Missionaries from some countries participate in the equalized contribution program. This means the same amount is contributed for each missionary regardless of where he or she serves. The amount is identified at Church headquarters. Leaders may contact the Missionary Department see In other countries, the bishop, stake president, missionary, and family counsel together about the monthly contribution amount.
The bishop and stake president consider guidance from the Area Presidency. They encourage financial sacrifice and self-reliance based on the circumstances of the missionary and his or her family. They agree on a contribution amount and record it in the missionary recommendation. The missionary and his or her family commit to follow through.
Contributions are made to the ward missionary fund. Bishops verify that the funds are contributed each month. Funds beyond the monthly amount should not be contributed in advance. Funds contributed in advance cannot be refunded if a missionary returns home early. Expenses in the field. Each month, young missionaries receive funds from the mission to provide for food, transportation, and other living expenses.
These funds are sacred. Missionaries use them only for mission-related purposes. They should not be used for personal expenses, saved, or sent to family members or others.
Missionaries return to the mission any funds they do not need. Missionaries use personal funds to cover other expenses. These personal expenses should be minimal. Senior missionaries serving away from home contribute to their home ward missionary fund each month. The contributions may be more than the value of Church-provided housing or vehicles. Senior missionaries from countries that participate in the equalized contribution program contribute an assigned amount listed in the call packet.
In other countries, the bishop, stake president, and missionary counsel together about the monthly contribution amount. They agree on an amount and record it in the missionary recommendation. This amount must be at least the amount established for senior missionaries by the Area Presidency in consultation with the Missionary Department.
Additional expenses. In addition to the monthly contribution commitment, which helps cover housing and vehicle costs, senior missionaries must fully cover all other expenses, including food. Missionaries serving at home are responsible for all their financial needs. Those who need financial help can receive it from family members and friends. Ward or stake funds may not be used for mission-related needs. All missionaries are strongly encouraged to keep their existing medical insurance if possible, including young teaching missionaries.
Missionaries serving at home must provide their own medical and other insurance coverage. Senior missionaries serving away from home must also provide this coverage. Senior missionaries who will serve outside their home country may be able to obtain insurance through the Senior Service Medical Plan. Family members and leaders help young men prepare to serve a mission. They also help young women who desire to serve to prepare. This may include the following:.
Help them become effective member missionaries in sharing the gospel before they receive a call to serve. Invite currently serving missionaries or others who have served missions to share their experiences teaching and serving. Encourage them to devote additional time to prayer and study of the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. Family members and leaders encourage senior members to consider senior missionary service. This may include helping them:.
Review their physical and financial ability to serve a mission, either away from home or while living at home. Become effective member missionaries in sharing the gospel before they receive a call to serve. Understand the blessing that missionary service will be to their family see Doctrine and Covenants —6.
Family members and leaders encourage all missionary candidates to study:. Preach My Gospel. Safeguards for Using Technology. Family members and leaders help all candidates commit to follow missionary standards.
They encourage candidates to study the missionary standards handbook that pertains to their probable assignment:. Some candidates have not lived in the ward continuously for at least one year. Missionary work is physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding.
All candidates are required to have medical professionals assess their health readiness. Health assessments are reviewed by the area office and the Missionary Department.
In some situations, the recommendation may be returned with instructions on how the person can improve his or her health readiness. The bishop and stake president conduct thorough, spiritually searching, and uplifting interviews with each candidate.
They use the missionary recommendation interview questions. Testimony of Jesus Christ and His restored gospel see Meeting the standards of worthiness see Physical, mental, and emotional health readiness see Financial readiness see The bishop and stake president also review information about standards of worthiness and health readiness in the Missionary Online Recommendation System. If a stake president in the United States or Canada has questions, he contacts the Missionary Department see Elsewhere, he contacts the area office.
The bishop and stake president do not add any eligibility standards. Nor do they change the interview questions. The information in the recommendation form contributes to the revelatory process of mission calls.
Leaders ensure that all information requested is fully disclosed. If the bishop and stake president have concerns about a candidate meeting the standards of worthiness or about his or her health readiness, they counsel together and with the person.
The bishop and stake president do not submit a recommendation until the person has repented of serious sin see In urgent cases when the bishop or stake president is unavailable, he may authorize one of his counselors to conduct these interviews.
In districts, the mission president or an assigned counselor interviews and recommends missionary candidates. District presidents do not conduct these interviews. The stake president may submit a recommendation for a young missionary candidate up to days before his or her availability date.
The stake president may submit a recommendation for a senior missionary candidate up to nine months before his or her availability date. The availability date must be when all of the following conditions are met:. The person has completed or is no longer attending high school, secondary school, or the equivalent. This applies to young missionary candidates who are 18 years old.
