Our mission’s future planning is now focused on the expected impact of President Monson’s announcement during the October 2012 general conference that lowered the missionary age for young men and young women. After the arrival of twelve new missionaries last week, we now have 153 young adult missionaries: 110 elders and 43 sisters. After the June 2013 transfer, we will have 190 young adult missionaries: 122 elders and 68 sisters.
To plan for and accommodate our expanded missionary force, President
Roney divided the mission into eleven zones instead of seven and called four
new sets of zone leaders, and he also
called two additional office elders
(Elder Dean from Fairfield, Ca. and Elder LeDuc from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
to devote a major part of their time to finding and setting up new apartments.
We welcomed six elders and six sisters last week: two elders and two sisters from French
Polynesia, one elder from England, one
sister from Germany, one elder from California, one Elder from Oregon and one
elder and three sisters from Utah.
Sister Jeppson and I are getting accustomed to a major role
in planning, providing the food and cleaning up duty for lunch on Tuesday and breakfast
and lunch on Wednesday when a new group of missionaries arrive. Providing lunch continues on Friday when
missionaries that arrived six weeks ago come back to Lyon with their trainers
for additional instruction and the following Tuesday when the zone leaders come
to town for zone leader council. The
work is totally worth it when we have the opportunity to associate with these new missionaries and
their trainers and the leadership of the mission.
Eight of the 22 zone leaders arrived in the mission field
after we did. It is inspiring to see
these relatively young elders step up and take on these leadership
responsibilities.
In the middle of all of this activity, Sister Jeppson
prepared and delivered a talk on prayer in sacrament meeting a week ago Sunday
with the help of the wife of the second counselor in the bishopric who
translated for her. Sister Jeppson has a
wonderful and inimical way of communicating with and inspiring people when she
speaks.
During this busy time, I
had the opportunity twice to meet with our Chinese speaking elders and a
student from mainland China. They need
to have a member with them when they teach a woman. She comes to church almost every week. They teach her about the gospel, and she
tutors them in Chinese. She tried to
think of a Chinese language characters that would come close to the name,
Jeppson. She wrote Elder Jeppson and
Sister Jeppson on a sheet of paper in Chinese for me.
NOS PETITS-ENFANTS
We know that President Monson is a prophet of God and was
guided by Jesus Christ to expand missionary work though out the world by
changing the missionary ages. It is
exciting to serve in France at a time when we can help our inspired mission
president implement the impact of these changes. As my mission president, President Martin,
communicated to me 46 years ago during my last missionary interview with
him: Always follow the prophet. I encourage you to read in the Friend and the
New Era, and listen to General Conference in April for the messages of
President Monson and follow what he teaches.
