Mission Leader Seminar

In October, we were invited to the Mission Leader Seminar in Orlando, Florida where we had the opportunity to meet the mission leaders of the 15 other missions in the North America Southeast Area. This meeting is hosted by the area presidency (Elder Stanfill, Elder Bowen, Elder Bassett, and Elder Corbitt) where they provide training and instruction to the mission leaders in the area. It was incredibly helpful and we left feeling very uplifted.

As part of the week, we took a short break and went to “Wild Florida” where we were introduced to airboats, alligators, and many other animals in the park.

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The highlight of the trip for us was the afternoon we were able to go to the Orlando Florida Temple. As we don’t have a temple in our mission, we don’t get to attend the temple as often as we’d like, so this was something we were looking forward to and really appreciated.

Mission Leadership Council

While at the temple, we felt some strong impressions about direction to bring back to our missionaries, which included:

1. Build the faith that every area can baptize every month.
2. Ensure our testifying contacts are leading to new people being taught.
3. Double the number of lessons with members participating.
4. Be bolder with the invitation to be baptized and confirmed.

We brought these themes back and shared them with our Mission Leadership Council on Halloween. We’ve recently made a lot of changes with MLC where many leaders have moved to training, and new leaders were brought onto the MLC. We love this group! They have so much faith and do a great job of serving the missionaries in their zones. With their feedback, we created the training plan for zone conferences in November.

New Missionary Follow Up

But before we got to zone conferences, we had our mid-transfer follow up with our new missionaries and their trainers. This is a really great group of missionaries. We spend a morning together doing training and role plays focused on building our finding skills. This often is the biggest challenge for new missionaries. The don’t typically come with much experience of stopping strangers and engaging them in a conversation about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, so those are skills we have to practice and work to improve. This group is doing it!

Zone Conferences

We felt these zone conferences may end up being some of the most memorable we will have in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission. The missionaries were very engaged and willing to act on the four impressions we felt at the temple. Sister Barlow shared a message about the need to have more grit that will be remembered. We made a change for these zone conferences with our training and role plays. In the past we’ve has the Assistants and our lead Sister Training Leaders join us at zone conferences to facilitate the training, but we changed to having the zone leadership teams do all of the training and role plays, and they did an amazing job with training on the invitation to be baptized and confirmed and ensuring our testifying contacts are focused on getting return appointments.

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There is something special happening in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission. Spiritual momentum is a real thing, and you can feel it with these missionaries. They are working extremely hard to implement everything they are asked to do. They have so much faith and are so willing to do anything that will help more people come unto Christ. Their efforts are starting to pay off in how they help others, but we feel more than anything, it is helping them become lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. They are amazing!

One of the great blessings of this service is the opportunity for us to serve side-by-side with them. We love them and feel so inspired by them every day.

Sister Barlow,

I wanted to send you an email about the experience I had with the Book of Mormon Challenge you gave me. Even though I know that I already talked to you and thanked you at zone conference and shared a little bit about my experience I wanted to share a little more about the lessons you were able to teach me through this experience.

That challenge you gave me July 27th to read the whole Book of Mormon and to mark every referance to Jesus Christ was everything to me. That Book of Mormon you handed me my first day in the TKM has become my most prized possesion. I carry it with me always. In it you invited me to mark every single refferance to Jesus Christ, I also added and marked every verse I though would be a good “shareable” verse (this quickly turned into marking two consecutive scriptures to share for the finding flow). The lessons I’ve learned from this challengenge… I couldn’t even begin to list them all but I wanted to share a couple.

The first lesson I learned was that Christ is everywhere. As I earnestly looked for him in the Book of Mormon I found myself findng him not just in the verses in the Book of Mormon but in every aspect of my life. On every hard day I could find him (even on the days it was really hard), mainly what I’m trying to say right now is thank you for teaching me how to look for Jesus Christ in ever aspect of my life.

The second lesson I learned changed the outlook I had on my mission. The first few weeks of my mission I was questioning ALL my life decisions. The mission was nothing like I ever expected and I felt absolutly completely unprepared and I have never seriously considered throwing in the towel, but that frist week the reality that I would be doing this for the next 18 months really hit me (and not in a good way).

But because I had taken your challenge I was reading in 1 Nephi 3 and I’ve always loved verse 7 but thats not the verse that stood out to me this time. This time it was verse 15 which says, “As the Lord liveth, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the things which the Lord hath commanded us.” and this scripture kept me on my mission. I know that God has commanded me to be here that he has commanded me to serve here and as the Lord liveth I will not go home until I have accomplished the mission that the Lord has prepared for me.

As you were talking about grit in zone conference this scripture came into my mind again and I believe that this is the Grit that you and God has asked us to have. To keep trying to stay, to keep trying over and over again every day no matter what the “Labans” of the mission throw at us. To not go home (to our apartments or our families,) until we have finsihed the work that he has for us to do.

The last thing I wanted to share was the truth that I found in these pages. I’ve always known the Book of Mormon was true. But because of the study I did in my first two transfers, I can testify of its divinity like I never could before. And I know that the Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth…and that a man will get nearer unto God by abiding by its precepts than by any other book” because it happened to me.

So thank you for this challenge and thank you for setting me up for succes for the rest of my mission and my life. I don’t think there will ever be a point where I can thank you enough.

Love,
Sister Hall

Side note: if you want to know how many references to Christ there are I couldn’t tell you but I can tell you that I used up my whole green pen and had to get a new one around the book of Ether haha.

On October 19th, we welcome 20 new missionaries to the TKM. We couldn’t be more excited about every one of them and know they will love Tennessee and the wonderful people here.

By the time they arrive in Tennessee, these missionaries have had a really long day. They typically got very little sleep there last night at the MTC. We take them from the airport to the mission home, feed them a good meal, and get them to bed to get rested before their orientation day.

The next morning, we share what they can expect in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission, provide orientation about finances, health care, vehicles, and the places they will live, take them to the University of Tennessee campus to do some finding, and snap a picture with each of them.

Following the morning of orientation, we announce the area they will start in and who their trainers will be, and by 1pm they head out and get to work.

Over the last three transfers, we had 18 missionaries arrive in July, 21 in September, and 20 in October. That is 59 new missionaries since we arrived, which is 1/3 of our mission. We currently have 41 missionaries in training, with 41 trainers, which is just under half of our mission. We’ve seen some amazing missionaries return home, but they continue to be replaced by these remarkable men and women who are ready to serve.