Sunday, December 1, 2013

Christmas Guidelines - 2013

2013 CHRISTMAS GUIDELINES FOR THE ITALY ROME MISSION

Lots of questions are being asked about approved and special activities for the upcoming Christmas season.  Christmas should be a time of reflection for each of you as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.  Please keep the true spirit of Christmas and missionary work with you at all times. 

Here are some guidelines for Christmas week:

Tuesday, December 24
Follow the regular missionary schedule.
Don’t go “door to door” after 1 pm.
If you are invited to lunch and/or dinner, you may go.
If you are at a dinner, you must be home by 10:30 pm and remember to “squillo” when you return.
It may be better to hold District Meeting on the 26th after 6:00 pm.

Wednesday, December 25
You need to have 1 hour of personal study but companionship study is optional.
You may sleep in an extra hour if you want to.
You may watch approved movies.
If you are invited to lunch and/or dinner, you may go.
You may call/skype your family.
You may do other appropriate activities.
Do not go “door to door”.

Thursday December 26
You need to have 1 hour of personal study and 1 hour of companionship study.
You may watch approved movies.
You may call/skype your family if you didn’t do so the day before.
You may do other appropriate activities.
You need to start working again at 6:00 pm.
You may want to hold district meeting at 6:00 pm.

(Since you communicate with home this week through calls and skype, you do not need to e-mail your family or Presidente Waddoups, except to communicate concerns and miracles or successes you don’t want to forget during the week.)

Guidelines for calling your families:
If your parents are divorced or separated, you can have a call with each of them.
Your total call time to your family should be approximately 40 to 60 minutes.           
    (Time spent towards connecting the call doesn’t count towards your hour.)
You can call on the day that works best for your family, ie, Dec. 24th, 25th, 26th
If you have trouble arranging your call through e-mail, you may make a quick call home using a phone card to arrange your Christmas call. 
If you have access to a computer with skype, you may use skype including the video feature.  You may not use a member’s computer.  (See handbook page 20.)  If the computer at your church has skype, you may use it.

You may want to prepare a list of items to talk about during the phone call beforehand to use your call time more efficiently.

Guidelines for appropriate movies:

You and your companion can only watch a total of 2 movies once or one movie twice.  If you want to watch movies with other missionaries, you may still only watch a total of 2 movies once or one movie twice.

You may watch movies only on December 25 or December 26.
The movie you watch must be one that you would be comfortable watching with a General Authority.
Examples of appropriate movies are:  **
    Any Toy Story movie, or other similar types of movies from Disney or Pixar
    It’s a Wonderful Life
    The Best Two Years
    The Other Side of Heaven
    The Sound of Music
    Remember the Titans (PG)
    The Work and the Glory
    Any Shrek movie
    Any Ice Age movie
    Tangled
You MAY NOT watch:
    Any Pirates of the Caribbean movie
    Any Harry Potter movie
    Any Star Wars movie
    Any Lord of the Rings movie
    Forever Strong (PG-13)
    Any Hunger Games movies
NO PG-13 movies will be approved.
If you want to watch a movie that is not listed above, call the assistants for approval.

You MAY NOT watch DVD’s on the DVD player that the church gave you to use in your home for gospel study purposes.  This may make it difficult for some companionships to watch a movie, but the Area Presidency has put strict restrictions on the use of these players.

**You may watch church issued videos on Christmas Eve in addition to the approved list of movies.

In your first weekly e-mail after Christmas, you need to tell me which movie(s) you watched.

Thank you for everything you do as missionaries and thank you for being “o-BEE-dient” to these guidelines.  We love you.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Presidente and Sorella Waddoups



NEW YEARS GUIDELINES

Here are guidelines for News Years:

December 31
Follow the regular missionary schedule, including DDM.
Don’t go door to door.
If you are invited to lunch and/or dinner you may go but you must be back in your apartment prior to 9:00 pm -- no exceptions.
It is okay to hold District Meeting on this day.

January 1
Deep clean your apartment.

1 comment:

  1. It's so interesting to see how different your guidelines are to here in Utah. I was asking our missionaries what their guidelines were like, and it's very different. Also, I have a nephew in the SL East (??) mission and he was able to talk to his family over skype for 2 hours.

    ReplyDelete