March 2016 President’s Letter

The President’s Letter As we begin this new season of weekends, I ask myself why Tres Dias is such an effective ministry, and if this is true, why do we have communities that are doing poorly? The short answer is passion. When I see how the fans of a sports team behave at games and read what they post on Facebook, it is obvious that they are full of passion for their team. It pours out of them in their conversations and displays of exuberance when their team is doing well, and in displays of anguish when the team is doing poorly. Tres Dias weekends bring out similar reactions. When I go to a closing, I see candidates expressing how they can’t wait to get home and tell everyone they know about the experience. But when I work closings, I often see the opposite emotion: people that are exhausted and muttering to themselves that they might never work another weekend because it is just too hard. Communities that are doing well find ways of tapping into the excitement that follows a weekend. For example, secretariats that regularly encourage new pescadores to take on leadership roles keep that passion alive. In communities that are in trouble, we often see leadership that doesn’t change; the leaders have grown weary and the passion has disappeared. The path to making your community vibrant again lies in recapturing the passion. This is best accomplished by the infusion of fresh blood into positions of leadership and by examining the structure of your weekends to remove the non-essential excesses that drain team members’ energy. Our stated goal is to build leaders for the church, and when we see new pescadores use Tres Dias as training ground for greater service, their growth inspires us to greater service throughout our environments.   Bruce Cato President, Tres Dias International Secretatiat