Mission Leadership Council

We drove to Tampa to the mission office to participate in the monthly Mission Leadership Council.  The purpose for this meeting is to provide instruction for the missionary leaders and also to help set the agendas for the district meetings this month.

President Cusick assigned each companionship of Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders to prepare a short role play/training on a specific topic, such as teaching missionaries about obedience, sharing a Book of Mormon with an investigator, teaching the Plan of Salvation, and so forth.  He recorded each of the presentations with the intent of distributing some of them to be shown in district meetings.  He thought the missionaries would be more likely to critique a presentation if the presenters are not in the meeting.  Even if that doesn't work, it will still have been beneficial for the the ZLs and STLs to have seen how other missionaries presented on the topics.

Toward the end of the meeting, President Cusick asked about our Standards of Excellence for missionary work.  Following a request from the Area Authority, the standards were set.  However, they have not been emphasized.  The standards include teaching 20 lessons per week, finding 3 new investigators a week, and others.  They have not been emphasized in the mission because of a concern that missionaries would focus too much on the numbers and those who fall short would be despondent.  After a good discussion, the missionaries suggested that we slightly increase the expectations and emphasize them more.  I proposed calling them Acceptable Quality Standards rather than Standards of Excellence.  The missionaries seemed to like this.  There is still a concern about the missionaries who regularly fall short of the standard, especially the Sister Missionaries.

A new missionary couple arrived today, Elder and Sister Hardy.  They will be living in Port Charlotte and working with the ward there.  I expect we will see them regularly.  Another couple arrived yesterday, the Alexanders.  Sister Alexander will be our mission nurse.  Hopefully she will take some of the health duties that Renee has had for the past two months.