missionary week

Our ward had missionary week for the youth.  It was awesome!  These are our two missionaries!  They kicked off the week with a special speaker and then got their "calls" and "companions" for the week.  Jared was called to the New York New York mission with the Monsons as instructors.  Ryan was called to the Portugal Lisbon mission with Bro. Boren as the instructor.  They each had great companions who were from the priests quorum -- James & Jeremy.  Each morning they had to be dressed up and at the church at 6:00 a.m. to study the gospel for a half hour before having breakfast.  Then they came home and got ready for school.  Each evening at 8:30 they had a devotional at the church.  During the week they were asked to give up tv, cell phones, video games, and computer time (unless they needed to do schoolwork).  Getting up so early was kind of hard near the end of the week, but they didn't complain.  They didn't even complain about setting aside the media for a week!  On Friday evening, each companionship went to a ward member's home to have dinner and teach the gospel lesson (apostasy & restoration of the gospel) they had studied all week.  Jared & his companion went to the Weed's home.  Jared loved dinner -- pasta! They had a great discussion and the Weed's threw them a couple of loops during the lesson for fun -- i.e. we would love to be baptized, but we're not married, is that a problem?!  Ryan and his companion ate dinner with the Hansen's, who have lots of little boys.  Ryan loved the spaghetti and homemade bread! They had a great discussion with the family and showed the little boys an awesome object lesson using 3 cups and 3 knives representing the church, prayer, & scripture study as a foundation for a strong testimony.  We were also able to host a set of missionaries (Clint & Rykker) for dinner & discussion.  It was fun to have them here and they did a good job on the lesson. Following dinner and discussions, all the youth missionaries went back to the church and had zone conference, i.e. testimony meeting.  Jared & Ryan had a great week of testimony building/strengthening experiences. I am so grateful for the good experience they had! I'm also grateful that they were willing to follow the "rules" and participate in everything, thus allowing themselves to have a memorable experience.