our homecoming

Everyone on our flight saw our happy greeting. “Welcome Home” groups are not that common in the Charlotte airport.
What a beautiful sight!

Almost as soon as we got back to the house, we called our missing daughter and her family. She is in the hospital waiting as patiently as possible for the arrival of our new granddaughter. They joined us via Facetime.
Presidente read our release letter from the First Presidency and the thank you letter from the Quorum of the Twelve. We took off our black name tags and pinned each other with the mission logo pin.




On to the next chapter…

last leadership meeting

The last leadership council was a great one. Normally, we don’t have special musical numbers at these meetings, but today, there were two, and they were both extraordinary.

Sometimes parents can be fortunate getting things into the country. Presidente received some Guarana from Brazil and I received this handmade shawl that is a tradition to wear on the first day of spring.

One of the zones made a flag for us. And there were some leftovers for the missionaries to take back to their pensions for dinner tonight!

The missionaries are also working on a welcome project for the Robertsons. We learned today that the long goodbye was going to last even a little longer than we thought. Hermana Robertson’s visa didn’t come in time. Their arrival and our departure has been delayed 24 hours.

Normally, the missionaries come in and leave almost immediately after we finish. Today, everything was more relaxed and almost everyone wanted to take a few extra photos.

A few years ago a youth soccer club in Thailand was highlighted by a bank that used the theme—Make the Difference. Our missionaries certainly are making a difference and I used it as the theme for the spiritual thought!

vamos buenos aires oeste

We have been working on a few projects. This is a short video that we plan to share with the missionaries at our final transfer meeting on Wednesday.

missionary leadership council in two parts

Of course, we normally have the leadership council with the hermanas and elders together. However, we have been feeling the need to address some items with the zone leaders and with the hermana training leaders separately. And that is what we did last Friday and today.

For the spiritual thought with both groups, I showed the following video by Ze Frank, however, the translation is my own.
 
Later, I gave them each a personal baggie with one candy to represent each day that they have left in the mission.

I am sure that it is pretty obvious that what I am really feeling is that the time I have left with them is short.

One of the hardest things in the mission is saying goodbye Every Six Weeks. I have never really gotten used to the pain of that. I am grateful for all the technology that makes it possible to check in with our missionaries and for them to check in with us every once in a while. Love that!

march madness

About six weeks ago, I was inspired to do a workshop for the zone conferences making an analogy using the 24 second clock in basketball and asking questions. (We have been focusing as a mission on teaching by using questions.) Then, when I realized that this month is March Madness in the United States, it became even more fun to use that as a springboard.

The first video is an introduction to the workshop featuring the words (translated into Spanish) of Elliott Bullock, an LDS basketball player.


The next video is the PowerPoint presentation where we discussed the analogy referred to above.
It has been so exciting and interesting to listen to the missionaries describe their situations--what the distractions are in their lessons, the importance of unity in the companionship, doing real work and not just going through the motions and many, many other ideas. Every conference has been spiritually exciting.



The missionaries then worked as a companionship and went to the Bible. They looked at the questions that Christ asked in the four gospels, and they all got a little study project for later to help them in their work. (I was the beneficiary of President Heyman's work--Argentina Resistencia Mission--which I was given permission to share with our missionaries, as well.)

Even when I felt that the workshop was ready to go, I continued to think about it and refine it. The night before the conferences began, I prayed to know if there was anything else I needed to do or needed to know. Of course, what I really wanted was the answer that Yes! it was ready to go, however, that was not the answer that I received.

The answer that I received was that I need to go back to the shot clock clips and turn them into slow motion. I had never made a single video before the mission, so my experience is limited at best and I didn't have the slightest idea how to make slow motion. Nevertheless, when I decided that I would try and learn how to do it, I was blessed with success.

I know that our missionaries are participating in big miracles everyday that have eternal consequences. Even though this does not even begin to compare to the real work of the mission, for me, it was a little miracle.


We have many missionaries that love basketball,  and even the ones that didn't know a thing about basketball before, seemed to enjoy participating in this workshop. However, I was a little concerned about one missionary that is an extraordinary basketball player, as sometimes things can hit a little too close to the heart and home. Both Presidente and I talked with him afterwards and that's when we learned that he had personally committed to "not think about basketball this month" and during the final video, he just put his head down knowing that he might find it to be a temptation.

And can I just say, that is the kind of awesome missionaries that we have here in the Buenos Aires West Mission.

the practice

The missionaries practice teaching most days. They teach for real too, but the practices help them when they are teaching for real, so it is an important part of their schedule. A while ago, we made this video of a practice lesson. It has been useful tool for us to use as we teach so that we can watch and stop and talk and then watch some more. I don't really expect that any non-missionary person would want to watch this hour long practice, but it is easy to keep track of things that are posted on the blog and you never know when you might want an hour long video of a missionary practice lesson ;)

end of the month

The way it normally works is that the missionaries have interviews one month, specialized training one month and zone conferences one month, then we start the quarter cycle over again. When the missionaries came in for their leadership meeting, they put forward ideas for the specialized training and then we prepared and practiced for those days.

