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Danny and Liliana Bolaños live in Eagle Mountain, Utah, where they serve in their Spanish-speaking ward as Ward Mission Leaders.
Highlights
6:50 Making sure members understand their value
- The youth in their ward love missionary work and aren’t phased by the challenges of the pandemic, and know their value as children of God and as missionaries
- The youth are first/second-generation members of the Church and either the pioneers in their families or have direct contact with family members who are, so they have seen people progress through the faith of accepting the gospel
11:55 The youth have unique skillsets for missionary work
- The bishop has called many of the youth as ward missionaries in preparation for serving missions
- They are held to a higher standard and treated as missionaries, learning to overcome any fears of sharing the gospel
- Weekly missionary coordination meetings include all the ward missionaries and the elders quorum and Relief Society counselors over missionary work, not just the full-time missionaries and ward mission leaders
15:30 Liliana’s experience as a young convert with leaders who made sure she knew that they genuinely loved her and wanted to connect with her
- Leaders and the youth spent a lot of time together and planned activities where they could bring friends and share the gospel in natural ways, as well as interacting with the full-time missionaries
19:30 The youth really know how to use social media and reach people through it 20:15 How their ward is doing missionary work during the pandemic:
- The Latino Outreach program
- Virtual Christmas lessons for primary kids—an activity developed by the youth to reach less-active families
- 27:30 #BajoEstaMascara social media challenge—Idea to share testimonies that we are all children of God, via social media
32:00 Coordinating with the full time missionaries
- Using WhatsApp to communicate with everyone: missionaries, youth, ward missionaries
34:50 Being a Ward Mission Leader is challenging and humbling, and has helped with trusting in Heavenly Father 36:30 Loving people is the best way to be a missionary
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This a great example of being creative in sharing the gospel and engaging youth. Interesting that he gave credit to recent conversions in the youths’ own families that shows them the impact the gospel in a person’s life and therefore less fear in sharing the gospel.
It seems like having a younger mission leader familiar with technology has been very beneficial to engaging youth in also sharing through technology. It sounds like he is conducting the Sharing the Gospel Coordination meeting as the General Handbook designed it. And even more importantly making sure the youth participate in the meeting, not just sit in the corner
It seems like everything shared was about youth. It would be interesting to know if the adults have been engaged as well.
I especially liked that the mission leader gave credit to his wife and her counsel. What a great example of counseling together with one’s spouse in a calling.