The Problem of Precedence

When we arrived in Lubumbashi, it was a rather isolated spot in the mission. The elders had gotten out of the habit of writing weekly letters to the mission president. Since they only saw him about every 6 weeks, the motivation to write weekly was not great. They had also become rather lax in taking care of their apartments (like kids when Mom and Dad don't check under the bed now and then).

So, one day while we were eating banana bread we came up with an idea.

We decided to give them a reward to encourage them to write their letters and to clean their apartments. (It's the nursery school teacher in me. You know, you should get a sticker or something for good work.)

The first zone conference we gave a mini-loaf of banana bread to one elder who had written five out of six letters since the last conference.

We gave Brent the prize for the only clean apartment and challenged them to do better than he did until the next conference.

At the next zone conference we gave out the prize for the best apartment, but it was a hard choice because they had all improved so much.

We were very happy with the improvement in the apartments and the letters to the president came rolling in.

At that next conference we gave out 7 mini-loaves of banana bread.

So, this zone conference 16 of 20 elders sent in their letter every week. Poor Sister Jameson was worn out from making banana bread and President Jameson's eyes were blurry from reading all those letters.

But we had a pretty happy bunch when the awards started being announced.

We announced at this zone conference that next time we will draw the names of four elders who wrote all 6 letters and they will get the prize. Four banana breads for each zone is all we will do.

So, we have learned a lesson about setting a precedence. We started our mission with only 16 elders here. We are now up to 38. By mid-March we will be at 42 missionaries in our area. We started with 2 loaves of banana bread and ended up with 19.

Be careful! You may have to finish what you start!