4/13/08

Hey E.A.

What’s new with you this week? I don’t really know when you will get on, so I can’t time my letters so you get them fresh for the week when you get on the computer. So you probably haven’t received my last week’s letter yet. But it’s sitting there as of last Sunday afternoon. I figured I better write earlier today if possible so you have it if you get on earlier, but then you’ll have two letters from me till next week. I had a dream about you last night, that we went walking into this random house, it must have been ma’s and pa’s since we just walked in, even though I have never seen this house before. And you were sitting there in your white shirt. Looking exactly the same as when you left. There was another dude in there dressed the same, I think it must have been an old companion visiting you since you had just gotten home. I think it was a surprise to us since I don’t think we were expecting to see you in there. Even though I didn’t act all that surprised in the dream. I was wearing my suit, but it was all haggard like it was a long day so my tie was loosey goosey around my neck, my shirt was unbuttoned a couple of buttons, my collar was sticking out over my suit and opened, etc. But you said I never looked so good. Anyway, I walked over and gave you a hug and the dream was over and I woke up cuz Aynslee was crying. That was just this morning. So what did you think of Conference? Make sure to return the favor of my favorite Conf. talks and why with your own. I’m curious to know what you gleaned from the talks and what you are taking with you to train the mission with. Still waiting for a few examples or topics of what you have been training on the last few ZC and ZLC’s. Have you heard much about the new church campaign for ads and commercials calling it “Truth Restored”? Here is scoop on that…

A new advertising campaign for the LDS Church that has been test-marketed in selected areas looks to focus public attention on "Truth Restored" as an answer to life's greatest questions.

With the 178th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints set to begin Saturday, church leaders will focus on specific doctrinal issues for church members. But the new ad campaign is designed to reach those who know little or nothing about the faith.

Developed by the church in conjunction with Brigham Young University's advertising department, the ads — inside publications such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and Sports Illustrated, and targeted at specific geographic markets — are a departure from the faith's long-running "Homefront" series.

The new print ad campaign features people who identify themselves and their quest to find God, describing a life challenge that sent them looking for meaning in the divine. "I felt so destroyed by my addiction to alcohol and drugs," writes Jovanny Vasquez, of Bronx, N.Y., in a two-page ad that appeared in U.S. News in the Las Vegas area in August.

Appearing alongside the image of a man dancing with a woman and two children, he continues, "I prayed with all my heart to find a solution to my life. I was at the point of losing my wife and family. The God I was looking for was a merciful God. I wanted to know how to be forgiven."

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At the bottom of the page, the church's logo appears in large lettering, with the phrase TRUTH RESTORED underneath in smaller type, followed by mormon.org beneath them both.

The campaign, which has adopted a slightly different format for TV, radio, billboard and Internet advertising, has been running for about eight months in four different areas of the country that correspond to designated LDS mission areas: Las Vegas; Las Vegas West; Independence, Mo., including Kansas City and Wichita; and New York Utica, which includes Albany, Syracuse and Utica.

Kevin Kelly, a former New York advertising executive and associate professor of advertising at BYU, told an overflowing auditorium at the school last week about developing the campaign with the church, with oversight from LDS general authorities on the Missionary Executive Council.

In surveys or pretesting done before the campaign began in those markets, results showed 63 percent of respondents didn't know the main claims of the LDS Church. So in an all-out media blitz, the team sought to "have people keep bumping into our message," Kelly said.

"The idea was that (our) media would do the heavy lifting, and that church members would then just answer people's questions, and if they couldn't answer then they would pull out their wallets."

The campaign includes pass-along cards for church members to carry, with answers to questions about topics including life after death, God's involvement in the world and how to keep one's family and marriage safe and secure based on LDS gospel principles.

After three months of intensive media in those markets, surveys were done again and showed that many more people than before "felt it's possible to answer life's deeper questions," Kelly said. "This was thrilling as an advertiser. People were actually looking for answers and also described the main claim of the church, that Christ's church and its teachings have been restored."

After several months, one mission president reported 76 convert baptisms that he believed were in some way attributable to or had been influenced by the campaign, Kelly said. The ads provided "identified messages that are relevant" to everyday people and increased traffic to mormon.org, he said.

Scott Swofford, director of media for the LDS Missionary Department, said the campaign was designed to target areas of the United States "that best mirror the country as a whole." It includes TV and radio spots featuring "man on the street" interviews, but simply walking up to people and asking them to sign a release and talk on camera or for radio "is almost impossible," he said.

The team called casting agencies that supply extras for film and television, told them they needed a diverse population, and had them send the extras to a street corner at a specified time, he said. "Then we asked them questions about life satisfaction that they had never heard before. They were actually questioned on camera, and it wasn't rehearsed, but these are people used to signing releases and appearing in front of cameras.

"I was shocked at how cooperative they were and how honest in their opinions," he said. "We had a wide variety of people to compare and contrast. Many of them expressed opinions that contrasted their own religious belief."

Their comments, including statements like "I would like to think God knows me," and "I don't think God cares about me," were condensed into radio and TV ads, followed by a voice-over that says, "After centuries of confusion, truth about life's great questions is now restored. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Visit mormon.org"

Swofford said the focus of the campaign is "what are things that resonate commonly among us, and does the restored gospel shed light on your question about life?"

