Helping Hands

Dear Family and Loved Ones,

     We spent a few hours on July 4th at a barbeque, several families from the ward got together to eat, visit and swim.  The hosts of the get together were the Benedicts.  Brother Benedict’s family lived in the Bountiful East Stake when my Dad was the Stake President there, his sister is Alana Winegar, a dear friend from our West Bountiful Stake. We are always surprised at our many connections with the members of the church here, time and time again we find that it is a small world – especially in the church!   The party was a lot of fun until a phone call from a homesick missionary brought us back to work.  By the way our Elder is feeling much better, it’s amazing what a pep talk from the Mission President can do to lift a missionary’s spirits.

     This week was a busy one with two days of meetings we call “Trainings”.  We have spent the past year training the missionaries in eight fundamentals , which they will now begin teaching in the MTC.  They wanted the missionaries in the field to understand and use the information so that when the missionaries are taught in the MTC they don’t arrive to find a different way of doing things.  Prior experience shows that if the missionaries in the field don’t reinforce what was taught in the MTC it is soon undone.  It is almost impossible for a new idea to be presented that way since the trainer would quickly tell their new companion, “that’s not how we do it in our mission”.  I think I have mentioned this before but the eight fundamentals are principles from Preach My Gospel which help in the conversion process.  We are so excited for the missionaries to arrive having been taught this information, in fact the emphasis in the MTC will be on the fundamentals and the missionaries will start learning the lessons (discussions) after they arrive to their missions.  The trainers will take on an added responsibility of helping their companion learn the lessons, they will have an extra hour of study each day in order to learn the material.  There have been some pilot programs around the church to test out the new system. Our nephew, Elder Edgington, is in one of the missions with the pilot program . . . so he is one of the first missionaries trained with the new system!

     Of course when the missionaries get together they need to eat, so Ben, Mari and I brought lunch for 56 missionaries on both days of training.  It was so wonderful to have their helping hands.  It takes about 15 pizzas to feed that many missionaries – not to mention salads, drinks, paper plates, etc.  The van is full when we arrive at the mission office, we quickly unload the food, cover the tables, set out the food and ice water and wait for the hungry, happy missionaries to arrive.  The van is much emptier on our return trip to the mission home. We keep the menus simple and are grateful to have COSTCO close by.  Having Ben and Mari’s help made our two lunches go very smoothly!  I’ll miss them when they go back to school but plan on recruiting some of the sisters in our amazing ward to help out.

   We currently have several missionaries with health concerns (mostly knee injuries) so please say an extra prayer for our Long Beach Mission.

  We love you all,

The Long Beach Buberts