End of Sept Mission Report

Elder and Sister Schill

Our mission is going well. We were able to get permission from our mission president to go outside of our mission in order to go with the members of our branch to the Chicago temple. It was a wonderful trip and a spiritual experience for many young people to go and do baptisms. Afterward we all went out for pizza.

We are moving forward with baptisms. We have had one baptism per month in our branch for the past several months. We enjoyed attending the baptism of a young man a couple of weeks ago and then, last Sunday, to watch him as he prepared the sacrament. We have another young man scheduled for baptism in October, and a young lady who is attending one of our institute classes who is also preparing for baptism.

Elder Schill has been called to serve as the branch mission leader and such works with the young elders who are assigned to the university campus to teach the 30,000 students who attend there. Working with him are five branch missionaries who have been called from the branch to share the gospel with their friends and to bring people for them and the full time missionaries to teach. Elder Schill is able to work with them to keep them motivated, active and assist with the teaching pool of investigators.

We are teaching three classes on Family Relations and Eternal Marriage and one class on the Doctrine and Covenants. We teach two classes in the daytime and two on different evenings. We have arranged table in one of the classrooms in the institute and Sister Schill always fixes a nice lunch for the students coming to the noon class. When we have finished lunch we sing a hymn and then have our class discussion. It is very cozy around the table together, like a family gathering. The students take the lead on Monday evenings with teaching the Family Home Evening lesson and we have very outstanding lessons, after which we play various games in the cultural hall of the institute. We have a family in the stake who each week tapes the BYU devotional and on Fridays at noon we have a nice luncheon and show the DVD of the devotional. It was great to have President Hinckley address the students two weeks ago. Since we have new members at the institute, several had never seen him before. We are looking forward to General Conference at our Stake center and for the opportunity for the students to hear the talks of the General Authorities. Many are very excited for their first opportunity to do so. We are having a branch luncheon at the home of the branch president between sessions.

We are getting very close to many of the members of the branch and enjoying their loving spirit and fellowship. The institute is really a haven for them as they spend so much of their time on the campus of a very secular university. They always look forward to the spirit of the institute and of uniting together for a few minutes each day. We love and support each one of them.