The Pun of Leadership Training

Sometimes being a missionary is serious work and other times it's a lot of fun.  We have had much laughter on this mission and Elder and Sister Davis hate to take ourselves too seriously.  We know we are doing the Lords work but we believe you should find joy in the service and  not become overbearing about our own importance. We are just a couple of regular people trying to do good things.  Why not enjoy the journey?

Since today's post started out bordering  on the serious side..Sister Davis decided to  make it a little more entertaining; She inserted a few puns through-out the post for her readers enjoyment.  So go ahead and laugh out loud if you want to....                                                                                                  

Last Saturday, Antti, our CES Baltic Coordinator, gathered the Student Councils from Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia together for a day of training. President Boswell was the key-note speaker.  He spoke of the future of the Church in the Baltic  and how the YSA's can help build unity between the three countries.

How does Moses make his tea? 
Hebrews it

It was nice of Elder and Sister Bonner  to drive the Estonian Student Council down in their car.

Elder and Sister Davis taught about the structure of the Institute Student Council. Many YSA committee members didn't know what the President's role was  or what a Vice-President does. We spelled that all out and then let them decide among themselves who would have what duties on their committee. Many had never seen an agenda or knew how to take minutes of a meeting.  They needed to be taught how to evaluate activities and know how to find the YSA's who were once active but no longer come to anything.

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

 Antti did training on how important Institute is for strengthening testimonies and showed statistics that 80% of participating Institute students go on missions....and  80% of those who go on missions get a temple marriage.

In the Baltic, we have had 44 returned missionaries since 2002 and only 4 of those have become less-active members of the church. That shows the importance of Institute attendance and serving missions in strengthening your testimony of Jesus Christ.

Lunch was pizza and soda. Sister Davis brought homemade Oreos for a treat.


Venison for dinner again? 
Oh deer! 

We think the YSA's learned a few things.  We know that Latvia's Student Council set up their first meeting for the next Saturday in our apartment. This is what the  future leaders of the church in the Baltic look like:

Lauris S., Romans C., Brigita N., Matiss S., Agneta L., Valeria N., Marianne R., Maksims,  Tina T., 

Sister and Elder Davis, Sister and Elder Bonner

Juris K.

This just in: All the toilets in New York 's police stations have been stolen. The police have nothing to go on.

The next week, we had a laughing good time for another reason...it was a farewell party for a fellow missionary couple! Now usually, that would be a sad occasion but we are all such good friends we couldn't help having a great time when we got together.  Elder & Sister Flake were headed home from their mission...home is Pinetop, Arizona.
 Sister Millet invited everyone to their apartment for dinner and discussion.
Jokes about German sausage are the wurst. 
It was the discussion that got rather amusing. It started with Elder Ballstaedt telling Elder Davis a story from his day at work in the mission office. Sister Davis had taken a small plate of brownies to the office for Sister Adams birthday and Elder Ballstaedt got one. He took a bite of it, set it down and got distracted. When he went to find his half-eaten brownie, he couldn't find it. He said he looked all over the mission office trying to find where he left that brownie....and he never did find it!
The funny part was that Sister Ballstaedt came up as he was finishing the story. She laughed and said, "I ate your brownie!"
Then it was Elder Davis's turn. He shared his own frustrating moment of they day.  He couldn't find his cell phone. This story is even more funny because Elder Davis has a phone holder attached to his belt but his phone never seems to be in it.  So when he went to find his phone, he looked in his holder and it wasn't there. Then he looked in this coat pocket, pants pocket, on the couch, in the kitchen, in the bedroom...finally he says to Sister Davis, "Just call my phone so I can find it."  And she does. Sure enough his phone starts ringing loud and clear...it was in the breast pocket of the white shirt he was wearing.
Not that is funny!

What can we say? Life can be very amusing for senior missionaries and when times get tough, a good laugh clears the air.  In the photo above, everyone is laughing...why?  Because Elder Davis kept trying to get the timer on his camera set to get a group shot and every time he set the camera on the shelf,  the flash went off! He couldn't quite make it into the picture.  Elder Flake had the same problem so his photos show Elder Davis and our photo shows Elder Flake but neither one got a photo of all of us together.

  I stayed up all night top see where the sun went, and then it dawned on me. 

And one last photo of faithful Latvian Saints: 

Latvian visiting teaching at it's best:   Agneta is being visited by Marta and Eva.

Special thanks for the puns... sent by Sister Davis's good friend Dena.