Law of Unintended Consequences

Hurricane season begins on Friday 1 June 2012!

To make sure that we are all prepared, President Wall devoted an hour of Zone Conference to emergency preparedness.  Every single missionary now has a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with one extra pair of pants or shorts, one extra t-shirt, one extra set of garments, and one extra pair of socks.  In a second Ziploc bag, we all have one extra tooth brush, one extra tube of toothpaste, one extra bottle of shampoo, one extra bottle of conditioner, a few (in my case, 50) alcohol wipes, an extra comb, an extra stick of deodorant, an extra bottle of bug spray, and more.  Each missionary will be getting a 72-hour kit of food, vacuum-sealed.  Each companionship has four gallons of bottled water.  We are ready for a storm!  (Even while we all pray that the hurricanes avoid Louisiana entirely.)

Last Sunday, the six "younger" missionaries serving in the New Orleans First Ward met with our stake president, President Gabriel Stock for about an hour.  Stake presidents (and mission presidents, too, for that matter) are to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as colonels are to the United States Army.  It's a big deal that the New Orleans Colonel decided to talk with some New Orleans First Lieutenants.  

President ("Colonel") Stock told us about what he wants us to do differently in order to help the missionary work progress in the stake.  His main theme was that he wants us to light a fire under the members (so that they can "be contagious").  He thinks that we can do that by teaching them the same so-called "missionary" lessons that we would teach investigators of the Church.  It's been a while since President Stock was a First Lieutenant, and they've changed the Standard Operating Procedures since then.  And so he asked us whether we keep track of lessons taught to members.  We explained to him that we do, but only if the members are recent converts or less-active members.  I then jokingly pointed out to him that, curiously enough, our missionary planners have a blank row underneath all of the other key indicators, which he could perhaps ask us to use in order to keep track of lessons to active members.

A week later, we learned in our district meeting that we are going to start keeping track of lessons taught to members who are NOT recent converts or less-active members.  

Go figure.