The Missionary Department sent out a new emphasis on "Preach My Gospel Methods." It re-emphasizes attention to teaching skills and more focus on the investigator and less on memorized, robotic deliveries of doctrines and principle of the gospel. It also changes a lot of how we do business. We now have zone coneferences and personal interviews every three months instead of every six weeks, which theoretically allows a mission president more time to work more closely with missionaries. There are a number of regularly scheduled training meetings for misson leadership and trainers. They are the missionaries who do face-to-face training of the field missionaries. Bored yet?

The first training called for 3-4 days straight with the leadership. These are four pictures of that major event.


We gathered in the church across the street from the mission offices. This is the oldest church in the State of Veracruz. It was fit for air conditioning less than a year ago! And they only air-conditioned the chapel. So, of course, we met in the cultural hall for these August 1st meetings. We didn't want our missionaries to catch a cold.


Assistant to the President Elder Redfern led some of the training. He is always ready with a wisecrack.


Elders Villalobos, Cano, Lozano, and Merino enjoyed. Well, maybe Elder Cano didn't quite get the joke. It was in Spanish.


Assistant to the President Amador (which translates "lover," but he was actually a world-class swimmer before his mission) runs the training videos the Church sent us.