Because we are reading the Book of Mormon as a mission, it was great for me to do a spiritual thought about the tree of life. I put together this little video with pictures from the internet as an introduction to the theme with music that is also called Tree of Life by Audiomachine.
 
We talked about the tree representing the love of God and that they, themselves are also trees of life in a way. They always have such great ideas and comments. I don’t know that I have ever enjoyed teaching more than I do in this scenario. About mid-way, I showed them another video addressing death. Their heartfelt comments brought tears to my eyes as they related the two to missionary work.
An Undertaking from Dark Rye on Vimeo.

P-day Navideno

zone conference in GC, RM & Caseros

Oh Elderes del Gran Catan

They kind of collapsed at the third verse, but then they pulled it out in the end. Enjoy the moment as we did!
The missionaries in Ramos Mejia came dressed in blue as a demonstration of zone unity, so we joined in with them for a group photo.
Our last workshop is about love. I have been using some scriptures in Ephesians 2 and a video project called Touching Strangers. It is always a little strange for me to give the same workshop more than once. I originally did this workshop with the zone leaders, but then my husband lobbied all of them and they lobbied to have it presented in the zone conferences. I have to say that I have loved doing it with all of the missionaries and it has been a spiritually uplifting experience for me every time. Today I felt that I should bring up something about the relations in a companionship. We discussed it for a little bit in the context of our other discussion. I hadn’t done that in any of the other workshops, but then Presidente came forward with two missionaries to begin his part. He hadn’t done that in the other workshops either. Eventually, two other companionship were called upon, as well. I will just write about one part, although the entire experience was beautiful in every way. It will make a little bit more sense if you have a couple of minutes to watch the video.

Anyway, one of the elders in the companionship is from Utah. He grew up in the church. His parents are members and his grandparents etc for a long ways back. He spent his time before the mission involved in primary and youth activities of the church. The other missionary is from the forests of Peru. He is the only member of the church in his family. He is not new to our mission, but even at the present time, he has only been a member of the church for two years. One of these missionaries is tall and pale. The other is very short dark. You cannot imagine two people more different in experience and background. The point is that they have found tons of things in common, but more than anything else, they love working together and they do it really well and they love what they are doing because they love the Lord.
Oh, it is so beautiful to be serving a mission with this group of missionaries!
Ellos se cayeron en el tercer versículo, pero al fin termino bien. Disfruten el momento como lo hicimos. Los misioneros de Ramos llegaron llevando azul como una demostración de unidad. Nos juntamos con ellos para una foto de su grupo.  El ultimo taller es acerca del amor. Estaba usando escrituras de  Efesios 2 y un proyecto de video se llama Tocando Desconocidos. Para mi es un poco raro dar el mismo taller mas de una vez. Originalmente, hice este taller con los líderes de las zonas pero después, mi esposo los convenció a ellos y ellos me convencieron de tener este taller en las conferencias de las zonas. Tengo que decir que he amado hacer con todos los misioneros y ha sido una experiencia muy edificante para mi cada vez. Hoy sentí que necesitaba hablar acerca de las relaciones entre compañerismos. Tuvimos una charla con el contexto de nuestra otra discusión. No he hecho eso en ninguna del los otros talleres, pero después el Presidente vino adelante con dos misioneros para empezar su parte. Tampoco el no ha hecho eso en los otros talleres. Por fin, dos companerismos mas participaran tambien. Voy a escribir acerca de una parte aunque toda la experiencia fue muy linda en cada manera. Va a ser mas fácil si tiene algunas minutos para mirar el video. Uno de los elderes en este compañerismo es de Utah. Creció en la iglesia. Sus padres son miembros y su abuelo tambien por generaciones. Paso su tiempo antes de su misión ocupado en la primaria y las actividades para la juventud de la iglesia. El otro misionero es de la selva de Peru. El es el único miembro de la iglesia en su familia. El no es nuevo a nuestra misión, pero ahora tiene solamente 2 anos como un miembro de la iglesia. Uno de estos misioneros es alto y blanco. El otro es bajo y negro. No pude imaginar dos personas mas diferentes en sus experiencias y su tipo de vida. El punto es que ellos tienen un montón de cosas similares, pero mas que todo, ellos aman la oportunidad trabajar juntos y lo hicieron muy bien y aman que ellos están haciendo porque aman al Señor. Oh, es tan lindo servir una misión con este grupo de misioneros!