New VoIP service sends out automated reminder calls on last Sunday of the month to all Elders/High Priests and Relief Society sisters reminding them to get out and complete their visits. If visits are completed, home teachers or visiting teachers then can press 1 on their phone or 2 to leave a message on when they plan to get out. System generates a detailed PDF report that can be given to bishop at PEC meeting.

We belong to a busy church. A typical Ward makes hundreds of phone calls per month (see below). This service is designed to simplify your life and help you become more effective in your church calling by removing the burden of making phone calls to remind ward members of meetings, activities and assignments. Let our system do all the calling for you. All you do is record your message, and we call all the people you select and play your recorded message to them.

www.LDSReminderCalls.com

Posted by John in General, Home Teaching, Visiting Teaching, HT-Leader Resources, VT-Leader Resources

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The Wyoming Ward of the Grand Rapids, Michigan Stake found a new program was needed it to lift its home teaching into a more successful mode. This power point program introduces the program. The program consists of a written report form which is completed in the last 10 minutes of the opening exercise on each fast Sunday.

The PPT presentation explains how the “Return and Report” report system works. Reports are reviewed in PEC the following Sunday. The HPG Leaders and EQ Presidency make written comments and initial each report. The Bishop does the same to provide encouragement, suggestions and feedback. On the 3rd Sunday, the reports are handed back to the home teachers for them to use in follow-up.

This provides rapid and specific feedback on each family. It gently requires accountability. It allows the PEC to act in concert to meet the needs identified by the home teachers. It creates a tendency to plan ahead and avoid procrastination of the brethren. This power point presentation was introduced to the entire assembled priesthood. If other units can benefit, feel free to adapt the slides to your specific unit.

The Power Point presentation is available in the downloads section.

Also, you will need the Monthly Home Teaching Report.

Posted by John in HT-Leader Resources, Downloads

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In 1965, when I was in the bishopric of the Alhambra Ward, our Bishop was inspired to introduce and implement just one procedure with the home teachers that doubled the Sacrament attendance. It had been running in the high “30’s” (38% and 39%).

After the procedure was introduced, weekly reports from the priesthood quorums were really effective. The specific: “if you do not see the family you are home teaching at Church, you are to telephone them before the day is over and inquire if they were sick or had some problem.” Just a phone call to obtain a reason. Then tell them you missed them and will see them next week!

After weekly phone calls, the percentage began to rise rapidly within three months. Before the year’s end, it was in the 70th percentile. Just concern and contact, showing love, week-after-week. Yes, the home teachers had to be encouraged, but the first few minutes of priesthood meeting were spent asking, “Brother Goddard, were all your families at sacrament meeting last week? Did you call the ones who were not? Will you call them today if you do not see them?”

Of course, this also put extra incentive on the Bishopric also to make certain that the members were “fed” when they came; that the sacrament meeting speakers were the best in the ward, stake and area; and that the members of the stake presidency were asked to speak in the ward within the first three months. Members came just to see if the stake president’s visit meant that other changes were being made!

The premise was: if the members do not attend, how can you feed them? How to remind of the Sacrament covenant? How to encourage the covenants already made? Well, it worked.

Drew Goddard

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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Elder Ben B. Bank’s talk (Feed My Sheep) in the November 1999 Ensign gives interesting data about the “less active.” Most have a testimony, believe, etc. He also points out that “the challenge before us is great,” but that “we must do it. The Lord is counting on us to do it.”

Home teaching is a great opportunity to bring the “one” back to the fold. He may be even be waiting for us to ask!

Ralph Johnson

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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I gave a lesson last Sunday to my quorum on home teaching and I thought I would share some of the lesson material with those that might be interested.

I cut out 27 silhouettes which represented the 27 families that did not get home taught last month. This is an idea I got from this list [LDS Teach mailing list]. I hung the silhouettes up on the walls around the classroom so that when the Elders came into the classroom they were already hung up on the wall.

My counselors and I started off the lesson with a skit which was taken from the first chapter of the book “Home Teaching with Purpose and Power”.

After the skit I handed out a 8 page booklet that I created which again was taken from the book mentioned above. The booklet contained the mission of the church, a mission statement for home teachers, lots of lists of do’s and don’ts for home teachers, scriptures and quotes about home teaching.

One of the scriptures in the booklet was the one on learning our duty. As we discussed this scripture I had an Elder get up who had been a marine and talk about what duty means to a marine. I called him the night before so he would have some time to prepare. He did a great job in describing what the word duty means to a marine and what happens when a marine fails in his/her duty. I then tied this into home teaching and our priesthood duty to visit and serve our families and how we too are fighting a war just like the marines do except our war is with Satan. When a marine doesn’t do his duty lives are lost. The same with Elders. When we don’t do our duty souls can be lost. I then pointed out the many silhouettes of our ward family members who were not visited last month and asked if we might be losing any of them in this war.

I then ended the lesson with my testimony that when we pass into the next life we will have a PPI with the Savior and He will ask us if we did our home teaching and I said that I hoped and prayed that they would not have to explain to the Savior that they lost one of their families to Satan and they weren’t there to help in the battle.

