Sunday, September 23, 2007

THE MISSION FIELD


Brian is starting to feel like he is living in South America Again! He just got called as Ward Mission Leader. Its his 2nd time around – he did have that calling in our BYU married ward. It is TOTALLY different. I will preface this by saying that our ward has some unique boundaries. We live in what’s called “The oasis in the desert.” Our direct area of 30000 people has one of the top highschools in the nation – top 1%. Every area surrounding it – North, South, East and West is all poor and is getting run down, as of the last 15 years or so.

Our ward boundaries are HUGE – we can go an hour south and still reach our ward boundaries – Peotone, IL.

The Chicago South Mission LOVES our ward. We have 4 sets of missionaries including 2 couples and 2 sets of Elders. Our ward is considered “Fertile” especially compared to the Naperville, IL and Frankfort IL wards – the ritzier of the mission.

Well, its interesting because all the new members and all the investigators currently do not own cars and many cannot afford their own rent and so forth. We have to send people to drive 30 to 40 minutes out of their way ONE WAY to try and get people rides to church. Very much reminiscent of many members in South America not having cars – everyone walked to church. However, the boundaries, were MUCH smaller…or they would be walking all night!

Sometimes, I envy the days of having our ward perimeters being 4 apartments buildings right in a row. Or even better – having just the FIRST floor of the dorms be the entire ward!!!

2 comments:

Cami said...

Yes, me too. Jake was the mission leader for a long time, and boy was it quite the adventure. There was definitely a lot to do. I'm sure Brian will do great!

Andrea said...

Wow! This sounds like a lot of work! Nate was just released as a ward missionary. Our ward boundaries probably contain 50% LDS, maybe a little less. So we don't even have CLOSE to the work you guys do, but more than when we lived in Wyview!