The Wilmington Zone is the largest of the seven zones in the mission. All of the Elders and Sisters attended, sitting at long tables set up in the cultural hall in a horseshoe shape in front of the President's table where he and Sister James, the Assistants, and the Zone Leaders sat. Behind the horseshoe were round tables and chairs where the missionaries would sit to have lunch, which was prepared by the Relief Society. Following lunch, everyone posed for a group picture, before another three hours of activities and instruction.
I attended all of the morning meeting, acting as timekeeper, but also listening intently. I was so impressed with the high level of instruction from all those who spoke. President James talked about teaching the Restoration using scriptures in the Bible, and it was very clear and impressive. Then various companionships took turns speaking on other topics. The Assistants each gave instruction. The missionaries were quiet and attentive throughout, asking intelligent questions and contributing when asked to do so; engaging in role play to practice the concepts being taught.
May I say, the missionary program is in good shape in this mission. If I then extrapolate this to the numerous other missions throughout the world the picture is even brighter. Where else could you take young men and women straight out of High School, send them out on their own, and have them find such a warm, loving, enlivening and enlightening atmosphere where they are treated as adults, act as adults, and therefore grow to discover their potential as human beings and as servants of their Heavenly Father? That's not to say that they don't sometimes have raucous fun, but there is a very positive mixture of the sacred and the silly among the missionaries.
I'd like to share a true story that was shared at the conference.
One of the Sister Training Leaders told an experience she and her companion had when they were scheduled to teach an investigator along with a sister who was a member of their ward. They were running late, and texted the member about half an hour before the scheduled appointment that they would be late arriving. The member had already started driving, so she continued to the appointed place and then sat in her car for 15 minutes or more, waiting for the missionaries to arrive. Because of the North Carolina heat, she sat with her motor running and the air conditioning on. She was not happy to be wasting her gas and her time in this way, and was not shy about telling the missionaries how offended she was that they couldn't be on time to the appointment. She went further. She posted on the ward's Facebook page that the missionaries were the worst she had ever seen, soliciting sympathy from other ward members for how badly she had been treated.
The sister missionaries were, of course, initially offended that the member could treat them so. They felt they had done everything they could do, and couldn't understand why the member would be so aggressively unforgiving and publicly hurtful. They decided that they would have to avoid this sister in the future, never sit with her, never talk to her, and just ignore the ugliness and hope it went away.
Then they wondered to themselves what Christ would do in their situation. They tried to put themselves in the member sister's place, and realized that any offense they felt was trivial. What mattered was that, as representatives of the Church and of the Savior, they needed to show love to all members of the ward, and reach out to this member sister with love as they always had. So that's what they did. The next Sunday they sought her out at church to sit by her. They could tell the sister already felt bad for saying the things she had about the missionaries, and in a few moments the relationship was put back on a positive footing. The ward was relieved to see the public demonstration of love and forgiveness, and an event that had the potential to split the ward and cause bad feelings for a long time was defused.
I see it as a triumph of the Spirit over the natural man. How many times have I allowed my "natural" inclinations to cause me to hold a grudge or retaliate against someone I felt had offended me, when a more positive, selfless response would have been more healing. These sisters taught an important lesson that I hope to be able to put into practice in my life.
After the conference, the five of us office missionaries drove a couple of miles to Wrightsville Beach where we parked the van and walked a short distance to the narrow strip of beach. We must have been a very strange sight, the two Elders in dark pants and white shirts, the three Sisters in blouses and skirts, all of us wearing our missionary name tags. It was a very windy day, and the blowing sand felt like shards of glass hitting us from all sides, but the sand was warm and soft and I couldn't resist taking off my shoes and walking down to the ocean.
Clinging to my skirt so I could preserve some level of modesty I walked into the water and discovered it was warm. The splashing of the waves as they came rolling in, and the pull of the water as it receded, taking the sand under my feet with it, felt wonderful. I loved watching the children playing in the waves, the seagulls flying above, and taking pictures of the beach houses built on stilts in defense against rising waters. On our way back from the beach to the van, my skirt pockets full of shells and sand, we stopped to get ice cream treats.
The last time I walked in the Atlantic Ocean was more than 50 years ago when my family lived on Suffolk County Air Force Base on Long Island, New York. So many things have changed since I was a junior high school girl. I'm very happy about where my life is now, and very glad and honored indeed to be involved in this great missionary work of the restored Church of Jesus Christ.
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