Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Tuesday evening Reed and I headed through rush hour traffic to get to Sandringham.  Getting over the Auckland Harbor Bridge from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. is very slow.  We did an education workshop for the Young Men/Young Women at the Kiwitea Chapel.

Ariel Wetere is the Young Women President and we work with her at the Area Office.  She is the Operation Manager for Self-Reliance.  We have already presented an educational devotional and another workshop for this Balmoral Ward.  Tonight we had them put into practice the things Reed has been teaching them.

This is Cody Wetere, Ariel's husband also in the Young Men Presidency.  They are getting the "feed" ready for after the workshop.



Ariel's son, Aaron, playing basketball with some of the Young Women before the evening starts.

Ariel and some of her Young Women peeling eggs to make egg salad sandwiches.

They began opening exercises about 6:20 so we could begin the workshop right at 6:30 p.m.  We only had about 12 people when we started the devotional.

By the time Reed got up to begin his part at 6:35 p.m. we had 20 YM/YW and five leaders in attendance.

We had them sit at tables with three of them at each table and assigned each of them a number.  First Reed presented a lesson review and taught them how to take proper notes.  They all took notes, some much better than others.  He told them in advance they would need the information from their notes for quizzes.  He helped them understand how important it was to work together in groups such as study groups.  Then during the quizzes he would give them a question and then give them a minute to discuss.  Reed then called out a number and the person that had that number had to come to the board and write the answer.  Some obviously paid much better attention than others.

Reed giving them some more instructions and talking to them about paying attention to hints the teacher might drop about this is important, this could be on the test, how to abbreviate and highlight important quotes.

We had a lot of fun, laughing, cheering and some moans and groans.

Most of them really had an enjoyable evening learning how to study in groups, take proper notes and applying what they had learned.  We passed out treats and then they had some good food after the closing prayer.
Reed and I are grateful for these opportunities to train and work with young people to help them understand the importance of education and how working together can help you learn more and study better.

We hope you enjoy seeing some of our actual missionary work.  We usually blog about visiting different areas but most of our time is spent working at the Area Office, participating in meetings, providing workshops, devotionals, trainings and supporting our Self-Reliance and Education Specialists Missionaries out and about.

Love you all, until next time Elder and Sister Spencer (aka Reed and Nada)