He said eight months "is a pretty short time to decide whether the campaign is working," but the team will continue to analyze data on how it affected people who actually joined the church. "What we do know is that traffic to mormon.org increased from 200 to 300 percent from pretest levels. Of the referrals coming in, many of them are from that site, but we don't have specific numbers yet that say things have improved or changed.

"Whether the net result will be an increase in baptisms — we're still trying to figure out where that is."

Early feedback from missionaries, church leaders and members in the test areas is "really enthused. ... Many reported retention (of converts) was better, and we've probably shipped over 500,000 pass-along cards.”

K, that was longer than I thought it would be. Sorry for hogging all of my letter time with that story. But it’s kind of interesting. A little reference to the Bronx too, yeahhhh!

Oh, you don’t need to worry about sending that picture of you and Foster, I think that’s what his Mom sent me. It’s the one of you two standing next to each other and he’s easily twice as tall as you? Or do you have a different one? You can send it anyway and if it’s different or better quality, I’ll post that one. But she sent me one at my request cuz she wrote saying she had one. She’s nice. Home boy is TALL huh? That picture looks so funny to me. I told her that her son is a giant among men. Thanks for the companion bio on Elder Gillett. He sounds like a good guy, with the exception of his musical taste. I like his Scriptures though. Those are pretty sweet scriptures to have as favorites. Do you have any new favorites? Seemed my favorite scripture changed from week to week the last half of my mission. So August 8^th eh? That’s the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. That will have to go on the TraVo since I’m sure we’ll be pretty busy with family festivities getting you home and listening to lots of stories and stuff.

I asked Ma what the plan was for Elder’s Lee and Van Leeuwen. She said if they contact her, she might have them over, but she’s not going to try to hunt them down or anything. So hopefully they check in with her and we all get together. That would be fun.

I’m having a few things in my yard quoted for some landscaping. So hopefully we’ll have some if not most of that done soon. This week I put a type test on my family blog. It shows how fast I type and you can click the link to see if you can do any better. Shelli has been obsessed with beating me, but it’s hard when she types a 74 WPM score and keeps seeing my unreachable 92 WPM score. That’s gotta be disheartening. I told her it’s like when we all played monopoly or chess and I offered you 3 a CD of your choice or a $5 spot if you could ever beat me in those games. It was just enough to keep you coming back for more, but I think it finally wore on you guys to keep losing and never get the unattainable prize. But she swore with an oath she would beat me, so I told her she could have a CD of her choice if she did, but I had a couple of hours upon notification that she beat it to beat it myself, which I can if I did it a few more times. That was not my best time by any means. It was fast, but I was a little bit sloppy. So it took my score down a little.

I drove by our old house the other day. We were having a little reunion with Mike Woodbury, Matt Ashton and Cammey Blake and all of their families over at Nicki’s Dad’s house which happens to be in our old neighborhood by Eisenhower. Do you remember that house well? It was pretty Ghetto. It looked way small and run down and they had junk all around the yard. I wonder if the BarnJarnies are still renting it out or if they just sold it. The Neighborhood was still decent, not really too run down, but that house was in bad shape. The BBQ was fun. I played a game of Halo 3 with Mike’s two sons who are 14 and 12 I think. They are good at Halo. Zach, the 14 year old went up 3 nothing on me right away. Then I got my bearings and went on a 10 kill run before he got a kill joy on me and scored his 4^th point. I went on to make an insurmountable lead and he gave up and threw his controller over to JC (the 12 year old) and left the room. JC is better, he actually got 5 kills in a row before I got ticked and cleaned him up too and got my 25 to end the game. So they were both a little bit bugged that I beat them both. When they were living in Florida, we were talking a little smack online about who was going to beat who, so they were a little embarrassed. We played some Guitar Hero too which is always fun and then we played some Wii. We bowled which was alright, we played tennis which was the funnest game on Wii, then we boxed and that was kind of fun, but too exhausting and too easy to cheat. I hate games you can cheat on.

I’m signed up for my concealed permit class on April 29^th. So I’ll have that soon enough. That will be cool. Not really getting it so I can pack heat wherever I go, but I wanted to get it before the elections since we are going to lose a lot of rights and privileges that we have now I think. Better get it while I can and have certain rights and discounts for that matter. So the time is right. John and Carry and Larry are taking it with me, along with one of the managers I work with and his wife and one of our vendors and his client. So we will pretty much pack that class. I’m kind of excited about it. It will be kind of fun.

Let me drop in your quote of the week and get this in the e-mail for you.

“The first responsibility of the leader is to define what can be. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.”

- Max DePree

I think you have found that principle of leadership is paramount, just through Christ’s example that servant leaders are the best leaders hands down. The more you serve those under your stewardship, the more loyal they will be to you and the better example you are to them. As evidenced by how much King Benjamin’s people loved and respected him for exactly that.

Ahhhhight kid, write back and make sure to cover all the questions that have been asked. Can’t wait to hear from you again soon. Hope the work continues to go well for you. Keep handling that load. You will miss that heavy burden like crazy in just a short time. So enjoy it while you have it. Soak it in.

Love you and miss you as always.

Trav