To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,
Many great things continue to happen in our mission largely through your expressions of faith through your finding and your effective teaching. Thanks for all you are doing. Many are coming into the safety of covenants as a consequence.
One area that has becoming increasingly clear that we need some work is in our planning. Much of our problems with planning begin with our weekly planning process. Many of you are doing your best in the planning process, but we need to do a better job providing training on this topic. PMG states that meaningful goals and careful planning will help you accomplish what the Lord requires of you. (p. 137)
Our first step in attempting to improve our planning took place last week as we pulled all of the Zone Leaders together for a 4 hour weekly planning session. We did some counseling and training. There were a couple of important take aways:
1. We need to start our session reviewing last weeks results and then make goals for the upcoming week before we start our planning. We can always go back and modify our goals, but we need a vision to start our planning because the point of the planning is to plan to achieve goals.
2. Our plans need to be people driven rather than event driven. When we are done with planning, we should have a really comprehensive plan around our efforts during the upcoming week by individual.
3. We need to plan events for people AND what we want their experience to be like in the event.
4. Once we have completed the weekly goals and plans, we need to push them into the next 7 days so our planners are "pre-loaded" with the things we need to do over the next week. The sum of the daily goals should equal our weekly goals.
5. These things are reviewed and revised each night.
This is the first of many attempts for us to break the cycle of less effective planning that has plagued us. We will cover this a little during our upcoming interviews. I would like you to bring your Area Book to interviews and we will have an opportunity to go through your area book, visit with you about how you could use it better and look through your planners together as well. You are entitled to greater blessings given the great work you are doing. When we combine your great efforts with revelation-filled planning, miracles will happen (Mor 7:37).
Love,
President and Sister Mortensen
Here are the pictures I took during transfers.
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| Temple with departing missionaries |
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| We will miss these beautiful sisters |
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| Love to see the transfer van at the temple |
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| Testimony meeting with the departing missionaries |
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| The first group to leave for the airport |
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| Playing "signs" |
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| Off to the airport! |
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| Last good-byes. We are sure going to miss them all! |
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| New missionaries arriving from the MTC |
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| Don't they look great?! We are so happy to have them here! |
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| Reunited with the new missionaries from the Mexico MTC. |
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| Our last two new arrivals. |
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| Real Texas BBQ. Yum! |
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| The Chappells counsel with Sophie :) |
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| We love them already. |
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| Breakfast the next day. |
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| Ready to meet our trainers at the transfer meeting. |
The next several pictures are of the new missionaries and their trainers. They are all in great hands!
