The Taller Day 2

I don´t know if I have said this before, but I absolutely LOVE the second day of the workshop. We start out reviewing a little, and then we go right into practicing interviews by videotaping them and then we play them back and give feedback. There is something about this particular group that has made it really easy for us to teach them. They are all so willing to participate and help eachother out and they are all just so much fun! I feel so good after activity and I can feel that they are understanding the principles that we are teaching. It is really a good feeling.

We started with interviews and it was a lot of fun. There were two of our alumnos that had to leave a little bit early yesterday, so they had missed out on part of the things that would have helped them with the interviews and it was really apparent. Now this might sound weird but that made me really happy because it meant that those that had stuck around had learned something that prepared them that much more than the next guy for interviews. I was happy about that. The interviews were so much fun as normal, we all got a few good laughs in a few places but over all our group was always able to find more good than bad in what everyone else had said and done. I love them for that!

We then worked on power statements. We had them practice these a lot because they are so important and we felt like last week we maybe skimmed over them a bit more than we wanted. In our manual it says to have them practice saying each of the four that we help them create to five people in the room so we decided to have them do that. We had given them a bad example with an actual story about a man who had said he was ´extremely creative´but then couldn´t think up an example. Well a few of our alumnos got a kick out of it so for the rest of the day they kept saying ´I am extrememly creative!´though they actually had examples as to why. Such jokesters!

Then we moved on into practicing contacting references and getting more information from cold calls. Yerko (who served in my mission woop woop!) was having a really hard time with that, so we had some really good discussions about WHY it was important to practice these types of phone calls before you did them and make little outlines of what you wanted to say. He had a phone call that he needed to make tonight to follow up on a resume he sent in so I am excited to talk to him tomorrow and see how it went. Here they are practicing with their cellphones

After talking about that, we put them into pairs and had them do their own little outlines for calling possible places of employment. Sarah and I were observing and discussing a few things we wanted to cover when all the sudden I look over at Yerko and David, and they both have their cellphones out. I think to myself, how odd, why would they be making phone calls in the middle of an activity. Well upon looking just a few seconds longer, I realized that they had pulled their cell phones out to practice making phone calls to make it more real. I started giggling, but they thought it was hilarious. So did I.

I think in the two weeks that we have been teaching this workshop I have already learned so much about so many things. More than anything I know that I LOVE teaching and I am very grateful that Heavenly Father has guided me to that profession. I also love being able to teach gospel principles intermixed with temporal advice. It is like the best of both worlds! There is a quote by president Hinckley that they have read us many times that I can´t remember word for word but it goes a little something like this, ´The church cannot expect to save a man on Sunday if it is an innocent bystander to the crucifiction of his soul throughout the week.´I think that is why the gospel is so WONDERFUL! There are so many programs and services that are FREE and THERE for us to use to help us in EVERY aspect of our lives...We just sometimes don´t take advantage of it.

Tonight we went with the Sister missionaries to do our weekly divisions. There are two new sisters as well as on of the ones we met when we first got here Hermana Webber, so there was a bit of confusion as to where to meet because they didn´t know where they were! But it all worked out and I ended up leaving with Hermana Coteno who is from Argentina to do contacts in the street. I watched her do one or two and then just jumped right on into doing it. It was fun to feel like a missionary again, but it felt a bit different not having the name tag and knowing that I wasn´t set apart. We contacted this really amazing man in the street who was with his two year old little girl. His name was Santiago and he was from Porto Natales! (Its part of my mission) He lives here now with his wife and daughter and we had a really amazing talk about the restored gospel, the plan of happiness and baptism. We told him about how missionaries worked and invited him after hearing the lessons to pray about what he had heard. We then challenged him to be baptised when he knew that they were true and he said ´If I feel it of course!´ It was really fun and he even lives in the Hermana´s area so we are hoping to see him at church in the next few weeks.