AN EXPERIMENT

May 21, 2011 Saturday

Before we came to Australia, we were studying Preach My Gospel one day and the idea came to us of showing a church DVD in a member’s home. A few days before, we would invite people living near the member to come to the movie. Last week in priesthood and Relief Society, the lesson was on missionary work. Orson mentioned the idea in High Priests, and Brother Witahira took him up on the idea. So we have scheduled to show “The Testaments” on Monday at 11:00 am and again at 7:00 pm. Today we went to their neighborhood and started inviting people. We’ve made up a flyer that invites people to “come and enjoy a DVD about a family in ancient America as they anticipate and enjoy the Savior’s visit to them after his resurrection.” There were a lot of people who said they “weren’t sure” but took the flyer. We will drop back on Monday and remind them about it. We are really hoping it works. We’ve told Witihiras that they are our “guinea pigs” and they are comfortable with that.
The mission has called a Sister Miles who has years of experience teaching English as a 2nd Language to teach free English classes here in Perth. Today Orson and I went to the class to see how she does it because we’d like to see a similar program going here on the south side of Perth. She is very good; it almost discouraged me from thinking we can do the same. However, we talked to Sam, our son who served a Mandarin Chinese mission in Sydney a few years back. He said he thought they had some lesson plans that the senior missionaries used over there. On Monday we will call to see if they still have them and are willing to share. Also, I have a friend who taught English at the Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake who said she has some things she used that she can e-mail to me. There are so many people here who struggle with English. It would be a great service to them and a way for us to share the gospel with them.