Happy Father's Day Yesterday! We had a fantastic sacrament meeting: Sister Jody Geis and her daughter Lyndy Geis spoke about father's/husbands--this last weekend Lacy (other daughter) was married in the temple to a young man. At the same time, Eric Geis was there (Jody's husband, who is not a member), and he was able to hear about how much his wife and daughter appreciate him. He went through the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House and has agreed to meet with the missionaries! We also received today in the mail a referral to see him (he had filled out one of the referral cards at the Temple Square Visitor's Center).
Saturday's activity was a great success! We ended up having 19 youth, about 10 adults, and 12 missionaries present. The youth were divided into three groups: English, Spanish, and Japanese. There were 4 English, 6 Spanish, and 9 Japanese. Elders Wallace, Morrell, Jones, and Bair taught the English group; Elders Correa, Wuthridge, Hall, and Finn taught Spanish, and Elders Stephenson (AP), Rigg, Nelson, Robinson, and Callor taught the Japanese group.
We had Brother Booth act as the MTC President for the activity, and his wife accompanied him. Bishop Bertagnole and Brother Nichols (member of the bishopric) acted as his counselors. Sister Bertagnole played the piano for the activity, Brother and Sister Bohn prepared lunch, with help from Sister Benedict, Brother Cowley and Sister Wrigley played the part of investigators for the kids to teach! Every group was taught about the Message of the Restoration, The Plan of Salvation, and The Gospel of Jesus Christ. The foreign language groups were also taught a little about their language, and learned two songs in that language, Spanish learned I Am A Child of God, and Called to Serve, Japanese learned Kaeru No Uta Ga, and Called to Serve. The English group (during this phase of the activity) was taught how to conduct music, and received a lesson on "How to Teach." We had a scripture chase activity for each group (separated), a relay race (combined) and tracting (separated). The Relay Race had three Stations: Companionship inventory, Cheerful Chores, and 5 Minute Lunch. Companionship Inventory consisted of one companionship per group trying to match items from two bags: The point was that a companionship had to be unified in order to work effectively, and there was only one matching item per set and they were separated by a chalk board from seeing into each other's bags. Cheerful Chores was to teach the kids that even when missionary work is hard, you still need to be happy: they had to chew up 5 saltine crackers and then whistle a song to someone (very hard to do!). 5 Minute Lunch Break was to demonstrate that missionaries are often in a big hurry: they had to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (for the entire group), but because "they had forgotten to wash dishes this morning, and didn't have time to do so," they had to use CHOPSTICKS to make the sandwiches! I think the English group finished first, but they were disqualified because their sandwiches were awful! (mostly jelly, one dab of PB) Therefore the Japanese group won (almost perfect sandwiches!)
We also had a testimony meeting where some of the kids bore their testimony in a foreign language. "Elder" Jeffrey Benedict (12) bore his testimony in Japanese! A lot of the Spanish missionaries did theirs in Spanish. We ended the activity by having the youth sing Called To Serve: verses were in English, but the first chorus was Japanese and the second was Spanish.We then had a lunch of hamburgers and the missionaries sang Called to Serve (to show them how it's done!)It was a FANTASTIC experience! All the youth want to do something like this again. Hopefully they can make a Stake-wide version of this!Well, all out of time,Love,Elder Callor
