I read a recent article in the church news, that indicated that the missionary schedule was going to to change. When I was a missionary back before "Preach My Gospel" our schedule was the same everyday. It was, 6:30 AM wake up study until 10:00 AM and then don't come back until 9:30 PM.
In Florida, they would allow us to continue teaching after 9:30 PM if we were in the middle of a discussion so that it would not kill the spirit knowing we had to get back and rushing out of our investigator's homes.
So the new policy is really great in my opinion as it allows for missionaries to set more of their own schedules based on culture, health and other reasons.
I served in both Venezuela and Florida, due to an accident I had while serving in Venezuela and had to server in Florida to finish up my mission.
In Venezuela the Challenge was that the men would leave at 6:30 in the morning and not get back until 10:00 at night. This left no time to teach the men and so we baptized a lot of women without their husbands.
In Florida I could have used some of my mornings to do more work with people especially in the summer months when youth and parents were home and then studied later in the day when less people were home.
I am noticing a real good trend in the church and with missionary work and other service groups, the brethren of the church are beginning to trust the missionaries and members more. With the bar raised for better missionaries who are prepared. They can begin to actually trust missionaries will do the right thing. The old schedule was a way to make sure that the missionaries did the work they are asked to do, but by giving missionaries more freedom they are able to do more of the Lords work in the ways that will benefit their investigators and themselves.
For example I had a companion that convinced me that because it was something that he thought should be done on preparation day that I needed to wait a week to get my glasses fixed. I wish I would have told him that it was important for me to get my glasses fixed that day instead, with the new schedule I think there would be no question what the priorities would be.
I don't think this means that missionaries will be sleeping in until 10:00 AM and then studying until 1:00 and then proselyte for 2 hours. I think with the missionaries dedicating themselves the archaic ways of the past will be replaced with ideas that will show missionaries that the Lord trusts them.
May we as members and missionaries stay worthy of that trust is my prayer.
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The image for this post was originally posted to Flickr by Ben P L at https://flickr.com/photos/88663091@N04/32019481303. It was reviewed on by the FlickreviewR robot and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0.