are "shepherding" and leading with love. They are great leaders and examples.
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| Our Mission Leadership Council |
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| Receiving some training |
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| Real Texas BBQ! |
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| Elder McGinnis will train Elder Day and Elder Boekweg |
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| Elder Hendrickson will train Elder Roberts |