We had some training this morning from Elder Gibson in the General Young Men's Presidency, and he said some interesting thing, so I thought I would share:
- The decision to lower the missionary age stemmed from a desire to curtail the loss of youth after high school. President Monson told Elder Nelson, "We are having a hemorrhage in our youth. You are a doctor and I need you to fix it." When Elder Nelson and the General Young Men's Presidency pitched the idea of lowering the age for Elders to 18 to President Monson, the first thing he said was, "What about the women? They ought to go at 19." His next question was, "Do you think this will result in more temple marriages?"
- When the member of the Presiding Bishopric are set apart, they are given keys similar to those of other bishops, but they are instructed that their keys are "dormant," meaning they take direction from the President of the Church. The Presiding Bishopric has essentially no authority and can't even preside at almost any meeting.
- The Church expects us to have 100,000+ missionaries after the first quarter of next year; however, they recognize that the numbers will drop in coming years and stabilize; one of the concerns they had was not pressuring women in to going on missions. The Church estimates that 25-30% of women will go on missions.
- The Church changed the Strength for the Youth pamphlet to emphasize group dating not as a group of boys and girls in any number of combinations, but instead a group of couples, each boy having one girl he is on a date with
- The Church stripped the activity portions of the Duty to God program because it felt that Scouting covered that need
I have to admit that I did some real praying when the lowered the age. For Brant that means I lose almost an entire year with him, as he will now leave right after graduation (yep, plan on his graduation announcement also being his mission announcement!). It seems that once they serve missions boys come back men and are gone from the home for good.... so it felt like I was losing a whole year of "mothering" that I wouldn't get back once he came home. But I came to the same conclusion you spoke of at the first- there won't be a chance of getting lost and it sends him out strong. It does up the ante quite a bit as a parent to make sure that our youth are prepared. And I have to admit- we've always raised our girls to consider a mission and with the age change we're talking to them just like we do the boys "When you go on a mission...." They'll have a choice, but I can't see how a mission has can do anything but help them.
ReplyDeleteAnd scouts... don't even get me started on that.
Grrrr