Savai'i Interviews

We spent a good part of the week in Savai'i training and interviewing. We continued to train on area books and planners. We were told that the missionary planner was designed by President Hinckley. When Elder Pearson was here, he told our missionaries using their planners should be a revelatory process. I can see that; as the missionaries use every section of it, they will be led to receive revelation. There are sections for goals, lessons, notes, and just about anything a missionary should consider in the work. Elder Pearson also instructed that anyone can tell what kind of a missionary someone is by looking at his/her planner. That has also been proven to be true. The ordinary member of the Church probably has never looked at a missionary planner. I know I hadn't before we came to Samoa. It is a remarkable support for missionaries. Ask missionaries in your ward to see their planners. Have them teach you about how they use it. They will be excited to explain how they are used and how they support their every effort. Thank you, President Hinckley!

The missionary planner is representative of so much of what Heavenly Father does for us. We are given a plan for our eternal progression and then, along the way, we are provided everything we need for success. Sometimes those things are painful, but everything that occurs in our lives God uses for our good and our progression. I have always loved Orson Whitney's understanding of trials. He said, "No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven."

But even when times are good, God still provides ways for us to grow and develop. Those ways are too many to list here, but how grateful I am that He is even in the small details like a missionary planner!

The following pictures are the Savai'i missionaries.

The daily planning record.