Texas Houston Mission: How to Begin Teaching

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

One of our favorite things to do is to attend district meetings with you. We hope you are coming away from those meetings edified. The chances of that happening will largely be determined by how much you invest in the meeting. We hope you are actively thinking about ways to improve and sharing ideas with the other companionships so that area reports and trainings feel more like a counsel where more experienced missionaries can share suggestions with younger missionaries.

It seems like every time we attend, we come away with ideas of how we can do better and how we can teach better. We particularly loved to see you this week begin to use the role playing time as a time to sharpen our skills from the toolkit. You will notice that we will continue to rotate through these skills so that we can stay sharp and avoid becoming robotic.

After this weeks role play, we would like to share a couple of observations:

1. We need to remember that the most important thing we can find out before we begin teaching is what they desire for themselves or for their family so we can relate what we teach to what they desire. Our message becomes relevant.

2. As important as it is to find out their desire, we need to remember that we need to guide them in helping them think about longer term desires. For example, some may say their desire is that they want to be happy. Instead of just saying, "that's great and our message will help you to be happy." It might be better to say, "That is a righteous desire. Have you given any thought to what you want for your family longer term, even after you die?" We want to help them think about questions of the soul. We can then say, "Do you want to be together forever?" Undoubtedly they will say yes. We then might say, "Have you considered how that is possible when most people are married until 'death do you part'?" Now we can say something along the lines of, "the Lord's intent is that our families are together forever. The good news we bring is that it is not only possible for you, but it is what our loving Heavenly Father would have for your family." Then we can go on and tell them that, "As we share our message, you will find that you will have greater desires to..."

We will update the toolkit to reflect this.

The mission is doing great and your teaching is great. Those two things are related :).

We are impressed by the great things you are doing and glad to be able to witness the miracles that result!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

President Mortensen and I attended District Meeting in the Fairfield District and we had a wonderful experience with the missionaries serving there. They are working hard to achieve their goals and increasing in faith.