John Here…

We are reaching a time when some of our courses and programs are winding down. The seminary classes have only two weeks, then two weeks off for holidays (this year, the holidays were scheduled to coincide with the finals of the Rugby World Cup), one more week of class, and then Seminary is over and they are out for the summer break until February. Wow, it went really fast when you look at it from this end. One of the Institute classes we teach, Presidents of the Church is winding up also. We just finished the second week of Gordon B. Hinckley. There is nothing in the manual for Thomas S. Monson, so we will have to come up with something for that one. After that, we are out of lessons. We will do a couple of make-up sessions, but the course is essentially at an end. We have another class we teach, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles” which has several more lessons to teach since we started that class a bit later.

The YSA choir performs occasionally. They have one more event and then it too will be taking a break for the summer. This event is a Musical Fireside, and the choir has been working on several numbers. We have been told that the choir is one of the best they have heard for a long time. This is due to our Choir Director and Sister Stauffer. The choir director is Ellen Chan, a Young Single Adult who is a Music Major here at the University of Canterbury. She is fantastic and does such a great job with these young people. Brother Bell and I add our voices to the choir as well, and enjoy singing with them.

We might have mentioned the Online Seminary program before. It is a program the church is trying out, and is being used to reach seminary students who live in remote places where there are no released time seminary opportunities. Sister Stauffer has been the teacher for this program here in New Zealand. I have served as technical support for her. I create Powerpoint presentations, connect and set up Meetingplace for our Friday meetings with all the students, and contact students, parents, and priesthood leaders over the phone. Here is how it works. Each student must have access to a Broadband connection, (high speed internet) to do this class. Once we get them registered through their LDS.org account, they can log on each day and start doing daily seminary lessons. These lessons are challenging and can take any where from forty-five minutes to an hour. They do four lessons per week, then, each Friday we have the online meeting with the whole class and teach them a lesson together so they can interact with us and other members of the class from all over New Zealand. In this instance we teach students from both the north and south island. Meetingplace is a program that allows individuals from anywhere to have a virtual meeting with each other online. They can connect with each other via their phone and computer. The organizer of the meeting can show Powerpoint presentations, or use a whiteboard interaction, or show illustrations or photographs. The guests at the meeting can use text, voice, or interact with the whiteboard to communicate with each other or the organizer. This gives them an experience that is closer to what a regular Seminary class experience is like. At least that is the idea. Sometimes it gets a bit difficult to get them to interact with each other. They do like to doodle and draw on the whiteboard when given the opportunity. We have students from the south end of the south island and students from the north island in the same class. Even though the students are possibly 1600 kilometers (about 1000 miles) away from each other they can participate together as a class. It is pretty cool technology and we have found it to be a great blessing in the lives of the students who are participating. They have an opportunity to be taught the same information that regular seminary students get. In fact we have felt that these students might even have a greater challenge than most students in regular seminary, just for the fact that they cannot just come to a classroom and sit without really listening or participating and still get the same credit as those who do. These students have to respond to the questions, write essays, and show that they have learned what is being taught them. The program is designed so that each teacher has from seven to ten students. Sister Stauffer has done a fantastic job, with more students than is recommended. She has had up to 20 students and is only supposed to have around seven.

When all of these programs finish for the year, we will begin training and preparing teachers and students for next year. We will be turning the Online Seminary program that we have been doing, over to three new teachers. It will be more manageable for them to do because they will have far fewer students than Sister Stauffer has been dealing with. We will also be traveling around the South Island visiting with next years early morning teachers and giving them training and distributing manuals and other materials for their students. This should keep us busy, but not quite as busy as we have been up to now.

The Ruby World Cup is on full steam right now. The “All Blacks” is the name for the New Zealand National Rugby Team, and are legendary as far as rugby teams go. Rugby is “THE” sport in New Zealand. These people are crazy rugby fans. The All Blacks are un-defeated, with a big win over France last Friday 37 to 17. The USA, however, not so good, with a loss to Australia 67 to 16.

My favorite player is Israel Dagg, (Full name Israel Jamahl Akuhata Dagg)

not because he is the best player, I just like his name. Other names that are great are: Sonny Bill Williams, Piri Weepu, and Richard Kahui. The player I like best for how he plays is Ma’a Nonu. Kind of the “Manny” of Rugby.

The Rugby World Cup, or RWC goes on until toward the end of October. I think it ends on the 21^st. Go NZ!

[I (Janice) just have to add my two cents.  We love the names of these rugby players.  They all sound tough and hard as nails.  We decided that John Francis Stauffer could never be a rugby player—the name is altogether too soft and mushy.  If anyone is thinking of raising a rugby player, please consider a manly name.  How about Craggy Bob McKai?]