Mama Winn's Place: Mission Presidents' Training Seminar

If you think that attempting to train a bunch of 19 and 20 year old missionaries would be a daunting task, imagine trying to train a bunch of over-the-hill mission presidents and their wives! First of all, if you're going to train them, that means the missions are going to be run by the missionaries for four days while the presidents are gone! Rather a scary thought, that there were something along the lines of 1,200 missionaries running loose in Utah for a long weekend, while we were off in beautiful Heber Valley learning how to do our jobs better. We came home with a really, really, really long laundry list of things we are doing wrong, and things we need to do better. Our mission would probably be better if we just stayed in Heber and left the assistants in charge. It was a beautiful place for a bit of rest and relaxation. (And phone calls and text messages!)

On one of the days, they took us on a bus tour that followed the trail the early Mormon pioneers followed into the Salt Lake Valley. I was very glad that I was on a bus, not pushing a hand cart. I was also glad that I did not have to build my house and plant my food. They let us out at one point, and tried to teach us how to find water by using divining rods.

Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, grave sites and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth radiation, without the use of scientific apparatus. Dowsing is also known as divining especially in reference to interpretation of results.

Really? These sticks are supposed to find, water, oil, graves, ore, metal and diamonds?!?!? What if I want water and it leads me to someone's dead great-grandmother? What if I want a diamond and I get water instead? How do the sticks know which thing I am looking for? Really??? I am very skeptical still, and think that it was all a huge practical joke on their part. Seriously, we looked like a bunch of idiots walking around holding out our sticks and waiting for them to magically gravitate towards each other. Bruce got his sticks to cooperate, but I think he was just walking downhill or something. Still, it made for some amusing pictures!