March 21, 2011
Dear Family and Friends,
The days seem to fly by when you are busy. February was the last full month of summer vacations here. Argentina is quite European in the sense that they value their vacations and take them regardless of whatever work may be pending. During summer, it is quite normal to expect long delays and a lot of stores and restaurants close for at least one month. The only positive is that the city is less crowded and the roads have less traffic. Overall, it has been good to begin our mission during the summer here because it has allowed us to get our feet on the ground and to understand our role much better. March is different and you can feel the pace start to pick up. We have begun to understand our assignments better and to focus on what we hope to achieve before we finish. That is always a good feeling.
I would say that we have settled into the role as “welfare missionaries” and if there is anything remotely related to welfare which President Arnold feels needs some attention, we generally get assigned to take a look. Currently our multiple assignments have distilled themselves into a few basic projects.
Our calling and primary assignment remains the Perpetual Education Fund. I outlined a little about how it works in my last letter, but for those of you who have donated to the fund, rest assured that the Church is very much on top of those funds and they are being put to good use to help those who otherwise would not be able to study. The PEF in our area was recognized by Salt Lake last month as the best performing area in the world in January. The local PEF coordinator, Isabel, is great and she and all the other workers and volunteers have done an amazing job to keep the monthly contacts at near 100% and the payments over the last 12 months at record levels (95%). The irony is that we have not done anything directly with the PEF other than to support and encourage Isabel and Claudia to keep working hard. I have not reviewed any loans and frankly, it is low on my priority list. I believe that you don’t try and fix it if it isn’t broken.
Our second area of work has been the development and implementation of a system to contact all the missionaries returning to this area at the end of their missions. The area Presidency was concerned about losing too many of our returning missionaries so we presented a program to contact all the missionaries who are returning to the South America South area with a letter from the Area Presidency and to track their progress for several months after they get back home. The first group of missionaries that received their letters and were part of the program were the 26 missionaries who returned to one of the wards or branches in our area in February. We have contacted most of them to verify if they received their letters from the Area Presidency, whether they have taken the Career Workshop at their Employment Resource Center and whether they are enrolled in Institute. The results have been interesting and very positive. We are working out the bugs, but I think we have clearly identified a need to help these returning missionaries adjust to the real world and to not feel alone in doing so. We sent another 36 letters to the missionaries returning in March. The April letters have gone out as well now. You can see how this aspect of our calling will only continue to multiply as we add about 30 new return missionaries every month to our database and we try to contact every one each month. We have enlisted the help of the PEF call centers and the Centers of Employment as well as Seminary and Institutes to make these contacts each month. We will keep you posted.
Our third area of focus is the Employment Resource Centers, which includes all of the professional and volunteer resource centers plus all the stakes under them. We have been blessed to work with the Employment Resource Centers (“CRE” down here) to make a lot of things happen. We focus on the five “professional centers” because they have an actual, rented office with computers, classrooms, etc. plus 2 full-time employees. The Volunteer Centers and the stakes are each staffed by a member or missionary couple and other volunteers. They work out of an assigned office in the stake center itself so they have internet access but no paid employees. On a personal level, I realize how much the Church relies on its good members to volunteer in its Centers and how valuable and rare a full time employee really is.
The Area Welfare Director, David Frol, is a talented manager but with only a couple of years experience in this job. Hermano (that is “brother” to you heathens) Frol and I have had some “animated” conversations about how to best manage the employment centers. Of course many of my ideas are somewhat of a shock to church employees who are used to reporting only the numbers that Salt Lake requires. Charting performance and sharing it among all of the 5 CRE's on a monthly basis has not been done – until now.
A related project, but fourth area of focus which we were just assigned, is to implement a program to train all of the Employment Specialists and bishops in the Area on how to use all of the Church’s welfare resources which are already available to them. We are emphasizing how the Employment Resource centers can support the members through these stake employment and education specialists. I have done training sessions with all the Bishops in two different stakes and I have gained some valuable feedback as to what works and what doesn’t. Eventually we will take this training to a control group of about 20 pre-selected stakes and then monitor whether their welfare statistics change or not. I hope to be able to empower those Employment Centers with the responsibility to help train the stake employment and education specialists. I envision it like a wave that starts with the Employment Centers and rolls out to all the stakes and members.
