"Welcome to the Church" Ensign Special Edition

While searching the internet for other Ward Mission related websites, I was reading an older article on another site that mentioned the October 2006 issue of the Ensign, which was a special edition called "Welcome to the Church" that was specifically geared for new converts. I noticed that you could purchase copies of that issue on the Church Distribution site for a very reasonable price ($1.50), so I busily began calculating how many issues I'd want - lets see, one each for all of the converts over the past year or so (12+), plus I'll need some a lot more copies for upcoming baptisms, and then a whole bunch more for future converts... It started to add up quickly, and since I do these packets as sort of a personal project and don't use any Church budget, I started to reconsider...

After a little more digging, I found that you can download entire issues of the Ensign on the Church website, way back to 2001. Here is the location where you can find this: http://www.lds.org/gospellibrary/pdfmagazine/0,7
779,592-6-1,00.html (or click on the photo of the magazine below).


You can actually print out the entire issue if you want, but I read through and selected two articles that I thought would be most helpful to our new members, then I printed them out in color (black and white is okay, too, I just happened to have a new color cartridge so I went for it!). I selected "New Members, New Traditions" by Elder F. Melvin Hammond (which covers some of the basics of what is expected of members, like church AND class attendance, tithing, singing hymns, preparing to attend the temple, family prayer, family home evening, etc) and "What I Wish Every New Member Knew - and Every Longtime Member Remembered" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (which covers topics like service, keeping covenants, fellowship, and leaving the past behind).

I will be including these articles in "Welcome" Packets from now on and also distributing them to recent converts if appropriate.

For more information on our "Welcome to the Ward" Packets for new converts and what is included, see the topic section labeled "WELCOME PACKET" on the right side of this page, above the picture of people shaking hands.