One thing we love about Tennessee is people here love Jesus Christ, and they aren’t hesitant to share that love. There are a lot of churches and the parking lots are full on Sunday. It’s not unusual to see people praying in a restaurant before they enjoy their meal. This makes is easy to start conversations about Jesus Christ, but at times, our missionaries can be be talking about Jesus Christ without teaching about the Doctrine of Christ, which is “Our Missionary Purpose” and the way the Savior taught that we come unto Him.

Nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach. Finding people to teach is where missionaries spend most of their time, and it can easily become pretty discouraging.

We have to talk to a lot of people to find those who are interested in learning more, and in that process, our missionaries face quite a bit of rejection. Much more than they have ever experienced before in their life. Finding requires faith, commitment, diligence, and persistence, so as mission leaders, we spend a lot of time nurturing and developing our faith to find.

While it might be the hardest part of missionary work, it is also the place where missionaries see the hand of God in their life the most, and where they see miracles occur as they are led to those God has prepared to receive the message of the Doctrine of Christ.

As new mission leaders, we’ve felt that we should begin by strengthening our missionaries faith to find. Once we zero in on a theme like this, we work with our Mission Leadership Council to identify the best ways to teach our missionaries these principles.

This is our Mission Leadership Council. They are an incredible group of missionaries who have the opportunity and responsibility to lead other missionaries. We have seven zones in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission that range in size from 20-32 missionaries, and each zone has four leaders: two sister training leaders and two zone leaders. Their primary responsibilities are to build the faith and skills of the missionaries they lead.

The Mission Leadership Council meets monthly to discuss priorities and how to best meet the needs of our mission. We typically have this meeting at a church building, but Kimberly really wanted to have this group meet at the mission home. It was a tight squeeze, but we cleared out space in the basement and talked about the faith to find.

We met with this leadership team from 10am-3pm. They are very inspired and love the missionaries they serve. The discussion and counsel shared was incredible, and led to two key areas of focus: 1) planning to find, and 2) talking with everyone. Both are acts of faith for missionaries as they seek to find people to teach.

Planning to find is setting daily and hourly finding goals, and having a proactive mindset around finding during each hour of the day. Talking with everyone requires missionaries to overcome fear and hesitation, and to have this commitment to be proactive in talking with everyone who crosses their path each day.

We then take those themes to zone conference. Zone conference is where missionaries gather together once very transfer (every six weeks) to learn more and discuss these themes, and then practice the skills that will help us improve. In August, we did three zone conferences: 1) Cumberland and Knoxville Zones, 2) Chattanooga, Cleveland, and Cookeville Zones, and 3) Asheville and Kingsport Zones.

Zone Conference runs from 10am to 3pm. During that time, I taught the missionaries about the faith to find, that faith will always lead to action, and in finding that action is our willingness and commitment to talk with everyone. Kimberly taught about expressing our love for the Savior by keeping our missionary standards, loving the members through service, and loving their companion. With that, she announced the “TKM Companion Appreciation Day” on August 30th, which is also our anniversary.

Our sister training leaders, Sister Chan and Sister Cunningham, gave outstanding training on talking with everyone, and principles we can use from Preach My Gospel to find people to teach. Our assistants, Elder Spiers and Elder Criddle, were very inspiring as they taught about the principles of planning to find. We spent an hour doing role plays to help missionaries build the skills with the principles that were taught.

Our missionaries are amazing! Their willingness to try new things is really high, and it is remarkable to see them take the things we discuss at zone conference and begin to apply those principles as soon as they leave the meeting.

After spending three days on the road together and training all 170 of our missionaries, we celebrated with the assistants, sister training leaders, and Elder and Sister Jentzsch at White Duck Taco in Asheville, NC. We love these missionaries and feel to grateful for their leadership.

There are a few other things from the last two weeks that were great experiences for us.

We were invited to speak at a youth devotional with the Chattanooga Stake about the opportunity each of these youth have to serve a full-time mission.. Samantha was the star of the show as she spoke about the blessings that come as we make the sacrifice to serve and adopt Nephi’s mindset of “I will go and do the things which the Lord has commanded.” We then had a missionary panel where the youth asked questions of our missionaries, which included Elder and Sister Larson (senior couple in Chattanooga Branch), Elder Hagerman and Elder Bangerter (zone leaders in Chattanooga) and Sister Colson and Sister Maxwell (sister training leaders in Chattanooga).

We attended the first sacrament meeting for the new Spanish group in the Lakeway Ward in the Cumberland Stake. That felt like a historical moment as we hope this small group today will grow into a large gathering of saints. We love President Dahl, stake president of the Cumberland Stake, who spoke at the meeting.

We had a follow up meeting with all of our new missionaries and their trainers to discuss their training experience and reinforce principles that will help them be successful missionaries. This is an incredible bunch. Some of our best missionaries are training these new missionaries and are doing remarkable work for which we are very grateful.

And lastly, Samantha had her first day as a sophomore at Farragut High School. I continue to be amazed by Samantha. She has made the biggest sacrifice of all of us by leaving Taylorsville and coming to Knoxville where she is building a whole new circle of friends. It’s been hard, but the people here have been incredibly kind, and I admire Sami’s positive attitude and determination to be proactive in making new friends. We love Sam!

Transfer week is the week where departing missionaries go home, new missionaries arrive, and others get transferred to new locations (and new companions) across the mission. It was a lot of work, but it was also a really incredible, Spirit-led experience.

As mission leaders, we make the decisions of who to put the new missionaries with for their 12-week training period, which missionaries should be transferred, where they should go, and who their new companion will be.