Young missionary candidates and their stake president plan for when the stake president should submit the recommendation. Missionary recommendations are usually submitted through the home ward and stake. Bishops of away-from-home wards, such as a young single adult ward, may process a missionary recommendation. They must first confer with the bishop from the home ward. The home ward should be listed as the funding ward. Sometimes a member who desires to serve may not be called as a full-time missionary.
This may be due to health challenges, not meeting the standards of worthiness, legal issues, or other circumstances. Missionaries fund their own missions — except for their transportation to and from their field of labor — and are not paid for their services. Missionaries may communicate with their families on their weekly preparation day via text messages, online messaging, phone calls and video chat in addition to letters and emails. Previously, missionaries relied primarily on email and letters for communication.
See the official notice to Church leaders. Missionaries avoid entertainment, parties or other activities common to this age-group as long as they are on their missions, so they can focus entirely on the work of serving and of teaching others the gospel of Jesus Christ. For more information on the use of the name of the Church, go to our online Style Guide.
To download media files, please first review and agree to the Terms of Use. Elder Hinckley has served in the department for five years, and has been executive director for the past three years. The assistant executive directors serve from one year to several years. They are intensely busy. They each carry supervisory responsibilities in the Missionary Department. The executive director or an assistant executive director is available and on call at all times, but professional staff members in the Missionary Department who are returned mission presidents handle all but the most difficult questions that come in from the field.
The executive director and the assistant executive directors are supported by a compact staff of professionals. A managing director and other directors oversee the work of a number of different areas, including missionary services, proselyting, media, public programs, finances and facilities, and MTCs.
A group of senior missionary couples provide much service. A retired physician oversees the medical area. He is assisted by medical missionaries—medical doctors and mental health professionals—throughout the world who provide medical and mental health counseling to the 52, missionaries now serving. The medical missionaries are not licensed to practice outside their home areas, but they advise mission presidents and missionaries regarding local physicians, hospitals, and procedures.
They save the Church untold costs in health care every year. With that introduction, we will now turn to the most important administrative responsibilities of the Missionary Department, the Missionary Executive Council, the Missionary Committee, and the First Presidency. First, the process of calling full-time missionaries: mission calls are initiated either by a bishop or branch president or by the prospective missionary himself or herself. Following successful interviews with appropriate ecclesiastical leaders and completion of medical and dental requirements, the missionary application is electronically forwarded to the Missionary Department.
Each week a member of the Twelve reviews the information on each potential missionary and assigns him or her to a field of labor. The Missionary Department provides information on missions that need more missionaries, languages needed, restrictions on the applicant getting a visa to certain countries and any other information that will inform the Apostle s while making the mission assignments as part of the revelatory process.
An Apostle makes every assignment for missionaries, both single missionaries and couples. He can look at all of the information and override any piece of it. There may be a mission that is low on missionaries. He can look past that and assign that missionary to a mission that is over its complement. He has full discretion in where the assignments are made, and every assignment is made individually and by inspiration.
They try to honor the financial and health constraints of couple missionaries. It takes a long time because there are hundreds a week. Assigning missionaries is rotated among the Twelve. In April general conference of , Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Seventy spoke on missionary work.
His address provided specifics regarding the process followed by members of the Twelve when they assign missionaries that are not available anywhere else. The following quotation is long, but it reveals much that is highly important regarding the assigning of missionaries to their respective fields of labor:.
With the encouragement and permission of President Henry B. Eyring, I would like to relate to you an experience, very special to me, which I had with him several years ago when he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. Elder Eyring was assigning missionaries to their fields of labor, and as part of my training, I was invited to observe. First, we knelt in prayer.
As the process began, a picture of the missionary to be assigned would come up on one of the computer screens. As each picture appeared, to me it was as if the missionary were in the room with us. How are you today? He told me that in his own mind he liked to think of where the missionaries would conclude their mission. This would aid him to know where they were to be assigned. Elder Eyring would then study the comments from the bishops and stake presidents, medical notes, and other issues relating to each missionary.
He then referred to another screen which displayed areas and the missions across the world. Finally, as he was prompted by the Spirit, he would assign the missionary to his or her field of labor. From others of the Twelve, I have learned that this general method is typical each week as Apostles of the Lord assign scores of missionaries to serve throughout the world. At the end of the meeting Elder Eyring bore his witness to me of the love of the Savior, which He has for each missionary assigned to go out into the world and preach the restored gospel.
