What do Senior Missionaries do anyway? (Revisited)

Back in November as we left the MTC and were waiting to 'ship out' to Singapore, I wrote a post giving an overview of some of the many duties of senior missionaries. With the experience of the past seven months, I thought I might update that a bit to share some of the current people and examples of great service we see here, using the same 13 categories as last time:

1. Teach and fellowship. All of the great couples in our mission do some of this in addition to any special assignments. Currently our senior missionary team is eighteen: Whittier, Anderson, Ferris, Foley, Douglas, Hobbs, Hathaway, Haltinner, and Sucher. Each of the couples is assigned to one or more wards or branches that they serve, as well as working with junior missionaries in the districts. Some senior couples in the church focus exclusively on this work and are called Member/Leader Services (MLS). We just learned that our Sister Mission Leader's mother and stepfather are coming to our mission in August to be MLS missionaries!

2. Interact with the public. We have loved getting to know Elder and Sister Ang! Both originally from Singapore, and some of the early members of the church from decades ago, they are the prototypical pillars of the community. Elder Ang seems to know everyone and has done a tremendous amount of good in building bridges across faiths in both Singapore and Malaysia.

3. Preserve and share church history. The church's Global Histories project is doing much to document and preserve histories of Singapore, Malaysia, and every other country in the world! Stories are finding their way into the Saints volumes, and senior missionaries are doing much to help collect these.

4. Help people find their ancestors. We are so excited to have the Suchers just join the mission. On the same day they completed a service mission at FamilySearch they were set apart to come to Sibu, Malaysia and help people in Temple and Family History work. They are organizing cemetery projects, teaching skills, facilitating temple trips, and more.

5. Provide humanitarian aid, and

6. Feed the hungry. I didn't include examples of these in my last post, but now have so many stories that I will likely do a full post on these in the future. In our mission we have had a string of amazing couples, including two that have arrived since us: Douglas and Hathaway. They are involved in so many interesting projects, including an island run just this past weekend (stay tuned). Until then, here is a short YouTube video of something that Elder and Sister Reese (whom showed us the Singapore ropes) helped facilitate when they were in Malaysia.
   

7. Help people become self-reliant. Vivian is currently leading a self-reliance group in the YSA Ward and has completed one set of 15 missionaries and started another. Other couples are working with other groups of church members and returned missionaries.

8. Support church operations. Our office couples (Ferris and Anderson) are amazing in all they do to shoulder the load of operating such a vast enterprise. Housing, transporting, training, equipping, and keeping safe over a hundred missionaries is an enormous undertaking. The old saying is that you couldn't pay people enough to do what these missionaries pay their own way to do.

9. Serve in a temple. We just had a local couple, Elder and Sister Lim, go from one of our Singapore Wards to Cebu City Phillipines to work in the temple there. Singapore has a history of sending temple workers across the world, and will leverage that experience as the Singapore temple comes online in a couple years.

10. Support young adults. Ah you have already heard much of this from our service here. It's a wonderful blessing and keeps us young!

11. Manage and maintain church properties and facilities. This is less common here than in the United States

12. Use your professional skills. We fit squarely in this box as you heard last week from Vivian. On the medical side the list of those we work with doing this is long. Currently using their medical or mental health skills in support of our mission and the Asia Area are Hobbs, Sucher, Clark, Snell, Snow, Ellis, Finlinson, Francis, Larson, Evans, Dewey, Taylor, and likely others I am forgetting!

Whew, that took longer than I thought - there is so much selfless service given and we are blessed to be surrounded by amazing fellow servants. There really is something for everyone that desires to serve!

I didn't even mention our week in this post! Suffice it to say that it has been a whirlwind of counseling sessions, mission health councils, emergency missionary interventions, visiting with family back home, orienting the incoming mission leaders that start their three-year service this weekend, baptisms (five in the space of a week!), teaching Institute, Self-Reliance, Temple Preparation, and crying through new episodes of The Chosen. Life is good but crazy!

Photos

1: From our flyby of the temple site. Sadly there is no visible progress since they changed the locks, but we keep checking.

2-4: Fun office duties. Ordering Hindi Book of Mormon copies and getting 2300 pass-along cards printed to invite people to our church buildings.

5: Insert "why did the chicken cross the road" here. This was right in front of our apartment building!

6-10: YSA Ward Conference, Dinner with missionaries and friend, Institute class hitting the 25 mark, and YSA activity at the Bishop's house. We really love these wonderful young adults: members, missionaries, and friends!

11: New flights with which to explore East Malaysia :)