Speaking of email, I read an article a few years ago about the power of email to transform the lives of the elderly, creating virtual communities of friendship for shut-ins and others, relieving depression and in some cases, extending life. My wife “visit teaches” an elderly sister in our ward by email who attends regularly but loves her privacy and hates formal visits in her home because they feel artifical and rushed. Having the spirit means meeting the needs of individuals, not some computer database in Salt Lake City.

I’ve written a script that will take a ward list and produce a .kml file that you can view in Google Earth. I played around with writing a Google Maps app, but the terms of service were unacceptable (basically, they get the data, which is a violation of church policy re: ward lists, I believe).

If you’re interested, send me an e-mail. In fact, I might just be polishing up the script for use in my new calling — I’ll post on it next week after I’ve been sustained.

BTW, the script depends on being able to get reasonable latitude and longitude numbers based off of street addresses. There are reasonable free tools for this if you’re in the US. Dunno about Austria (that’s where you are, right?)

Maybe I’m assuming too much but I think that a talk by an apostle addressing this issue in General Conference means the 12 are interested in changing member’s minds and hearts and not just interested in getting them to eliminate a few youth meetings.

Doing more is never questioned in the church, it is just assumed that doing more is equivalent to magnifying your calling, and who can object to that? So we have a theological predisposition to that mindset, and we reward it.

I see a wonderful example of that in my own ward. I have been told repeatedly in my married life by many different women that as a man I don’t really understand how onerous and difficult being in charge of Enrichment night really is. The difficulty of planning and carrying out these meetings is a constant theme among women I’ve known (and by the way, I completely agree that it is a difficult calling). So what happened when the church announced that Enrichment night as a formal activity would now only be done quarterly? Did they rejoice, breathe a sigh of relief and embrace the new order? No, they now tell me that we are a unique situation, their women need the monthly contact. So we still have monthly enrichment, and small group activities and last Sunday they announced a Saturday Super Enrichment Day from 9 am to 1 pm that will take place in a few weeks.

Is the reaction to this increased busyness concern that they are not following the program? No, because doing more is always part of any program with our current mindset. Maybe there are a few people like me who think it is madness, but I’m far outweighed by the comments I hear that aren’t we blessed to have such a dedicated, wonderful RS presidency who are willing to go the extra mile and to magnify their callings. They got similar praise from the pulpit after announcing the super Saturday activity.

You can’t go wrong doing more, more and more in the church. How do we change that mindset? How do we convince members that we can be more effective stewards when we take into account the impact this has on families in the church and eliminate the unimportant? Encouraging that change and giving members permission to act on it can only come from the top.

I’m in an urban stake presidency and, per the authorization of a letter from the First Presidency, we don’t require home teachers to physically visit folks each month. They are to focus on part-member, new converts, reachable less active, youth, and the “sick and afflicted” first, then contact the stalwarts and “hostiles” as time permits and as mutually agreeable. The jury is still out on how effective this will be. On the one hand, it probably creates laziness; on the other hand, we’ve had some real success focusing our limited resources on those that need and/or appreciate the attention, resulting in baptisms, temple recommends, return to activity, etc.

In the past I have arranged to home teach some of my assigned families via a phone call. These were families of ward/stake leaders. We all saw each other socially anyway and an actual visit was redundant.

I’m all for home teaching via e-mail or telephone. Perhaps that’s the test being conducted in other places: limit or eliminate visits to strong, active members and concentrate more on the less active or struggling members. I would not mind never having a living home teacher in my home again except to assist in a blessing or some other ecclesiastical service.