November 5, 2010 Friday
What a good day! We picked up the Cahoons at the airport this morning. I went into the airport while Orson stayed with the car. The parking lot is closed for reworking so someone had to stay at the car on the strip immediately in front of the airport. They were some of the last ones off; all the passengers were men, many in their work clothes, except for Sister Cahoon and one other lady. This is certainly a mining town. We learned today that there are several big natural gas platforms off the coast here and lots of the shift workers are lifted out there by the many helicopters here at the airport.
We met the elders here and from Port Hedland; they are all new since the last conference three months ago. The two here in Karratha are from Tonga and the Portland Elders are Elder Richards, the DL from New Zealand, and Elder Rodrigues from Spain. I love his accent. He really speaks English very well after being here for 14 months.
President Cahoon talked about why it’s important that we get people to come to church. It’s amazing. We read from D&C 59 where it begins, “and to keep yourselves unspotted from the world…” all the way through verse 21. There are some awesome promises in there that I really hadn’t paid attention to besides “keeping ourselves unspotted from the world.” We then had training on committing people to come to church. The new Preach My Gospel DVD’s are very good in showing exactly how to do that. For those who aren’t familiar with the PMG DVD’s, the church actually filmed a district (of carefully selected missionaries, I’m sure) actually teaching real investigators. These have been used since PMG came out. They have now produced new ones after general authorities interviewed missionaries and new converts around the world to find out how effective the missionaries’ teaching has been. They are teaching these improved teaching methods in all missions right now, and the MTC’s will begin training this way beginning in January of next year. We then spent an hour modeling (practicing) what we just learned on each other. We worked in 2 groups of 4 missionaries, and the Cahoons listened in, made suggestions and we “modeled” again. It was very cool and a good way to learn.
Lunch was provided by the RS president and a counselor in the Primary who is the wife of the branch president, President Pilkington. She brought her two little boys with her—one is 14 months and almost ready to walk, Tyler, and Mikey is a very cute 3 year old. He wears glasses and has done since he was 10 months old. We had met the RS president’s daughter, Cassie, at breakfast. She cleared our dishes and made a comment that made us ask if she were LDS. Her reply was, “Last I heard, my mother was the RS president.” We asked her what she did and she replied that her life “had taken a different path.” We offered to help get her back on the right path but she didn’t take us up on the offer. Her mother was quite shocked when I asked her after lunch if she was Cassie’s mother. I then explained we’d met her at breakfast and her comment was, “Let’s see if she waits on you tomorrow morning.”
In the afternoon we did another PMG session on how to get a lesson started. President Cahoon said that Elder Packer told the mission presidents that one night he woke up in the middle of the night and received the section in PMG on getting a discussion started word for word as it is printed in PMG. Wow! We again watched a DVD from The District 2 and then modeled it. President Cahoon gave me a temple recommend interview during the modeling. It was amazing how strong the spirit was during that interview.
We then waited for him to finish missionary interviews and then took them to the Pilkington’s house because the branch president needed to talk to President Cahoon. It was so fun for the rest of us to just sit and visit with Sister Pilkington and to watch Mikey build a train track. She is so delighted to be a full time mom, and it was very evident from watching Mikey that she has given him everything that he needs to be just a cute little boy. Also, Tyler finally let me hold him for a few minutes which really topped off the day. We dropped the Cahoons at the airport, ate dinner and returned to the hotel after a very fulfilling day. It was well worth all the driving to get here. (We just have to remember that tomorrow on the drive back to Broome.)
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