I felt it was a special lesson, the Spirit was very evident and I received quite a bit of good feedback from the brethren. I know that some of you will ask for the booklet that I gave to the quorum and because the information is copyrighted I cannot [post it on this site]. If you email me privately I will send it to you. It is in Word format so you must have MS Word.

John Hesch
Contact Me

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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I remember a sacrament talk in my current ward given by a youth speaker. The young woman compared going to a movie to going to church. She asked what it would it be like if we used the same excuses for not attending church when deciding to go to a movie?

I have nothing to wear to the movie
The people do not like me at the movies.
All of the people at movies are phony.
I am feeling depressed today.
Someone said something I did not like the last time I went to the movies.
I do not like the time the movies are held.
When I served as an Elders Quorum President I applied this same comparison to home teaching. It proved very entertaining but it also pointed out how transparent our reasons are for not home teaching/visiting teaching. So what are your best reasons for not doing your home teaching? The way to get started is to remind yourself what you did instead of going home teaching.

Ron Woods

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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When I was a counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency, we used to have our Home Teachers divided into enough districts that each District Leader only had 4 companionships to call each month, and they (the District Leaders) would report their statistics directly to their assigned member of the Presidency, including the secretary, who could bring all the info to the President. Each member of the Presidency was over maybe 2 or 3 District Leaders. This worked really well, barring any glitches such as vacations, trips, illness, etc. I do think that it is extremely important to call the brethren to a sense of responsibility in accepting the call of Home Teaching through a “return and report” system. I have seen wards that leave it to the individuals to call in their Home Teaching statistics, and every time this resulted in no Home Teaching being done, or failure to call in and report. It is much more reliable and gives a stronger sense of responsibility to make a call to each Home Teacher asking for a report of their service.

It is also important for those District Leaders to be sensitive and not unrighteously chastise people for not getting their Home Teaching done in any particular month. My Elders Quorum President said that we must accept whatever service our Elders were willing to give, and try through patience, perseverance and love to encourage them to give more.

Dr. Ross E. Smith

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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It would involve a joint effort of both the visiting teaching and home teachers. As you know there are a “few lost sheep” that we need to nurture back to the flock. I came up with a simple method of fellowshipping these individuals and families back in the church. I call it “FEED MY SHEEP”.

This is the the plan: Starting in January, each month “dry can” one item and distribute it to those most in need: inactives, single parents and those who genuinely need assistance each month in the ward. One a month, you can deliver beans (home teachers). The next month will be rice, with a recipe from the visiting teachers and maybe a bishops message to top it off. Each month the food and the message will arrive. In December, a “special” can will be given to each person on Christmas. It is up to the Spirit to decide the contents of that 12th month. Now as far as home teaching goes, the brethren will have to deliver these items each month, or they will accumulate a lot of food storage with someone else’s name on it! And that can motivate a home teacher sometimes!

Author Unknown

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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My experience has proven to me when there is a better (meaning Complete) job of assigning families and Sisters then the other ideas presented are easier to accomplish. In fact they will fall in place.

In other words if the leaders do a timely and complete presentation of the important details; Names, Ages, Birth Dates, etc then the Teachers are given tools to use in conjunction with and complimented by the spirit.

Phil Anderson

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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There are five steps you can take to improve the results of the Home Teaching within your quorum. Keep in mind when applying these five steps that, typically, as soon as the number of families assigned to a companionship reaches more than four, the Home Teaching rate of that companionship is lowered.

• One-third of all Home Teaching familes are the “bullet-proof” families - stalwart members of the Church. An other third are those who never come to Church and are not at all active in their membership. The other third are members who fit somewhere in beween. To the “bullet-proof”, assign the less-diligent Home Teachers, or a combination of less-diligent and more-diligent. Be sure the families are aware that they may need to contact the Home Teachers at first to make the visits. To the “semi-active”, assign the very best of you Home Teachers. These families are the easiest to reach - the lowest hanging fruit on the tree, if you will. To the final third, use the missionaries (both full-time and stake, or a combination of both). They will get in the door much more effectively than other members will. Remember, at the Bishop’s approval, there is always the opportunity to assign husband/wife companionships, and this arrangement may be the best in certain situations.
• Twenty percent of the North American population moves. Plan for move-ins by having “slots” available in certain companionships. Simply insert the new family into the “slot” of one of the companionships.
• Constantly, constantly follow-up.
• Never set goals lower than 100% Home Teaching (i.e. “This month, brethren, we have set a goal to go from 60% HT to 80% HT.”) Any goal less than 100% will never be met. If you want to raise your Home Teaching Rate to 80%, set the goal at 100%, and you will be more likely to reach the target rate.
• In addition to the First Presidency Message, assign 12 monthly messages from local leaders. For example, four months of the years, a message from the Stake Presidency; an other four months, a message from the Bishopric, and; the other four months, a message from quorum/group leaders.

Adapted by a talk given by Elder Lynn Rosenvall, Fifth Quorum of the Seventy, Priesthood Leadership Session, Lethbridge Alberta West Stake Conference, 22nd April 2000

Posted by John in Home Teaching, HT-Leader Resources

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