Because I believed the words of President Kimball, my vision of missionary work expanded, and I was determined to do my part. As Elder Kikuchi had predicted, after reading these words, I couldn't sit still. But, as I was soon to realize, the vision alone did not cause things to change. During our first month, July 1978, we had only 9 convert baptisms. That was less than half of what most of the other missions in Japan were having and almost a record low for the area.

Progress was slow but steady from there. In August the number of convert baptisms increased to 18; then to 25 in September, 28 in October, and up to 62 in November, the largest percentage jump the mission ever made. During December of that first year we reached 65 convert baptisms. Thus, during the last six months of 1978--our first six months as a mission--we had a total of 207 converts, or almost 3 per missionary, on an annual basis. The next year the number of convert baptisms increased to a total of 1,631 for the year, or approximately 10 per missionary. Nineteen eighty ended with 5,433, or 28 per missionary. During the first six months of 1981 we had 3,953, or 49 per missionary on an annual basis. We experienced two months of over 1,000 converts or 63 per missionary on an annual basis, and a total of just under 12,000 for the three years (Missionary Department Annual Report, 1978-1981).

Because the missionaries in the Japan Tokyo South Mission had come from two different missions, the Nagoya Mission and the Tokyo Mission, and because rules, policies, and procedures vary slightly from mission to mission, I felt it was necessary to create unifying policies and directions so we could function as one mission. Rather than change over to the policies and directions of one or the other of the parent missions, I took this opportunity to begin to create a new vision for the mission by developing policies and procedures which I believed would emphasize and support and lead us in the direction of the new vision. This meant making changes. I believed that these changes were made in light of the vision I had of what could and should be done and in response to specific problems or situations that existed at the time.

The purpose of this description is to answer the question: From a management perspective, what were some of the major intentional processes which were implemented during the first three years of the Japan Tokyo South Mission? In other words, what was I, the mission president, trying to do?

Because a mission is a spiritual experience as well as a temporal one, some people might object to my looking at it from the point of view of management, instructional productivity, organizational change, and so forth. However, I feel it is the very merging of the management processes with the spiritual experiences that will yield new insight and understanding.

Many if not most academic studies limit their descriptions to the empirical data and facts. However, in this study I include feelings as well as facts, both my own and those of my missionaries as far as I am able to obtain them. I believe that the experience cannot be understood without an understanding of these soft issues, especially the concept that I have labeled vision. This construct of vision consists primarily of feelings, faith, attitude, self-concept, self-worth, purpose, confidence, perception of personal role, etc. I believe that to leave these out of the study would be to remove the life from it and examine only the dead carcass. The essence would be missed. As Schumacher (1977) expressed, 

            To describe an animal as a physico-chemical system of extreme complexity is no doubt perfectly correct, except that it misses out on the "animalness" of the animal. 

Similarly, to describe the mission as only activi­ties, numbers, percentages, and ratios--even though all of them might be correct--misses much of the essence of the mission such as faith, vision, spirit, etc., which are embodied primarily in feelings. One of my primary contentions in this description is that feelings are equally as important, if not more important than, facts, and that it is these soft issues that often make the differences. As Peters and Austin (1985) conclude, "When it comes to achieving long-term success, soft is hard."

I recognize that I cannot fully understand others' feelings. My tools for knowing are limited. My sources are primarily my memory of my own perceptions, my personal journals, and letters from and interviews with missionaries. I recognize the limitations these bring. However, I hope that my attempt to include them, even with their limitations, will bring more insight than would an attempt which ignored them.

Finally, to me, the mission was a spiritual experi­ence. I believe in such things as faith, prayer, and divine inspiration. During my mission I experienced many things of a spiritual nature. I feel most of my successful ideas and actions came to me through divine help and inspiration. Even so, except for occasional references sprinkled here and there, I have not included detailed descriptions of these spiritual experiences in this paper. I consider them too personal and too sacred to do so. Suffice it to say, during this mission more than at any other time in my life, when I prayed, I received answers to my prayers; when I asked for help and guidance, I received help and guidance; when I exercised faith, my faith was rewarded. I believe, with Gandhi, that 

            Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real; all else is unreal (Gandhi, 1957, p.72).

Organization of This Description

During the mission I began keeping track of those changes and activities which I felt had made a signifi­cant difference in the progress we were making toward our vision. When I originally started the list, I entitled it: Actions/Changes I Made as a Mission President Which I Feel Made a Significant Difference. I also attempted to categorize them with the original label used in the mission field. These labels segmented the actions into the following categories:  

• Physical
• Organizational
• Motivational
• Training
• Information
• Break down barriers

 The date the action was begun was also included.

I have organized these changes/activities into seven parts in an approximately chronological order. The first two parts are three-month periods; the rest are six-month periods. Each part begins with an overview of that period. Next, I discuss six to eight of the actions/changes I made by explaining the problem or situation I believed existed at the time, the action I took (including the category and date it was initi­ated), and my view of the results that action produced. At the end of each part, I summarize with a concluding things learned section where I discuss some of the most important things I learned during and from that period.

Although I attempted to order the actions/changes according to a sequential time frame by period, I soon realized that few of the items had a specific definable beginning. Rather, they evolved over long periods of time. Some seemed to occur at almost the same time, and I am not sure which preceded which. Even those items for which a specific starting time could be determined continued to evolve, changing and adjusting as they merged with other innovations and changes.

In order to organize and describe the events, I have kept with the sequential format, but recognize that it is only an approximation of when the items described were begun, formalized, or strongly emphasized. In most cases the changes continued throughout the mission, overlapping and interacting with subsequent changes. Often, previously described items were emphasized even more strongly later on. Thus, what is described as having started in September of 1978 may actually have continued evolving and changing for the next two and a half years, and the next item may have returned to September of 1978.

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