He said that it is by the great love of the Savior that His servants know where these wonderful young men and women, senior missionaries, and senior couple missionaries are to serve. I had a further witness that morning that every missionary called in this Church, and assigned or reassigned to a particular mission, is called by revelation from the Lord God Almighty through one of these, His servants.
When the calls come back to the Missionary Department, staff members in the department prepare what is called a call packet. This call packet provides the newly called missionary with information he or she will need, including clothing requirements and travel information, to prepare for the specific mission assignment.
The Travel Department arranges transportation and visas. Mission presidents are called in a somewhat different manner. When General Authorities and Area Seventies visit with stake presidents at stake conferences, they suggest that the stake president might recommend two or three of the best potential mission presidents to the Missionary Department.
General Authorities—the First Presidency, the Twelve, the Seventy, and Area Seventies—also see men who impress them as good candidates and bring those names back to the Missionary Department.
They look through these recommendations carefully and prayerfully. Most of this information comes from stake presidents. This process begins about eighteen months before the new mission presidents will enter the field. In , the Church sent out new mission presidents. More couples than needed are screened or backgrounded, as not all individual circumstances can be determined until a personal interview takes place.
The six General Authorities in the Missionary Department look at the candidates together and then forward the files of the possible new mission presidents to the Missionary Executive Council, where they are carefully reviewed again. Those they choose to bring forward will be presented to the First Presidency and the Twelve. Potential mission presidents are interviewed by a member of the Twelve. Although possible missionary service may be mentioned in this interview, the member of the Twelve does not extend the call to serve.
Interviews with the Twelve reveal facts that could not be ascertained through the backgrounding process. This anonymous man talks to the locals when they walk into his shop and prays, listens, and provides a nice warm cup of coffee to express his love for Jesus to them. Church Building missionaries go to a country where the majority of the churches are very rare-and-few.
The missionaries create a building for foreign people to go to. Building a church on a mission field provides memorable moments of opportunity to proclaim the gospel with other people groups.
Finding and constructing a church also provides others a safe and sacred place to learn about the Father. An illustration of church building mission trips is about a man who served in Brazil for over five years. He built up a church with his wife and ten-year-old daughter.
It took two years to construct a building with more than thirty people to attend his sermons. While other missionaries are called to help the providers of the families, Early Childhood Education missionaries have the younger generations on their hearts.
These believers go to a different culture to gift an education spiritually and academically. They play, love, and tend for the younger boys and girls. Early Childhood Education missionaries not only teach the students in the country they are serving in, but they also learn the foreign language themselves to be able to teach the young ones.
A lady went to India and taught through an internship with her church at a local school in a small village. A little girl asked her dad one day about Jesus and noticed how he got angry and frustrated. When the little girl went home and told her mother what the teacher said, the mom went to the school and also has a list of questions about the Christian faith. A year later, the mother sought the Lord for salvation and influenced her husband about God.
Medical missionaries who go for more of the medical side of a trip are trained professionals who stay for a designated period of time. The teammates that this mission team consists of speech therapists, surgeons, registered nurses, etc.
These missionaries go to help increase the health of the nation they are serving in. Many deprived countries have a necessity to advance medical assistance and have the necessity for a sense of hope.
A man served in New Delhi India as a registered doctor. He just graduated from university and was called from the Lord to serve in this location. He also served over there for twenty-three years. The first seven years he was there he helps create a hotel for critically-ill civilians. It took three years to build the care center and he had to learn, by himself, how to speak the language and run a hospital in a completely different culture. He has provided cures and treatments for over people within his first five years serving there.
This man also shares his love of Jesus to his patients and even has a small church-gathering in the lobby of the hospital. Social Justice missionaries go to this type of mission field because it includes helping others who live in the country they are serving in who are lost, scared, and held in bondage.
There are various types of social justice positions in this type of mission group. Such as the ones who evangelize to the homeless, prostitutes, etc.
Also, there are those who go find the hidden areas which hold forced women in hostage for human-trafficking. The last position is the ones who want to go to the nation to help children and adults who are being forced into work-labor and are treated unfairly.
To illustrate, a missionary went to India to pray and evangelize to the homeless. Right before he went to leave back to Australia, the man gave her his Bible. She kissed his wrist and gave her blessings for showing her hope and a future again. This is the last type of mission field type. Volunteering missionaries are the ones who provide the manual labor to help out an organization, church, or school.
The majority of volunteers spend their time serving by digging, cleaning, drilling, painting, and repairing different homes and buildings for the community. These missionaries will get the chance to talk to the other people groups about the Lord and be able to share the gospel with them.
This is an efficient way for the missionaries to show their trustworthiness and display how the Lord has transformed their lives to a non-believer with their testimony.
Lastly, here is an example of a volunteering mission trip.
0コメント