Thursday, February 26, 2015

TRAINING FOR LIFETIME DIGITAL HABITS

February 25, 2015

Today our mission had the best training ever from Elder Clarke, 1st Quorum of Seventy and Elder Donaldson.  Half of our mission went to the first session which was from 8am to noon in Theatre 1 in SVC.  The rest of our mission attended the second session from 1pm to 5pm. Today’s presentation is not about an event but a journey.  This mission wide training is for incorporating the ipad as a tool for missionary work.  Even more important than that, today was about learning digital habits that will not only bless us in our missionary work but bless us for the rest of our lives and also bless our families.  

The Lord is hastening His work and it is our job to be good servants.  Heavenly Father trusts us to use ipads in our missionary labors and it is a big deal to be trusted by the Lord and His ordained servants to give us an ipad as a tool to further the Lord’s work. In our training and instruction we not only learned how to avoid the evils of technology such as pornography and other bad stuff but also the wasting of precious time.  Whenever we use technology on or off our missions we should ask ourselves: How does the Lord want me to use technology for the rest of my life?  We were taught to use technology with a purpose in mind – missionary work, genealogy, family history, etc. We want technology to be our servant and not our master. If turning technology on doesn’t relate to our purpose then we need to turn it off. Also, we don’t invert or focus on the mobile device.  Rather we focus on our purpose. Using a digital device becomes part of who we are—like holding a pencil to do our work.  As the Lord’s servants we are to be the primary source through which the Holy Ghost teaches. Nothing replaces the missionary!
 
Elder Donaldson, Elder Clarke, President and Sister Poulsen