The Warnes in the Chile Rancagua Mission: district meeting

This week I’m going to describe a district meeting. If you served a mission you know all you need to know. As I think back to when my sons served, I knew hardly anything about missionary activities, so I hope this will be interesting to at least some of you.

Each mission is divided into zones, districts and then companionships. Usually a district is composed of three or four companionships with an elder called to be the district leader. He is responsible for keeping track of the statistics for his district, such as lessons taught or baptismal dates. He also teaches a class to his district three times per month. In addition, he helps with questions or other issues, does baptismal interviews and reports to the zone leaders.

The zones meet once a week under the direction of the zone leaders (ours is on Wednesday). One Wednesday per month the zone leaders present the information they received in the mission leadership council. The other weeks, the zone meets together for song, prayer, a spiritual thought and announcements, and then separate into districts. The district leader teaches a lesson, hopefully following the spirit about the needs in his district. After the lesson, the missionaries practice teaching each other the concept of the lesson or the district leaders may assign another topic for practice time. In our mission we also have one half hour at the end for English practice so that Latin missionaries who do not have North American companions can receive help.

The district leader is the second level of leadership in missionary life with the first being a senior companion. Most often zone leaders are called from among the district leaders; although many missionaries serve honorably having never been called as a zone or district leader. We tell our missionaries, maybe more often than they’d like to hear it, that their mission is preparing them for life. Serving as a district leader can be an invaluable calling to prepare them to serve in whatever organization they are needed after they return home.