by It has been said that the most important responsibility in the mission is to be a trainer. It is the thing that has the biggest impact on a new missionary and how he acts for the rest of his mission. These are some thoughts I had on training and some things I wish I had focused more as a trainer:
How to train your new missionary
When training, use the EDGE method which is Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable. When teaching things like how to contact people or how to teach a certain principle in a lesson first explain. I would often explain how to do certain things to the new missionary while we were walking from lesson to lesson then I would demonstrate in the lesson how to teach the principle. Later I would let him do it too and provide feedback on things that could have been done better.
My philosophy as a trainer is that the role of the trainer is to prepare your trainee to be able to train a new missionary immediately after his training is over. My role is to give the new missionary all the skills and know-how that he needs to be independent and to be a self-sustaining missionary who can also train a new missionary after I am gone.
Here are some of the things that I did when I was a trainer:
1. Let the new missionary teach as much as possible
As a trainer, you should let your missionary have as many opportunities to teach as possible. Test their teaching ability and knowledge so that later you can guide them in how they could teach better.
2. Go on splits with the members
Before, you could do splits with the members, now you can’t. When I was training, I would have my son go off with another adult member and they would teach. This made him teach all by himself and increase his confidence and make him self-sufficient. Since splits with the members aren’t possible, try working with a member and having the member and your missionary teach the majority of the lesson and you share a little bit.
3. Creative ideas
In our mission, we started a thing called “creative ideas”. Everyday we would think of one or two things we could do that was new in our area and we would start doing them. It’s great when you and your comp can brainstorm about new things we can do like new ways of contacting and new ways of strengthening the members and teaching. It helped us a lot to push our boundaries and explore new ways of doing things.
Training a new missionary isn’t just teaching lessons
Missionary work involves a lot of new skills other than knowing how to teach that new missionaries need to learn to be self-sufficient. Trainers need to explain, demonstrate, and guide, and enable their new missionary to learn how to plan lessons effectively, plan out the day, do missionary coordination meetings with local members, set up baptism services, call and set up appointments with investigators, work with ward and branch leaders, and many other skills. The trainer needs to make sure that the new missionary has experience doing all these things on their own so that they will be confident when you leave them after training.
Good luck training your new missionary!
