Our Fabulous Senior Missionaries!

A rock solid cornerstone in our mission is our Church Service Missionaries. The young elders and sisters lovingly call them the senior missionaries. Don't misunderstand the term "Senior," as age has nothing to do with it. Mostly, it means that they are older than 26. But they are a part of this mission we couldn't do without! These Church Service Missionaries live here in the Salt Lake Valley. They live in their own homes. For the most part, they still have full time jobs and full time lives. But after work is done, three or four or five days a week, they come out of the phone booth in their missionary duds, slap a name tag on their chests, and start their second jobs. At nights and on weekends they are Supermen and Superwomen!

There isn't anything that they don't do. They wander through neighborhoods talking to people and inviting them to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ by the full time missionaries. They mend suits for the missionaries. They feed the eternally hungry elders now and again. They teach English to people in their own homes, coming daily for short lessons. Often, as the word gets out that the English teachers are coming, the headcount in the home grows night after night, as uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents and friends show up to learn English from these nice old people. With the many refugees in Salt Lake City, our missionaries may be teaching people who speak Swahili, or Spanish, or Burmese, or Nepalese, or a dozen other languages. It's a juggling act of charades and pictures, assisted by the 5 and 6-year-olds who have spent some time in school and know a few words of English. Still, night after night, they do it.

They help give the full time missionaries rides. They plan weddings, and bake the wedding cake and throw the reception afterwards. They teach the gospel or teach someone how to grocery shop in America. They give rides to people like they were running a taxi service. They share their amazing testimonies of the gospel. And all of this they do without pay, on their own time, after they've put in an 40 hour work week to support their family, and always, always, always with a huge smile on their face. We couldn't do it without them!

So at Christmas, Elder and Sister Deyhle (another amazing "Senior Couple" who help us out with the mission) put together a little pot-luck dinner for them. It snowed that night, but that didn't stop our Church Service Missionaries. Not much does.