THM Recovery Update Wednesday 9/6 11:00 pm CT

The missionaries continue to amaze me.  Today, I was in between a conference call with the other mission presidents discussing clean up protocols and going to the Bear Creek and Houston West South Zones to interview missionaries when I received a call from the CEO and President of NAM.  She said they were swamped with people coming in for disaster relief in the way of foodstuffs, clothing, diapers and short-term financial assistance and needed some help unloading trucks and interviewing potential candidates for financial help.  She asked for 50 volunteers to come to their site within an hour and to have 100 more volunteers each of the next two days.  I sent out a text message to our zone leadership and then went to my interviews.  I asked the first counselor in the Texas Houston Mission presidency, Charlie Broadbent, to see if he could organize the responses from the missionaries, answer questions and organize the day.  After my interviews ended at 5 pm, I was informed that we had 46 missionaries there helping and we have over 100 shifts filled (some missionaries filling two 3-hour shifts per day) each of the next two days.  I know that this service will go along way in sharing the light of the restored gospel as NAM is supported by 25 local church organizations and the director will certainly mention this effort to her constituents.  

I stopped by the new LDS Emergency Response Control Center today which is set up in our soon-to-be Deseret Industries location.  I picked up 180 yellow mesh vests, 150 pairs of gloves and 50 protective eye goggles.  As the clean up work continues, it will be important for missionaries to dress appropriately.  They will need the vests so they can be washed out each night.  Their clothes will need to be washed after each muck-out job to clean out any unwanted bacteria.  The stakes have offered to have the Relief Society clean the missionaries' clothes with a special detergent mix that will kill bacteria.  Missionaries who have not had their tetanus shot in the past 10 years are being required to get that or not go into flooded homes.  We are working to have the missionaries procure long pants (they can get them at a thrift store or you can sent them from home) and work boots.  If you can send them boots, that is great, and if not we are seeing about getting them some.

We continue to see miracles and are finding new investigators even through the distractions of flood clean up.  There are 24 new missionaries coming our way next Wednesday and only 8 going home so we are opening new areas and calling many fine missionaries to serve as trainers for these new missionaries.  It will be a busy September but we are ready to take on the challenge because we have the greatest missionaries in the Church.  Thank you for raising and sending them!

-  President Peterson

Below are pictures of one of our Spanish zones out helping this week