At the mid-point of their first transfer, we bring new missionaries and their trainers back to Knoxville for a day of training called “New Missionary Follow Up”. With 23 new missionaries and 23 trainers this last transfer, this meeting was the size of one of our zone conferences.

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In the past, the main focus of this training was “Adjusting to Missionary Life”. But since starting our Missionary Resilience Class (which is based on the Self Reliance: Emotional Resilience class), we’ve been able to change of the focus of this training.

Of all the topics we could choose, we’ve felt that one of the most important skills these new missionaries can have is finding new people to teach. This is because Preach My Gospel teaches us that “Nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach.”

But this is a challenging skill to learn. It requires overcoming fear and replacing it with the faith to find. It’s not natural for these missionaries to open their mouth and have the courage to talk with everyone. They are asked to initiate conversations with strangers, which isn’t a skill they typically start their mission with, so we focus all of New Missionary Follow Up on building the faith to find.

How do we do that? We take skills taught in Preach My Gospel and role play those skills over and over again. For example, skills like sharing our missionary purpose, asking inspired questions, using the Book of Mormon to answer questions, and inviting friends to learn more.

Role playing is another skill that usually has to be learned. In the beginning, missionaries are usually uncomfortable in role playing these skills. We remind them there is no growth in the comfort zone! We build skills through practice and repetition, and that practice for us as missionaries is role playing. This gives them the opportunity to practice themselves and hear the language others use that they can adopt.

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All morning is spent doing these role plays. After lunch, we take a couple of hours on learning how to find people through technology. Investing a day with these new missionaries helps them to learn these important skills, which leads to them feeling more confident in doing the things they are asked to do.

This is a really great group of missionaries and we are excited to spend the next 18 and 24 months with them.

Christmas is an amazing time to be a missionary. While it is common for missionaries to be missing home and thinking about family traditions that make Christmas special to them, it is remarkable to be a representative of Jesus Christ at a time when everyone is celebrating His birth.

To celebrate Christmas as a mission, we invited each zone to plan their own Christmas party. Zone leadership did a lot of work to get everything prepared. Every party was different yet a ton of fun as missionaries gathered together to celebrate in these smaller groups.

What did the missionaries do? Here are a few highlights:

• Devotional that included Sister Barlow reading a Christmas story and sharing our family’s Christmas traditions.
• A great devotional where we watched “The Christ Child” and missionaries shared thoughts on the perspective of Mary, Joseph, the angels, and the shepherds. The impressions missionaries shared were really powerful.
• Dinners that ranged from pizza parties to a Mexican fiesta to a traditional Christmas ham. The homemade tortillas some friends made for the fiesta were especially good. And shout out to the Kingsport Relief Society for offering to prepare the meal for the Kingsport Zone.
• Decorating gingerbread houses, but often with a twist. While some did gingerbread houses others recreated stories from the scriptures.
• A Christmas piñata.
• A visit from Santa Clause.
• A corn hole tournament.
• A pickle ball tournament, included a huge bracket to track the winners.
• White elephant gifts.
• A game from Elder Jentzsch called “A Dog. A Cat.”
• An egg nog chugging contest.
• Ugly sweater contests.
• Basketball, spikeball, and volleyball.
• Lots of other music and games.

We also had the opportunity to attend the Nativity that was put on by the Chattanooga Stake. It was absolutely incredible! For three days they completely transformed the stake center into a walk through experience of the nativity, beautiful displays of art, and so many talented stake members who provided music. We are already looking forward to attending it again next year.

At the beginning of each month we meet with the Mission Leadership Council. The mission is divided into “zones”, or geographical areas of missionaries, and each zone has four leaders: two sisters who are “sister training leaders” and two elders who are “zone leaders”.

These leaders spend time with the missionaries in their zone doing training, most of which is being side-by-side with them while doing missionary work. They set goals for zone and work with all of the missionaries to achieve those goals. They work hard to inspire their fellow missionaries and build their skills.

These leaders make up a council…the Mission Leadership Council…that leads the mission.

