Hola!
Our second week of virtual MTC training was a little more intense
than the first. We logged into the “Zoom” video conferencing application at 8am
each morning and finished at 5pm, with an hour break for lunch (although sometimes
the morning sessions ran long!). We are formally called as mission “office
specialists” and the focus of this second week at the MTC was office training.
There are typically four areas of responsibility in a mission
office: mission secretary, financial secretary, housing, and vehicles. Since
the Peru Lima North Mission doesn’t use cars or bicycles, we didn’t need to
learn the “vehicle” information. Although it sounds like our mission may also
have technology and social media assignments, we didn’t receive any training in
those areas.
Highlights:
Working with a new set of MTC trainers: Once
again the MTC trainers were stellar young adults who were very knowledgeable
and patient as they introduced us to the details of working in a mission office.
Learning IMOS: IMOS stands for Internet
Missionary Office System and it is basically the “brain” of the mission. The
way the system is set up is genius as we are able to log-in to a “practice”
version of the Peru Lima North Mission’s actual IMOS, which is basically a copy
of what was going on in Lima 2 weeks ago. This 2-week-old version of IMOS allowed
us to enter data, assign new housing, make financial payments, and move around
missionaries on the virtual transfer board without actually causing changes.
This practicing is so helpful! Lane and I had some classes together and some
separate. Lane focused on learning the financial responsibilities while I
focused on the mission secretary and correspondence responsibilities, and we
both learned about housing responsibilities.
Reconnecting with our mentors: In
January, we were each assigned personal mentors who introduced us to IMOS (in
meetings over Zoom) and began teaching us how the system works. Then, each day
during our MTC training we would again “meet” individually with our mentors who
would review what we had learned in the previous training session. They quizzed
us by having us complete certain tasks – finding and modifying reports, making
payments, writing correspondence, interacting with the transfer board, and the
like. So, we didn’t just watch while the trainers and mentors demonstrated
tasks, we had the opportunity to actually do things (in a virtual setting where
we weren’t actually messing anything up!).
Watching a Lima stake conference:
Corinne, Lane’s sister, sent us the Zoom link for a stake conference at which
she and Meredith (President Packard) were speaking. It was so fun to see them
speak – they radiated enthusiasm and joy – and even if I (LeAnn) didn’t understand
everything, I was able to catch words and phrases here and there, and Lane
translated the rest for me.
Thoughts: Before beginning our studies each morning and afternoon, we
took turns sharing an inspirational thought, and one sister in our district
shared a thought from Steven Covey’s book, The
Divine Center. We don’t have the book, so this isn’t a direct quote, but we
loved the idea: All people have Christ-like potential. Divinely-centered people
are always learning, curious, growing, humble, upbeat, and cheerful. They aren’t
judgmental; they don’t carry grudges. They keep up on current affairs and are
active in the community. They have a sense of humor, and learn from all good
books. The 13th Article of Faith aptly describes them: “We believe
in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all
men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all
things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to
endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or
praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”
¡Tengan una buena semana!
(Have a great week!)
Love,
Lane & LeAnn