Our training will eventually include how to use the perpetual education fund, the function of the employment resource centers, the proper use of fast offerings and the Bishop’s storehouse. I know these Bishops and Stake Presidents are busy and have a lot on their minds. I am trying to approach these leaders with the idea that a Ward or Stake Specialist can help them “administer” many of these programs while they focus on “ministering” to their members. For example the PEF sends our monthly reports to all Bishops which show exactly where each participant in his ward stands with regard to his PEF loan. The Bishops have felt that the PEF is asking them to be bill collectors, which they should not be. Our training treats these PEF reports as “indicators” of what may be happening in the life of their member. If a good young person is not making his PEF loan payments, it is most likely that he has other problems in his life and a good interview is in order. The church has developed many training video clips which show different ways to reach those kids. If the local leaders can be persuaded to just show one of these little video clips each month, the spirit will touch them and they will learn one more technique or maybe they will simply be motivated to look at the reports they already get in a different way. Since Salt Lake has now added “Bishops Trained” to the key indicator report for PEF, I can get involved with the local stakes and hopefully have a positive impact on them.
The latest addition to our assignments I brought on myself. In our last PEF Committee meeting, I challenged the Area Director of Seminaries and Institutes to be more pro-active in making sure every stake has a PEF fireside which shows some of the many benefits of going through the whole PEF process. After the meeting I met with him one on one and he admitted that most of the stakes don’t like the idea of a PEF fireside because they don’t understand the program. We decided that Seminaries and Institutes can play a much more pro-active role in making sure these firesides are scheduled, advertised and that they are really good firesides. These firesides are “scheduled” in each stake in May, June and July, but most don’t actually happen. Now we are committed to pulling several stakes together into a regional affair with a great speaker. This will be fun but a huge challenge to pull off with relatively little notice. I didn’t elaborate my second objective with the Area Director, but I really feel that we need to include PEF students who complete a year in the program to be recognized at the end of each school year along with the Seminary and Institute graduates that year. I am afraid that this may require Divine intervention, but I have taken it on as one more goal.
Our final focus is to continue to develop the personal relationships we have formed with most of members of the Juncal ward here in Argentina. As members of the Ward, we have been embraced and feel welcome. We have 5 (and were just given 1 more last Sunday) families to home teach and we feel that we have made really good progress with each one. We got one family involved in the Employment Center in Buenos Aires and two of their sons are taking the Career Workshop. The one son, Sidney, has a twin brother, Kenneth, who just finished his mission. Sidney didn’t go, for whatever reason, but in the Workshop when they reviewed long term goals, they chose him as the example and put his short, intermediate and long term goals on the chalk board. The instructor talked about “other goals” like spiritual and family. He asked Sidney if he was planning to go on a mission and to my surprise, he said he was considering it but wanted to wait until his brother gets back from his mission. That may be another impact we can have.
Then, this last week we asked one of our home teaching families if we could do a Family Home Evening with her since her mother is not a member. We didn’t realize it until the day before, but she told us she invited a few friends. We ended up with 8 total and 2, including her mother, were non-members. Linda gave the lesson on Lehi and we all read from the Book of Mormon. It was inspiring in many ways. Most of the kids were Judith’s age (23) and going to college. There were 2 return missionaries and some really good church members. It renewed our hope in the future of the church here in Argentina.
Linda started a Relief Society sisters choir and they sang in church a month ago. They were really good and they continue to improve each week. The sisters love to sing and Linda has been the perfect combination of music direction and loving friendship. She ended up with about 20 sisters who participated and they were so excited when the choir performed on Sunday. They wore white blouses and had little gold and blue ribbons, which the Bishop's wife made, pinned to them. We couldn’t record the actual performance, which of course was the best, because it was during sacrament meeting, but we did record one of the practices. She posted it on facebook or the blog… not sure which, so look for it. They have already begun to practice their next song, “How Great Thou Art” which they will perform on April 10.
It is interesting that here they do not have a rest hymn in any sacrament meetings here. When I asked the Bishop about that, he said that the handbook does not allow it. I read the handbook and showed him that it does allow it. He told me that the new handbook does but that the prior Area President and instructed them not to have a congregational hymn. Linda and I were shocked, but when I spoke to a member of the Stake Presidency, he confirmed that they believe they were instructed to not have rest hymns but only special musical numbers (which they don’t have either). I showed him the music pages of the new handbook and asked him to raise it in their next presidency meeting. That has been one month now. It will be interesting to see how that goes. So maybe part of the reason we are here is to bring music back into the meetings. Who knows?
Anyway we are busy as you can see, but it is rewarding and that makes us happy. We are growing spiritually and have new understandings of the scriptures. We have been blessed in many ways. We miss our friends and former life, but we recognize how truly blessed we are to be here among the saints in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. We love you and are thankful that our paths have crossed in so many ways.
Abrazos y Besos al estilo Argentino,
Elder & Sister Zobrist (aka Mark and Linda)
