The Age Change: I am the Mission Presidents wife of the WA
Spokane Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I am an ordinary woman called to do an
extraordinary thing; serve the Lord for 3 years as a missionary, councilor, cook,
trainer, driver, speaker, health coordinator, event planner and supporter of
all things missionary.
It’s not hard to serve a mission. The Lord helps
you out; makes you enough, buffers the stress of the schedule, brings so many
things to your mind that you just know he is there telling you what to say,
puts love into your heart, and reminds you to be humble and teachable pretty
much every day. Lately I've been
learning that He really will ease our burdens so we can hardly feel them and
strengthen us so that we can bear them with ease when we turn to Him. (Actually serving a mission is difficult when I do it by myself. But with the Lord it isn't hard.)
I love the gospel of Jesus Christ so much. I KNOW
I knew God and Jesus Christ in the pre-existence and I loved them then, just as
much as I do now. I love having made choices to consecrate my life
over the years to God and the blessing that has turned out to be in every
instance. I feel so full and it is a witness to me that God just
blesses us and fills us when we do his will, he doesn't take, he just gives, as
we give our lives to him.
I want to share briefly what happened in our mission around
the time the age-change happened; the first 18 months of being in WA. Our mission was due to be split when we
arrived. We started out right from the
beginning having huge transfers to build our missionaries up from about 170
missionaries to about 260. Our mission would
lose about 60 missionaries to the Kennewick Mission so the big influx of
missionaries was necessary. We fed,
trained and housed about 90 new missionaries in a few months’ time and then 60 were
gone due to the split. Then we needed to
build our compliment back up to 250 so we started all over again.
Starting in March of 2013 we saw a reflection of the age
change in our transfer’s, we went from about 20 sister missionaries to 100 and
started receiving a lot of 18 year old elders.
Our largest transfer brought 39 new missionaries in at once and then 35
and 37 were the next ones. Some of these
numbers were visa waiters who were coming and going too.
It was hard at first.
The early sisters who came out seemed a bit unprepared emotionally and
physically for the demands of a mission and the elders just seemed really
young. We were also losing our
foundational missionaries in the midst of all of this change. By August we started to worry about losing
the great culture of our mission. Out of
necessity 6 week old missionaries were training 6 week old missionaries and 12
week old missionaries were training brand new missionaries. (Babies were training babies in other
words) It was a difficult situation that
most missions were facing, not just ours.
We prayed a lot about what to do. I want to share this with you because I love
to witness of the Lords hand in our lives.
We felt we needed to buckle down and do some intense training with everyone. We called a 3rd
Assistant and sent them on the road to meet with every district and train on, “How
To Begin Teaching”. We had interviews
and introduced “Boot Camp” It was an intense study program they were to do for
4 weeks that taught them doctrine, how to teach simply and ask inspired
questions. (We gave them extra study time every day to complete it.) We held a specialized training where we
taught them how to progress less actives, get members to fellowship, and teach
simply and powerfully to investigators.
They were to have a full schedule that night to go out and actually do
the things we taught and then they came back the next morning to report. (It was like practicing on real people.) It was awesome! Then we held a specialized
training and called it Cleaning House.
The “House”, dealt with cleaning our Physical, Emotional and Spiritual
selves. (The apartments were dirty, the
emotional resource book the church had put out for missionaries was introduced
and spiritually we just taught doctrine.)
That was great too. We gave them
2 weeks to totally de-junk and deep clean their apartments. It was great.
I also held a sisters conference and had two therapists speak on
depression, anxiety, and relationship skills.
During that sisters conference we had 12 musical numbers throughout the
day and talked about grooming, nutrition, questions of the soul, and even had a
clothing exchange. The sisters loved
it. Our mission had 54 training’s in a 6
week transfer. We worked hard, the
missionaries worked hard and the members drove a lot and made big
sacrifices. But we felt driven by the
Lord to do it.
