We’ve come up with another “new” idea. It’s called “Wake up, Little Suzi.” When we were young, the kids in our neighborhood would put on theatrical programs for anyone who was nice enough, kind enough, or crazy enough to come watch. For a minimal fee they could see a bunch of seven or eight year old children sing, dance, and whatever. The only song that I remember us singing was “Wake up, Little Suzi” because I was lucky enough to play the role of Suzi, and during practices I had to keep acting like I was waking up over and over and over as the rest of the gang sang. Now back to the project at hand. It’s the perfect title for our “new” idea—the Garretts, Thompsons, Sister Kinikini, and Sister Vuki are visiting each of the missionary companionships between 7:30 am and 9:30 am when the cute missionaries should be up, dressed, and doing their individual scripture studies and then their companionship studies. The senior troops are going to do early morning scriptures reading with the young missionaries. We tried it last week, and it was really fun. The seniors had a prayer with the younger missionaries, read together with them, and left them a treat.
So why call it “Wake up, Little Suzi?” You probably can guess—many of the missionaries were still sleeping when we arrived.
Somewhere along the way, they haven’t been trained on what it means to STUDY the scriptures. Maybe it’s more inclusive than that—they don’t know what HARD WORK is…
Not only are we throwing in a little “Wake up, Little Suzi,” we are also adding “Whistle While You Work.” (For those who don’t remember that project, it was super cleaning the missionary houses.) The missionaries will earn points for cleaning this time. The zone with the most points receives a “Free Zone P-day.”
In my college days, a professor of mine drew an analogy on how to get children (missionaries) to work compared to how to get a donkey to work. You can push, pull, or ignore the donkey. Or you can dangle a carrot in front of his nose. We are trying the carrot approach.
“ Wake Up, Little Suzi” and “Whistle While you Work” are the “carrot” approaches. We are hoping to improve the cleanliness and spirituality of the missionaries with rewards, then hopefully they’ll eventually do it for the Lord instead of a treat.
We have also had Zone Conferences with the four zones on Tongatapu. John prepared a power point presentation about “Houses of Worship.” He showed pictures of the temple and discussed the sacredness of the temple.
He then showed pictures of several chapels and discussed their spiritual worth.
Then he showed pictures of some of the missionary houses that we have inspected, and they weren’t a pretty sight.
It was an eye opener. Pictures are worth a thousand words. He finished the presentation with quotes from prophets and other church leaders. The final slides showed missionary houses that are kept clean,
then chapels,
and then the Tongan temple.
Two weeks ago the same presentation was given to all the Stake Presidents in the Kingdom of Tonga, but instead of focusing on having missionaries maintain their houses better, it was directed to parents. Stake Presidents were challenged to teach parents that they need to teach their children how clean a house, how to respect the property of others, particularly church property, and how to care for personal belongings. So many of our missionaries were not taught how to do these things when they were growing up, therefore, the challenge of teaching, has become ours.
Hey, we’re trying! ‘Ofa atu, John and Diane
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