Mission Leadership Council

We were invited by President Cusick to join with the missionary leaders for the monthly Mission Leadership Council.  Included are the assistants to the president, zone leaders, and sister training leaders.  The purpose is to provide administrative guidance and to set the training agenda for the district meetings for the coming month.  Pres. Cusick is concerned that the training agendas are not getting to the district leaders and are not being used in district meetings.  He asked me yesterday to think about how to improve this.  Then unexpectedly (at least to me) had me speak about how to carrying the training from the meeting to the district leaders.  I focused on the importance of writing down what was said and then referring to those notes often.  I used a statement I recently heard that the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory.

Pres. Cusick said that for the next month, the training should focus on three topics -- and only these three topics: Personal conversion to the Book of Mormon, How to gift (present) the Book of Mormon to investigators, and Utilizing the pamphlets.  There was some discussion on these topics along with role playing with potential investigators.  I thought it was a good and very direct presentation.  I guess we will find out over the next month as we travel to district meetings.

Usually these meetings are held in different Church buildings, but occasionally they are held "off-site."  Today's was at Hurley Park adjacent to a beach in St. Pete Beach.  It was a cloudy, windy, cool day.  We were all wearing jackets, so there wasn't much temptation for the beach.  It is a nice beach though.

We then drove back to Sarasota and worked on getting our lease resolved.  Supposedly everything is now OK with the leasing company to accept a lease with the Church and provide the needed information.  However, things keep falling through the cracks.  If we didn't really like the apartment complex, I would have given up on this process.  It is still not entirely resolved, but I think with some additional pushing it just might get done.