Transcription performed by AI, please excuse any incorrect transcription from the original audio.
(0:00 - 7:07)
Thank you Elder and Sister Brown for the opportunity to be with you this today. We are Elder and Sister Chase serving in the Latino mission as senior missionaries in the Monta Vista branch in the Prescott Valley State. We are absolutely loving our calling in the Latino initiative and excited to serve in the branch and we're excited to tell you a little bit now about some of the things that we have experienced in our few short months that we've been involved in this program.
First of all I'll just tell you just a little bit about ourselves. I served a mission in Argentina many decades ago. I got a bachelor's degree after I came back from my mission in Spanish and then worked as an optometrist but I traveled for probably 25 plus years down to Mexico and served hundreds and hundreds of children giving them eye exams so I was able to use my Spanish quite a bit over the last few decades.
Now my father, although he was born here in the United States, his parents come from Mexico and so the Latino culture is very important to me and has been an important part of my life. I also play the piano which has helped in our branch a lot as I serve as organist for sacrament meeting which they did not have anybody to play before as well as a pianist in primary and again they didn't have anybody there either so that's been a big help. So some of the things that we've been doing in the branch since we've been called to serve there by President Kleinman as far as sacrament meeting goes since Sister Chase is up playing the organ I go around and greet each and every person that is there giving them a handshake and an abrazo if it's appropriate.
I've tried to learn most of their names. I don't know everybody's name yet and of course when there's new members but I make sure to introduce myself to each and every person and try to make them feel welcome and at home. Another thing that I've been able to do using LDS tools I've made a group chat for all the adults in the branch and so whenever we have activities or service projects I can just group text them and let them know what's going on during the week or what activities we are having.
The other thing that I do is I attend the branch presidency meetings which allows me to kind of get a a flow of what's going on in the branch and the needs of the people and those that they're discussing and listening as President Bryce talks and mentions individuals or families that might need a visit and I make notes of that so Sister Chase and I can go out and visit those people. Another thing that I've done is I've made a spreadsheet so when we go out and visit which we try to do once a week I made a spreadsheet and I've linked it to President Bryce and on that whenever we go make a visit I put the name of the family that we visited, the date, and then I have a comment section so I can talk about what we're doing and what has gone to pass on each visit. When we go on visits I like to take some kind of a treat, I bake cookies or take sweetbreads something like that so we come with a little gift in mind before we give our lesson.
We've had some really meaningful spiritual experiences in our visits. Before we go on any visit Stephen looks over the list that he has to see who he feels would be appropriate and we always start our visits with a prayer. There's two experiences we've had that we'd like to share today.
One has to do with a family who had been in a car accident. One of the daughters had been in a car accident and I'm going to have Stephen tell you about that experience. So this family had been they'd come to church once in a while and stuff but I had heard in the branch presidency meeting that their daughters were down in Phoenix and they were in a car accident so we decided to go by and visit them and we went to their home.
Of course Sister Chase brought her famous cookies which kind of got us in the door easy and we were able to talk and visit with them and as we did I asked the brother I said would your daughter who happened to be home at the time was she like a blessing and he excused himself and went and asked her if she would and he came back and he said yes she would and then I asked him if he would like to give her a blessing and he was very hesitant and did not want to do it. He asked for me to do it and so I respected his wishes but I did make sure that he participated in the blessing and so the really wonderful experience was that here it was we gave his daughter a blessing and he was able to lay his hands upon her head. Later on they were asked to speak in church and he mentioned that experience and how important it was to him to be able to feel the spirit of Lord at that time because it was present in abundance.
It really was that was a really good experience. Another time we prayed about and felt we needed to go visit a fairly newly baptized sister in the ward who has a family when we went to see her we found out that just that very day she was just coming home actually she had just lost her job and was really discouraged and we had a good experience with that as well. So we met with her and actually just talked to her out in the driveway she got out and I asked her how she was doing and she said oh it's been very difficult the last few days she lost her job she's been out hustling to find another one she did find a part-time job and she said but it's working at night so I asked her what are you going to do about the kids and she had a friend just the next door neighbor that was going to watch him while they were dating while she was working.
I asked her if she had any problems meeting expenses or whatever she said it's going to be really difficult at this moment so then I mentioned to her about the possibility of maybe getting some food for the next few weeks to help her out where she could save some money and use that for rent and so I went and spoke with our branch president and he okayed it and talked with the Relief Society president and they were able to get her a two week supply of food which she was very grateful for. The interesting thing that we've found that we've gone on visits now for a few weeks it's almost and every single time that we've gone out on a visit there's been a reason that we didn't know about until we got there and then we found the reason and the Lord opened our eyes and we were able to address it or to bless an individual or whatever maybe it's just been a humbling and faith promoting experiences. One time somebody needed a blessing another time we actually met children that we didn't know existed so to speak and it was really good to get to know them so a lot of great experiences.
