Manual de Salud Misional 2016

Many of you have heard me quote William Bradford's talk from General Conference of April 1984, "It causes me to wonder if they (those who choose not to go on missions) really understand and believe the two fold nature of the purpose of missionary work: first, to sanctify the missionary himself, and second, to bring converts to a knowledge of the truths of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to baptism into His Church which is the sure and natural product of a missionary who is in the process of sanctification."

Now that I have been observing and participating in the Church's missionary program here in Mexico the last six months, I am even more convinced of the truth of that statement.  These missionaries are the future leaders of the Church.  Mexico has prophesies to fulfill and it needs well trained, dedicated, self sufficient leaders to do that.  It is placing huge resources to accomplish those ends.  I felt a part of that from the start of my mission.  The one thing I felt I could do was to help the missionaries to learn to take care of their own health issues.  I was getting calls for simple questions and I was aware of Mission Presidents and their wives getting similar calls.  The Church had produced a great collection of  self-care articles on its Missionary Medical website, but they were only in English and 80% of our missionaries speak only Spanish.  So I took on the project of getting them translated to Spanish and adapt them to to Mexico (Mexican brand names, local phrases, etc.).  We have a large number of LDS physicians in Mexico and many of them offered to translate the articles.  The final product consisted of 48 topics in both English and Spanish, a review of the 10 Commandments of Good Health and a section for Mission Presidents only with guides on determining whether a  missionary is a candidate for surgery, in-depth evaluation, etc., a list of Mexican medications and their US counterparts. and suggestions regarding healthy housing guidelines.  We called our project Manual de Salud Misional and we produced 40 copies and took them all to the Mission President's Seminar in Tuxtla Gutierrez on Oct. 19 and presented them to the wives of the Mission Presidents followed by a 2 hr. workshop. 

Of course, we also took advantage of the trip to do some sightseeing.  We went up the Grijalva River through the Sumidero Canyon.  Some scholars feel the Grijalva is the prime candidate to be the River Sidon of the Book of Mormon. 

Jungle river ride with beautiful waterfalls, monkeys, crocodiles

After the river, we had lunch and shopping in the old Spanish town of San Cristobal de las Casas

We were able to visit the Tuxtla Gutierrez Temple in a short break in the seminar.  Here we are with Pres. and Hermana Williamson of the Querétaro Mission and Pres. and Hermana Kimball of the Pachuca Mission.

We were treated to a meal and floor show displaying the local cuisine (a little hard to enjoy) and dancing and music much easier on the palate.

It was a fun and satisfying four days, but best of all was the wonderful privilege of getting to know the 34 Mission Presidents and their wives.  What wonderful and dedicated people.  It is a real blessing to work with them in caring for the wonderful young missionaries serving in México.

Apologies to the Tenorios and Ávilas on the left