Wednesday, July 6, 2016 – Mission-wide Training Meeting US & Illinois Flags

This morning’s Mission training meeting was very good. Our trainer was Elder Stephen B. Allen an Area Seventy from Salt Lake City. He’s the Managing Director of the Church Mission Department. He knows more about the book PMG (“Preach My Gospel”) than any other person because he was instrumental in its content and production. One of the things he told us is that the first draft of PMG was over 650 pages long! He said they had to follow the spirit, reduce it and simplify it to make it smaller and better. He said that’s the way we should all teach, “Follow the spirit, keep it short and make it better.”

This morning we woke up to rain, yea! It wasn’t much but every little bit helps. You can see in the satellite picture that we were just on the very outer fringes of a very powerful storm that crossed the state of Illinois. I knew if I washed my car yesterday it would rain today and it did.

Last week we discovered that the two flags (US Flag & State of Illinois) flying at the visitor’s center in Carthage were both badly worn and needed to be replaced. Upon further inspection, the state flag wasn’t very bad. The hem at the end of the flag had come loose. The flag only needed a new border sewn on.  The US flag needed to be retired and so it was replaced with a new one. I got to run the colors up the flag pole and now both flags are flying proudly again.