(7:08 - 9:32)
We're also able to go out with the elders when they teach if they ask us to and that's been really exciting also. Then another thing that we try to do the branch is trying to have it doesn't happen every month but they're trying to have temple trips down to the Phoenix temple and so we attend those with them and it's just been a sweet experience to be in the temple. We do the Spanish session which is really really quite fun and Sister Chase understands a lot but she's learning.
I don't speak very well. But lo and behold when she got up to the veil she did it in Spanish although using a card and of course I had to use it too because I wasn't exactly ready to do it in Spanish but it has been a wonderful experience to see these faithful saints attending the temple and how beautiful they look and their white clothing as they go through and make these special covenants with our Father in heaven. Just one other thing really quick I think as Stephen mentioned or as Elder Chase mentioned I don't really speak fluently.
I understand better than I speak but I was able to give my testimony in Spanish and I think they appreciated the fact that I'm trying. She did a perfect job better than me. Another thing that we try to do because the president has been worried and rightly so that a lot of our new members baptisms are not really converted to the gospel.
They have testimonies but it's more like a conversion to the to the missionaries and so what we've been doing is trying to visit these new member these new baptized members and give the new member discussions which are the same discussions that they receive from the missionaries but just a little bit different form. So I used AI and I went into and I asked it to take for example the restoration lesson and preach my gospel and break it down into three short lessons with concepts and some questions and scriptures and it did it and then I was able to print it out on a sheet both on one side was English on the other side Spanish. It's just one sheet of paper and it just has maybe three concepts that we can cover and with a scripture to go with each concept and then also we can ask a question at the then that at the very end there's an invite and that's been a wonderful opportunity for us to be able to try and do that to help strengthen or reconvert them in the gospel.
(9:36 - 13:17)
So I want to talk a little bit about something that we noticed when we first began in our the Monta Vista branch is we noticed that some of the leaders although they are wonderful people of the organizations didn't really understand fully what their responsibilities were. For instance primary and I'm going to talk about that because I've been called to the primary. So our primary president who's a wonderful really spiritual lady she'd been in for a year but was feeling very discouraged because nobody had really trained her in what she needed to do and they were only getting one or two children at a time and so oftentimes they would just cancel primary.
They didn't have a primary program that year and so the first thing I did was just to encourage her that she was there for a reason and even those one or two children deserve everything we can give and we would just do what we could and she felt much better about that. Then we had the state come in to train her because you don't know what you don't know. Oftentimes state leaders will when a new president is called in an organization they'll just say do you have any questions right but if you don't know what you don't know it's hard so they came in.
We only have a president and a first counselor and the first counselor wasn't available so our president asked me to sit in with the two state leaders and they went through and just really explained to her how to run a primary or ideas on how to structure a primary and gave her the more encouragement that she needed to know that she was in the right place doing the right thing and it just really boosted her confidence and morale and we are having a program this year and the state understands our difficulties and they said you know what if your program is only 10 or 15 minutes long then it's 10 or 15 minutes long but you are trying and doing it and that's great and so we will do something this year. Then they asked us about our valiant activity days well our primary I think we have 13 on the rolls that we knew of at the time 13 and we only had one activity boy one activity girl within that age range. Now previously president Bryce and our primary president and I had discussed the possibility of not having girls activity days or boys activity days but having primary activity days and the state was very supportive of that knowing that we had to do what we had to do for our branch and we did this for a couple of reasons.
One reason is because as I said most of our kids are between the ages of six and seven but we felt we had to get them together and the second reason has to do with the youth. Steven you want to? Well what they've been doing is the parents come and they drop off all their youth at the church and then they're just hanging around with their brothers and sisters playing soccer or whatever it may be and it's turned out to be kind of a little babysitting type deal opportunity and so that they come so they decided to have the activity day which we've had we've had one and it was a energetic fun time and the kids are very excited. What we're hoping through this is that they will now talk to mom and dad and get them excited about what the gospel offers them and number one bring them so they can participate in activities day and once again I have a group chat that we send just to parents with primary kids and number two that they'll talk to their parents and to stay in the second hour so they can attend primary.
(13:18 - 14:53)
So president had called had called us to be over those primary day activities and then when he felt the time was right we we began that program and as Elder Chase said our first one was a great success we had eight children attend that first one which is really good for us and they were very excited about it and then when we got on a subsequent visit one of the primary children that we saw who was not there said oh I heard about it and I'm going to go to the next one and and it was it was really it was good yeah that's really good we think it's going to be a great tool so basically we've noticed an increase in sacrament meeting since we've been doing some of these things we also noticed some are starting to stay a little more for second hour it's just been a an absolutely wonderful experience for sister chase and I I mean you can you can feel the branch feels more energized yeah more energized I think and we get home back from our visits it's just a hugely spiritual experience it's a missionary experience like all of us have or most of us that have been on missions we feel and sister chase is getting this for the first time and it's been exciting so we bear our testimony and our witness that this program is from our father in heaven and that will help strengthen our saints our latino saints and make them stronger in the gospel so they can participate but also to bring their families to the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity and we say that in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.