Sunday, 23 Oct 2016

Sundays are a day of rest from our normal labors and to focus on things that help further the work of the Lord.  The day starts with an 8:30 am bishopric meeting.  Then we have sacrament meeting at 10 am - the testimony from some of the newer members and a talk from a longer-time member were good. Then Sunday school, followed by Relief Society & Priesthood meetings.  We are looking at how the Hyde Park meeting house is used, so I was tasked by Bishop Akroyd to take a count of the rooms used and how many people were in each room.  We will do the count again for the next 3 weeks.
1:30pm we had ward council, where all of the organisations of the ward meet to discuss what is going on in the ward and how each organisation can help each other and/or members of the ward.  Then a short break and onto the last meeting of the day which began at 3 pm - the Missionary Committee Meeting (MCM).  I have never seen an MCM held until I came to Hyde Park.  We have all the full time missionaries (16 at the moment), 4 senior missionaries, the bishopric and the ward missionaries (about 6 or 7 at the moment) in attendance, so the room is full.  In the MCM we hear from the full time missionaries on their activities and confirm which converts will be participating in the next ward baptism.  We hold ward baptisms on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays at the Greenwich ward building since we do not have a baptismal font at the Hyde Park building.

There was a multi-stake fireside at 7 pm, but our internet link was not good enough to carry a decent video, so hopefully that will get fixed in the future.  The Lems (the other senior couple here) led us in a really neat session by having each of us select one of our favorite hymns and tell about it, including reading the scriptural references that are associated with each hymn.  It was a very touching and spiritually lifting session.

Then home, unwind and head for bed