Numbers

G’day mates,

It’s been some time since our last email. We’ve had a busy little run… finally getting this put together. Let’s start with a couple pictures…because, why not?

Two weeks ago, we had the Pacific Area President, Elder Meurs and his wife in town for a week visiting and teaching within our mission. To learn from both him and his wife at Zone Conference was extra special. He’s also a piece of our life story, so it was great to see him and share with him his part in our puzzle. We first met him in the Taiwan Temple…where he said to Joachim, “What do we need to do to get you back out on a mission? We need you out in the field.” I’ve held on to that and knew we would serve a second mission.

Fast forward a few years, and we are working under him in the Pacific Area. He is the one who had the vision for the Careers Coaching Initiative. The goal is to make this a world-wide initiative….it’s heading that way. He and his wife are lovely and we very much enjoyed getting to know them.

I thought it may be interesting to share how the Careers Coaching Initiative is going. Eighteen months ago, the program was on the drawing board. Sister Castleton, who just went home this month, came to the mission and began writing the curriculum to teach the coaches who would be called. Every coach goes through a 6 week training course to learn how to coach. Last December we got our call to serve in the Australia Sydney Mission to help build the program. We arrived in February and began working with 4 stakes to start introducing them to the Careers Coaching Initiative. Here are some numbers of interest…there are over 90k Young Adults in the Pacific Area. Over 2K in the Sydney area alone.

To date, we have put over 180 missionaries and YA through the program in our mission. We now have 50 coaches trained and ready to go in Sydney. In the Pacific Area, we currently have 470 active clients. The 470 is made up of current missionaries serving with 6 months to go on their missions, missionaries returning home, and YSA ages 18-35. The goal for the Pacific Area is to have 10k active young adults in the program! This is a massive goal!

It’s amazing to be a part of this…we coach, we train and support coaches and we train coaches on the ECM which is the computer portion to keep track of clients. This too has been designed for us. All of this is new and exciting. We met with a new stake today that sees the vision and called 6 coaches straight away. We can already tell that they are going to be leaders and will be a stake we learn from and one that others will look to as an example.

We still teach institute and continue to make modifications to that program….still working on a new name! We work in the temple on Wednesday night which is a perfect mid week boost!

We interact with the juniors as much as possible and love taking them out to eat. We found a Taco Bell….and I may have squeeled with excitement! (hey, I’m desperate!)…and we didn’t take these Elders to Taco Bell….we took them to an all you can eat for 90 minute korean bbq.

On a personal note, this month we lost some of our dear mission friends. We feel so blessed to have been able to interact with the seniors that have been here. They have blessed our lives. We had 4 couples leave this month and 3 arrive. One of the arriving couples knows my Uncle Lee and worked with his boys in scouts. That was a fun connection to make.

We still love exploring and seeing as many kangaroos as possible…they facinate me! We miss our family and driving on the right side of the road. We are doing well and looking forward to an exciting month. We have friends coming this weekend, and our daughters come during Thanksgiving!

We feel very grateful to be able to serve a mission. To see the work progressing, to be even a small part of the gathering is a wonderful thing. We are learning heaps!

Until next time,

Sister and Elder Gloschat