Russell and Eileen's Church Missions: CHRISTLIKE QUALITIES

Monday, January 14, 2013

CHRISTLIKE QUALITIES

This past week we said another goodbye, this time to one of our NGO leaders. Michael Allen has worked with us representing United Cerebral Palsy in Indonesia. He is moving back to California to work in another position with UCP. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Michael. He has a great sense of humor, responds immediately to our needs and has shown us what being a good NGO (Non-governmental organization) partner means. We wish him well as he returns to his wife and soon to be baby. I (Eileen) think he should name his new baby boy Joko as that is a common name in Indonesia.

Last Thursday we had the privilege of attending Zone conference. This is where 30 missionaries from the surrounding areas get together to learn and grow together. President Groberg picked the topic of Becoming more Christ-like through studying the attributes of Christ as demonstrated through his parables. Each missionary was assigned a parable and was asked to give a 2 l/2 minute talk on the meaning of the parable, what attributes of Christ are illustrated in the parable, and how the parable can apply to us today. The attributes that we focused on came from the book Preach My Gospel. They are: Charity, Love, Knowledge, Faith, Hope, Virtue, Patience, Humility, Diligence and Obedience. I think we all learned from the talks we prepared and also from the talks we heard. We also played a game where our companion wrote down an attribute that he/she felt like we each displayed and why. The rest of the missionaries then guessed who it was. If you were to pick one of the above attributes about yourself what would it be? After discussing it between ourselves as a couple we realized we have a lot of room for improvement.