In my professional and church leadership lives, I often spoke with teams and colleagues about the constancy of change and of setting the right measures of success. Humans have a tendency to want to get things to a good state and then KEEP THEM THAT WAY AT ALL COSTS! We use words like "freeze", "bottle", and "preserve" not just for food, but also in relationships, organizations, and processes.
But unlike a deep freezer or dry cellar, humans and their systems are subject to many drastic external variables. Resilience to change, not avoidance of it, is the true mark of success. To this end we are so happy that two weeks ago VIvian began facilitating (with my technical support) a ten-week course with fourteen amazing missionaries. It is called Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience and it's chock full of great material...
1: Building Emotional Strength in the Lord
2: Healthy Thinking Patterns
3: Our Bodies and Emotions
4: Managing Stress and Anxiety
5: Understanding Sadness and Depression
6: Overcoming Anger
7: Managing Addictive Behaviors
8: Building Healthy Relationships
9: Providing Strength to Others
10: Moving Forward with Faith
The missionaries have been very eager learners. The class has had another benefit of reducing some of her individual counseling load, as she often winds up working with missionaries on these very topics.
Meanwhile we are practicing what we preach organizationally as well. On July 1st, the Asia Area is having a massive leadership change. Nine of eleven sets of mission leaders are completing their three years of service and two additional missions are being created. So all told we will have eleven new sets of mission leaders coming in. I have been busy the last week scheduling them for orientations with Vivian and her colleagues and arranging an option for them to view a Mission Health Council before they arrive.
Doing this has been a massive logistical puzzle as they are scattered across seven different time zones, ranging from three hours later to fourteen hours earlier. But that kind of mass coordination event is also something I know well from professional and church experience. As of today we now have six sessions scheduled from mid-April to mid-May. We are very excited about meeting them and starting off on a good footing.
Finally, we are VERY excited for our church's semi-annual General Conference this weekend! We always look forward to these two days of inspiration and instruction from our church leaders. Once again the time difference makes things challenging as the sessions will start at Midnight and 4 a.m., so we might we watching on delay for the first time in years.
Photos
1 - 4: We had a wonderful trip to Coney Island. No, it's not that one with the roller coasters and corn dogs, but rather a quiet rustic island off the north shore of Singapore. Long time readers of this blog will recall us sharing how hard it can be to navigate places. Coney Island was one that was especially painful to get to the first time, but we are pleased to report we learned from our mistakes and got there without incident. And it was totally worth it! We even enjoyed dinner at a nice seafood restaurant nearby afterwards.
5 - 6: Happy Easter! We loved having a wonderful group of young adults and missionaries over for our first hosted dinner of our mission. Vivian did amazing cooking a delicious dinner and dessert.
7: Meanwhile back home the solar panels are working great and keeping our electric bill low!
Bonus video: In this short video the Foleys have had enough of their obnoxious doorbell. (Spoiler: we finally figured out how to change the tune).
Comments