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As we meet each month with the Mission Leadership Council…or MLC…they set the goals for the mission, determine the training needed most, and are responsible for the culture of the mission.

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As we are closing in on six months here in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission, we decided to check in on key strengths and opportunities that the MLC sees in our mission culture.

We did this when we first arrived in the mission in July by using the question, “In the Tennessee Knoxville Mission we ___________.” Missionaries were invited to fill in the blank to help identify key attributes of our culture. Here is how the MLC completed that sentence in December 2023.

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We also gathered input on other questions like, “What do you see as the strengths in our culture in the TKM?”

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We counseled together about the biggest opportunities in our mission and decided that the most important opportunity we could focus on was planning. Preach My Gospel has an entire chapter on planning titled “Accomplish the Work Through Goals and Plans” that helps missionaries follow a process in setting goals, making plans, acting on those plans, and following up.

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In this chapter, missionaries learn key principles like:

Goal setting and planning are acts of faith.
Goals reflect the desires of your heart and your vision for helping yourself and others come to the Savior.
Carefully considered goals and plans will give you clear direction.
Make your goal setting and planning an inspired experience.
Pray earnestly, exercise faith, counsel with your companion, and follow the promptings of the Spirit.
As you plan this way, you will feel the Lord working through you to bless others.

After reviewing these principles, we made plans on how we could train missionaries and build greater skills with planning in December. Our goal is for every missionary in the TKM to become a “Master Planner”.

I look back on my experience as a missionary and recognize it was the first place I began to learn important leadership skills that would help me for the rest of my life.

It was on my mission where I learned leadership principles like, “Assume people are doing the best they can, and if they are going to improve, it is up to me to help them to do it.” And “You can’t ask someone to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself.” And how to use principles like repetition and high love, high expectations in leading others.

These are leadership principles I’ve used throughout my life that I first learned as a missionary where I was assigned to lead others. And now these missionaries are learning many of those same lessons, and we hope these lessons will help them for the rest of their lives.

On November 30th, we welcomed 23 new missionaries to the Tennessee Knoxville Mission.

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These missionaries were greeted by the welcome posters created by the departing missionaries who had returned home the previous day.

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On their very first day, we teach these new missionaries skills around finding people to teach and then take them to the campus of the University of Tennessee to put these new skills to work. And these missionaries were amazing!

We shared with them that with the last group of new missionaries who arrived in October, when they visited the campus on their first day they found a man who was then taught by the missionaries and was baptized just the week prior to this new group’s arrival.

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We are really excited about this new group of missionaries. Welcome to the TKM!

We said goodbye to another incredible group of missionaries on November 30th. This group has made a tremendous difference in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission: We’ve spent more time with each group who goes home now, so it continues to get more difficult to see them leave.

It was a very competitive 4th TKM Olympics with four events:

1) Corn hole
2) Bocce
3) Kub
4) Poster decoration

The poster decoration was a new event, but will likely stick because of the impact. These returning missionaries were asked to create welcome posters for the new missionaries who would arrive Thursday afternoon after this group had left Thursday morning. It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun.

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The poster decoration was very competitive. We were impressed how much effort these missionaries put into the assignment to welcome these new missionaries who they would not meet. It actually was really powerful.

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After all events were completed, Elder Putt and Elder Johnson were awarded the medals for their 1st place finish in the 4th TKM Family Olympics. It would have been more appropriate to get their picture taken while they still were wearing their Tennessee checkerboard overalls…but missionary attire will have to do.

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Before heading to the hotel, this group recorded one last “Tender Mercy” video to send our to their fellow missionaries in the TKM.

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We love these missionaries and wonder how we will be able to continue on without them. They are outstanding missionaries and have served incredibly well, and we know there are great things that lie ahead for them.

Front Row: Elder Johnson, Elder Klein, Elder Smith, Elder Putt, Elder Criddle, Elder Nelson
Back Row: Sister Sincich, Sister Hurley, Sister Parry, Sister Nuttall, Sister Griffiths, Sister Chan, Sister Dean, Sister Phillips, Sister Oldroyd, Sister Georgeson, Sister Stroud

We love you!