Primary Activity - Missionary Training Center - Getting Ready

First, a little background.  The handbook does not state you MUST do any activities, but I feel it's a fantastic way to get into the homes (or at least to their doorstep) of those you may not get to see every Sunday (or any Sunday).  Even if they choose not to attend, I still get to see them and let them know we're thinking about them.

We participate in or plan several activities every year.  We plan and put on two activities strictly for the children (usually one in late winter and one in the summer), one activity just for the teachers and leaders in primary (a BBQ where we both thank them and do a short training), and two others that we help out with (Halloween and Christmas).

Our activity last month was our first activity of the year and while brainstorming during a presidency meeting toward the end of last year, we decided on a missionary theme.  After talking about what goals we hoped to accomplish with our activity (everything from what we wanted our kids to learn to how to increase attendance), we made our master plan.

Like all plans, this one started with preparation. 

A few months before the activity, we passed around a mission sign-up to all the adults.  Okay, that's not really a very good word for it, but I can't think of anything better.  At the top it states that the primary is planning to do a mission activity in the next few months and we wanted to be able to talk about where different members of our ward had served.  We asked that they would write down their name, where they served and what language they spoke.  We then used this "sign-up" later in our planning.

Mission Survey (in Microsoft Excel)



A few weeks before the activity, we asked parents of many of the children to come and help out with the activity (we had specific roles for them, which I'll tell you about later), this ended up being a blessing in more than one way.  I'm certain it increased our attendance, but it also spread out the burden of putting on a pretty big activity.  As a presidency, we spent a lot of time planning and figuring everything out, but after that, it was all pretty simple and about as no-stress as possible.

Station Descriptions (in Microsoft Word)

Then, the Sunday before the activity, we put a flyer in the Sacrament program and asked the bishopric to make another reminder during their announcements.

Sacrament Meeting Program Flyer (in Microsoft Word)

The only other part we worked on before the activity itself, was sending out the "mission calls."  As we handed out a large packet of information, I'm going to talk about those in my next post.  Or you can click back to the overview page to get to any post.

If you click on the link below each picture, you can download an editable version of EVERY part of our planning process to use in setting up your own activity.

Leah