13 December 2006 – Wednesday

Since today was new missionary intake day, are awake at 5:00 am so we can get over the MTC early and get a good parking space in the church parking lot. Since no new missionaries will come in between today and the first Wednesday in January, the group coming in today is large – close to 500. During the day and into the evening we greet and talk to them when ever we get a chance. It is great to see the smiles on their faces and feel their spirits.

As we were on a break, two missionaries – not new ones – said hello to us. We stopped and spent a couple of minutes talking and we found out they had been here just one week. I was inspired to ask them to give us a 3-5 minute discussion on the Restoration. One of the elders had a hard time getting started so the other one jumped right in and gave a good presentation of the first four points, by then the other elder had recovered and finished up with the last points. As they spoke I could feel their spirits and I told them so. I reminded them that the Lord had promised them that if they would open their mouth he would provide them with what to say. It was an important part of my day.

The day was spent completely on learning how to conduct a Career Workshop. Jeff Foy was our instructor and he was very, very good. If I can learn to teach the workshop 1/2 as well as he did, I will be happy. Mainly he had us actually do a good portion of the workshop – just as if we were taking it. A full workshop takes about 12 hours. I found that parts of it was not easy to do – especially when trying to develop a good ‘Me in 30 Seconds’ statement.  It was a day of learning.

In the evening we had our last language lesson with Sister Tippetts. Since sister Kane was taking a class in using the computer – I am rather amazed at the number of couples who have no or little computer skills – we invited elder Kane to share our lesson. After an hour Dan was in information overload, so he left to try and digest some of it while we finished up. Although I am far from being able to communicate in Indonesian, I am always surprised at how much has actually soaked in. As I hear some one talking or while reading something, I often find myself trying to translate into Indonesian. Hopefully the learning curve will pick up and with the Lord’s help the language will start to flow.

I forgot to mention that a new intake of senior missionaries came in on Monday. We try to stop and say hello to as many of them as we can. We found a group of them were going to Nauvoo and we asked them to be sure to meet Nancy and Neal and say that the Piers say hello. Most of the senior missionaries who came in this week are going on proselyting missions. I am a little jealous but then realize we will have many opportunities to invite others to come unto Christ – we just have to be ready and able to do it well and with the spirit.