Then the question came, “What Next Lord?” It felt like we were preparing for
something. And we were exhausted. It was the end of October 2013, and it was
time to go to the mission president’s seminar.
Elder Ballard was there along with the presidency of the seventy. They are serious about missionary work and we
felt it. It wasn’t a, “Let’s fill you up
with the spirit and make you feel good, kind of seminar.” It was, we need to increase our vision and
our expectations. They set goals to
double our baptisms in the next 6 months, increase church attendance in our
wards and get every missionary to be teaching every day. I was very overwhelmed, but on the 5 hour
drive home we gained a testimony for ourselves that this was exactly what the
Lord was leading us too. And we were
exactly ready because we had followed promptings.
We came home and started preparing for zone conference and
let the spirit do the work. It was
amazing. We talked to them of the vision of doubling our baptisms and the goals
to get there. We also introduced accountings.
We knew we needed follow through with these young missionaries if we
really were serious about helping them.
They started calling in every night to account for the daily goals of
teaching 3 lessons every day, (to members if you have to), and having 10 gospel
conversations with new people. The
missionaries loved it. We had so many
missionaries who changed. It was kind of
eye opening. In interviews in December
we had so many comments we never expected.
They just talked about how happy they were, how unified their districts were,
how easy it is not to feel guilty, just repent and do it tomorrow, how
important it is to account because it makes you change and bring what you know
you should be doing to the front burner and make you do it and not
procrastinate. We thought we would just
see them get to be better teachers, and increase investigators. (That shows you our limited vision). We almost doubled our baptisms in
December. How amazing is the Lord in
leading us. We have almost consistently
kept that increase.
I will write more about what has happened in 2014 later, but
I just want to say that our sisters who came into our mission that first
transfer at 19 years old have now gone home.
They were pioneers. I couldn't be
more appreciative and grateful for their good service. The sisters in our mission are amazing young
women. It is so inspired to have these
spiritually sensitive women out here doing missionary work.
I felt last year the Lord declared to us as mission presidents
that He is in charge of His work. He
will lead and guide us in doing this great work if we will be open to receiving
revelation and acting upon that revelation.
I love your observations, insights and faith Sis. Mullen. Our son was one of those visa waiters through that transitional time of the great Washington Spokane Mission.
ReplyDeleteYes I remember him. I hope he is doing well. We were fortunate to have him for a time!
ReplyDeleteWe have 2 of the sweetest Sisters here in the Kellogg ward. .We love them. .I love reading your observation on the age change. .My daughter is out now. .
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! I totally agree with your comment about how working side by side with the Lord is much easier. Sometimes I forget and try to do things alone and feel overwhelmed. I LOVE having sister missionaries in our ward. I have enjoyed visiting and teaching investigators, cooking meals for sick investigators or simply having the sisters over for dinner and a message. It really is powerful to have the missionaries AND members working together! Have a wonderful week.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your words. It is interesting to read about what you are teaching the missionaries and all the preparation you and your husband do to help the missionaries. Although my son came to your mission at the end of this period you wrote about, he received many blessings from all of this teaching. I know that Elder Johnson is so happy to be serving in the Spokane mission.
ReplyDeleteI loved reading this!!!
ReplyDeleteSister Mullen!! I love you so much!!! Thank you for this! I feel so grateful to have been a part of all these experiences and to be changed by the Savior through them. Reading this brought back a flood of memories! Oh how great it is to be a full time representative of Jesus Christ with his name on your chest.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sister Mullen for giving us an inside peak at what is hapenning within the mission. My Elder has been in the Spokane Mission since the age change and he has loved it. I have viewed the pictures posted on the FB page of the new missionaries. It has been exciting to see but I know that there have been challenges that I can never understand. Thank you for your honesty and sharing your joys and the lessons you learned. I will forever be grateful for you and for President and the wonderful examples you have had not only on my Elder but all the other missionaries as well! It is such a blessing for a mom to know that there is another mom looking after her son and loving him and helping him to become the best missionary and person he can be!
ReplyDelete