MORMON.ORG

CLICK ON THIS LINE TO SEE ALL PICTURES OF THIS TRAINING
We are missionaries of the Arizona Phoenix Mission of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We are from all over the world.
We love and live the Book of Mormon.
We are a Preach My Gospel Mission.
We obediently love and serve.
WE ARE MORMONS!
So, How many of you have been to Mormon.org?
How many of you have created your own profile?

These are the "I'm a Mormon"-themed centerpieces that Sister Taylor created to both underscore the topic of the training and to help introduce the 14 new missionaries that had arrived the week before.

We were delighted to find out that Phoenix was targeted as one of nine areas of the country for the Mormon.org media initiative. It will begin October 3 and run through March 2012. The campaign will include TV commercials, billboards and bus stop signage.
In preparation for this campaign, we were privileged to have Brother Tracy Watson, director of proselyting for the Missionary Department, come to train all of our missionaries in both how to be prepared for the attention this will bring to them, and to help them train members in how to answer the questions of their friends. We held three sessions of training over Sept. 13-14 to accommodate our missionaries in the mission's 11 zones..

Sister Taylor began the sessions with a presentation based on Elder L. Tom Perry's talk from BYU Women's Conference in 2009 entitled "The Image of The Church." It introduced the misconceptions that are out there about the Church and emphasized what we can do as members to help dispel myths that are out there. Go to: THIS LINK to view his talk.

This of course, was the perfect time to remind all missionaries that they are THE FACE OF THE CHURCH! Our deportment and demeanor may be the only thing that some people will associate with the Church of Jesus Christ. This face should be neat, clean and happy! I came dressed all in black from head to toe...one of the misconceptions of non-LDS. I then flipped to the new dress and grooming standards for sister missionaries from LDS.org and proceeded to try to quickly make myself look more approachable to non-members.

The sisters were especially excited to see the new dress standards...
a Special Training will be in order just for them very soon!

Brother Watson did a WONDERFUL job of training all our missionaries on why we are doing this campaign and what people want to know about the Church.

He helped us understand that when someone asks us "Why is your church doing this?" We can carry on a conversation to let them know:
1. We know there are myths out there about The Church that we need to dispel.
2. We follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
3. We want give everyone an opportunity to learn more about our church.

We had plenty of chances to practice what was being preached...using real investigator situations

and everyone practicing role-playing what they could say to their friend
who asks about the media campaign.

We were so serious about getting this training done that we kept on going even without power — only limited emergency lights and NO AIR CONDITIONING — in the chapel for the second half of training on the last day...being in the dark is not something that stops the missionaries of the Arizona Phoenix Mission!! (Don't take that un-literally!)
We encourage all of you to learn about Mormon.org
Get some pass-along cards and use this great tool to tell friends and family who we are, what we believe in and how to find out more!