GLENDALE NORTH ZONE INTERVIEWS 4/14

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We finished up our month of INTERVIEWS this past week.  What a great month it has been!
As you may know, the main purpose of INTERVIEWS is the interview itself...each missionary has about 8-10 minutes with President Taylor.  Around the world, each mission has different ways of accomplishing this goal.  In our mission, we are so close to each other that it is not hard to get each zone together for a 5 hour training with Sister Taylor and the Zone Leaders, Elders Leonhardt and Mullenix.  We also perform Car Inspections with Elder Rodgers during this block of time.

Sister Rodgers also comes and talks about referrals.  Zone Tech Specialist Elder Beck, shows his zone how to utilize the online referral system that is relatively new.  GREAT JOB ELDER BECK!

The day begins with the missionaries coming to put the finishing touches on their clean cars. Elder Rodgers scores them and rewards them with CLEAN CAR AWARDS which is part of his safety training time.  It is a lot of fun.
The Assistants to the President are in this zone and they came REALLY CLOSE TO A PERFECT SCORE!

I began the training with a discussion on THE WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN ORDER OF THINGS based on a talk by Elder Packer.  It was an open discussion on many things that we do that are spelled out in the scriptures or other handbooks as to the order or organization, as well as things that we pick up along the way that are more a culture of things yet can be important.  Each day the missionaries brought up things that no other group had thought of!  It was such a good discussion!  I love that we have the exact order of things like the sacrament prayer, and the unwritten order of things like reverence for sacrament meeting and men and boys wearing white shirts when possible, or preparing for meetings by sitting quietly.
The Zone Leaders, Elders Leonhardt and Mullenix led a discussion on effective Exchange Wrap-ups based on scriptural doctrine and then had all missionaries go on a walk with someone they normally do not work with, getting to know them and ask good questions and ask for ideas.  It was a wonderful exercise and they had many good key learnings.

It was sweet to walk outside and see so many companionships just walking and talking.  I think they learned that in relationships, sometimes a change of scenery is good, and that you can really get to know and care about someone in a short period of time.

Our theme for the day was ORDER IN ALL THINGS...so my "Practical Lesson" was on apartment cleanliness and organization.  I brought slides with cheap organization ideas for them and then we played for the third year in a row...
THE CLEANING RELAY!!!
We had Jr vs Sr companions...

First they put on the yellow cleaning gloves

Then we sweep up the Cheerios into a bin

Next we shoot down Mr CLEAN with a spray bottle...

...Yup, that is MR CLEAN!

 Then they toss a scrubbie with a toilet plunger into a bucket held by a team member...

...then scrub the plate clean

 ...toss 4 rolls of toilet paper through the toilet seat hoop
(OK, don't worry, I bought these toilet seats and all the props 3 years ago to use just for these games!)

 Elder Nield in the seat of honor!!

 ...and lastly, you run back a mop pushing a bar of soap to the finish line where you strip off the gloves and hand them to the next teammate.  IT IS GOOD CLEAN FUN!!!











Here is the GLENDALE NORTH ZONE in all their CLEANING GLORY!

 We celebrate the months' birthdays by singing and giving out treats.

ELDER BECK was the only April Birthday in this zone!

He was sung to also in SWEDISH by Elder Stulen!!

We spent the afternoon doing a great teaching by all members of the zone about how to PLAN/ORGANIZE with PURPOSE each day.  They started with morning exercise and ended with Nightly Planning...each point of the day!  Great ideas and comments from other zone members on each point.

And as they spoke, I would randomly come up with props pretending I was a non-member and give them the opportunity to TALK WITH EVERYONE during their day!
I worked in my teaching into their activity.  THEY DID GREAT!  It took a bit to have them realize what I was doing, but when they caught on, it was a blast to have them look for how they could invite me to do something to learn more about Jesus Christ

Here is my advice to all of you this week..."If you want to baptize a few people, talk with a few people...if you want to baptize a lot of people, talk with a lot of people...if you want to baptize everyone, talk with everyone!"
May we ALL talk with more people about what is really important to us!  Family, our Savior and his Gospel!  Have a great week!  Sister Taylor