We believe God is involved in those details and will put these missionaries where He needs them most. We expected to feel the Spirit guiding those decisions, but were surprised at how truly Spirit-led the entire process turned out to be. Heavenly Father really does know where He wants each of these missionaries. That is due to the people He needs them to serve, and other times it is about the missionaries He needs them to serve with. Most of the time, I’m sure it is a mixture of both and likely many other factors we wouldn’t know about.

The first experience of transfer week was taking the 22 missionaries who were heading home in July to the Nashville Tennessee Temple. It’s a little bit of a journey from Knoxville to Nashville, but these missionaries really look forward to the experience. A new temple has been announced for Knoxville and we hope work will begin on that temple soon.

On Thursday, we welcomed 18 new missionaries to the Tennessee Knoxville Mission. This was a really impressive bunch and we know the Lord has great things planned for each of them. Their day started at 3am at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, so by the time we got them to the mission home to have dinner together, they were pretty exhausted. We kept things brief after dinner, and sent them home to bed as we had a busy day planned for them the next day.

Friday morning began at 8am where we put these new missionaries through orientation. That included interviews with me, interviews with Kimberly, a trip to Knoxville to do some street contacting and sharing the Book of Mormon, and discussions with the senior missionaries in the office to explain to them the expectations and support around finances, healthcare, mental health, apartments, and vehicles. I don’t know what we would do without our amazing office staff. They are really extraordinary!

Once we wrapped that up, the next thing that afternoon was introducing them to their trainers. Being a trainer, without a doubt, is the most important leadership role in the mission. They are the ones who transfer all of the knowledge and culture to these new missionaries. They are with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and watch over, care for, support, and train these new missionaries for their first 12 weeks. You can imagine the huge adjustment these new missionaries experience during that time as very few things are familiar from their life prior to the mission. There are some tough moments to navigate, and their trainer is the primary person who helps them get through it. We felt that we should only ask our very best missionaries to accept this assignment.

I’ll take a brief side track here. My trainer on my mission in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission was Elder Garland Parris. Today Elder Parris is a firefighter in Phoenix, Arizona. We traded notes right before Kimberly and I went to the MTC. Elder Parris was doing the things that trainers do…trying to pump me up and build my confidence. “You’re going to be great! This is going to be an amazing experience. These missionaries are so lucky…they are going to love you!” Things like that…building my confidence.

I said to him, “Elder Parris, I want you to know that very few people have had the impact on my life that you have had. My mission meant EVERYTHING to me. I look back and it was the most impactful experience of my life, and so many good things in my life can be traced back to that experience. And my mission was so good because my trainer was so good. You put in all the effort to make sure my mission started exactly the way it was supposed to begin. And that good start made all the difference. All the amazing experiences that came after were a result of that effort in how my mission began. Thank you!”

That’s the impact of a trainer, and that’s why we feel it is the most important leadership role in the mission.

So we had to choose 18 missionaries to be trainers to these brand new missionaries. The Spirit was so clear during that entire process. It was very evident who the 18 trainers should be. And then assigning them to the right companion was an even more powerful experience. As I was interviewing these new missionaries, I would check the list to see who their trainer would be and had the same impression every time: “That is going to be perfect!”

If we can get it right, the relationship they will have with their trainer will be one of the most powerful friendships they have on their mission. So the moment that a new missionary is introduced to their trainer is a really big deal. It would be hard for me to describe how strong the Spirit was as we announced these companionships. The trainers are all seated at the back of the chapel and don’t know who their companion is going to be. The new missionaries are seated in the first few rows and as you can imagine, are pretty nervous about what is about to take place.

We would call a new missionary by name and ask them to stand, and then we would tell them we would like to introduce them to their trainer, and call the trainer by name. The trainer would come up with a big smile on their face, and wrap that new missionary in a big hug. It was a really exciting moment.

Once we had made all of those assignments, we said a few brief words of instruction, and these new missionaries were off to their new areas with the new companions.

Transfers had also begun. We had announced transfers earlier in the week where many missionaries were informed they will be moving and will be working with a different companion. They all come to the stake center in Farragut where one missionary is dropped off (along with everything they own, which isn’t much), and a new missionary is picked up. In the meantime, it’s like a family reunion has broken out where missionaries take a few minutes to catch up with other missionaries they haven’t seen in awhile.

You ultimately end up having to break up the party and send everyone back to work. But the reason they linger is because they love each other so much. These will be some of the best friends they have in their life because this shared experience is so powerful.

Once transfers had cleared out, we took the departing missionaries back to the mission home where we did the first every “TKM Family Olympics”. Every Memorial Day we have the “Barlow Family Olympics” and this was a knock off of that. We divided into 10 teams that competed in five different events:

Corn Hole
Bocce
Kub (it’s a fun game…look it up)
Chalk Art, and
Checkers

We had a lot of fun spending the afternoon with this group of missionaries and reminiscing about the many great experiences they’ve had in Tennessee.

The competition was stiff! And it went down to the wire. But Elder Noble and Elder Nelson asked me to make sure everyone knew they were the gold medal winners.

This is a very special crew. They have given up 18 or 24 months of their life and literally set everything aside to come to the Tennessee Knoxville Mission to serve the Lord, to serve the people of Tennessee, and do everything they can to help others come unto Christ. In the process, they’ve been given life-changing experiences that will never be forgotten. They have built friendships that can never be broken. And they have learned important lessons that will bless them for the rest of their lives and help them to be life-long disciples of Jesus Christ. We love them, have great respect for them, and feel very proud of them.

Lastly, over the last two weeks we have traveled across the mission to attend as many baptisms as we could. These are really powerful meetings as we get to witness the joy people feel as they make changes in their life and make covenants with God, and also seeing the joy of these wonderful missionaries who have been working so closely with them. We feel very lucky!