Online On Christmas

Referral Center Mission at Bishop Allen's

Wednesday evening my mission went all went to the home of Bishop Allen.  He's the son of one of the leaders over our mission.  As a bishop, he volunteers to oversee a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Part of that includes overseeing the young men and women in the Church by strengthening them spiritually and personally, and by helping them reach out to other young men and women.  This outreach helps strengthen their faith and help them share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with their friends.  I know that the ways I helped my friends learn about Jesus Christ and his modern prophets, and built my faith in him, when I saw the changes that took place in my friends' lives.  To help build the young men and women's faith in Christ and to share it with others, Bishop Allen held a fireside in his home, in which we presented how we do missionary work online, and suggested ways others could get involved in sharing the Gospel online.  One of the main ways we covered was sharing it with status updates on Facebook and such.  Our faith is so dear to us, that many of us forget as we hold it sacred to let it show in our daily lives, especially as we show our daily lives on the internet with friends and family across the world.  How often do we post an update to show how our families are remembering Christ?



Elder Spencer, showed me this video, that shows what Mary and Joseph's status updates would have looked like, as they might have shared some of the most sacred events of all time.

BCC Zeitcast 4.3: The Cyber Elders

Serving online, I've had the opportunity to meet a wild variety of many wonderful members of the church.  Many of them are engaged in their faith through the online community.  Following the suggestion of some of my missionary leadership (not breaking any mission rules),  I was searching members blogs for ideas for my own, and ways to reach out in the online community.  One of the blogs I stumbled on was By Common Consent.  The most recent post touched on a topic I had recently shared my perspective on here on How Beautiful are the Feet....  It created quite a stir when I commented on the topic, and made no attempt to hide my identity as a full-time missionary.  Mormon missionaries usually aren't on the internet except to email home.  After some mutual misunderstandings of what was going on, that were a result of the inconspicuous nature of our mission, Scott B, one of the authors of the blog did some more research into my background and online missionaries.  Scott conducted an interview with Elder Meza, my companion, and I on Skype and posted it on By Common Consent.  The interview is an hour long, and focuses more on Elder Meza's and my experiences as online missionaries, than the actual logistics of the mission, but word is spreading.
BCC Zeitcast 4.3: The Cyber Elders