This coming week in the
Church News will be the account of the addresses received by the mission presidents and their wives at the 2010 Mission Presidents' Seminar.
I thought it would be interesting though to show a few behind the scene activities to whet your appetite for my post next week. So in this post I am featuring some old dudes I served a mission with back in the mid1970s and their connection to M. Russell Ballard. The first part of the post shows my old buddy Richard Holzapfel with whom I went to BYU and he gives us an overview of the seminar followed by the M. Russell Ballard connection.
Richard Holzapfel, a former BYU religion professor and newly called mission president to the Alabama Birmingham Mission, gave a brief overview of what transpired in his blog:
We entered the MTC on June 23, 2010 for the New Mission Presidents' Seminar (Photograph taken in front of the Wilford Woodruff Administration Building at 9:00 am on June 23). Some 114 new presidents and their wives gathered in Provo for the five day training. They came from across the world, including Europe, Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim, North, Central, and South America. The Missionary Department announced changes in dress for sister missionaries, interview and zone conference schedules, and a new simplified teaching/training plan. It has been a wonderful experience!
M. Russell Ballard has a great influence on the missionary work in the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. He has been involved with missionary work full-time going back to 1974 when he was called as mission president in the Canada Toronto Mission. A few of his missionaries have followed in his footsteps. All of them were mission leaders in the CTM being former zone leaders and mission assistants.
