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 Week 44

Church Reputation Management

15 June 2025


Hello Everyone. Happy Father's Day to all of the dads. Kelly and I love you and appreciate your service, sacrifice, and dedication. 

This is an old picture (I forgot to take a picture during one of our many meetings this week) but is shows most everyone on our Public Affairs team for the Pacific.  There are new interns and one additional full-time employee not shown.  If there is a public affairs issue or event happening in the Pacific, this is the group to blame or thank.  

We have often been asked what we do for our mission.  Public Affairs and Communication handles the inter-faith, political, media, and community relationships and events. We also provide all of the content (articles, stories, pictures and videos) for the Pacific Church Newsroom and also the Pacific Facebook Newsroom Group. We train, support, and coordinate all the national and coordinating council communication directors. We are also tasks with safe-gaurding religious freedom in our Pacific Area.  Our Area includes New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, American Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Cook Island, Tahiti, Kiribati and a few other scattered islands.  We also work closely with the full-time employees that handle all the production video, audio, print, and campaigns such as Giving Machines, Greater Love, and Light the World.   

One of our tasks is to manage the reputation of the Church in each of the areas listed above. We do that by monitoring media, visiting with members and non-members, surveys and keeping a pulse on what is happening.  When we feel we need to improve the reputation or respond to an issue, we determine the best way to do that. In the past, reputation was handled with media stories, support articles, inter-faith events, coordinated service projects, etc.  We spent most of the week working on the Church's reputation issues in New Zealand and Australia.  Both countries are moving backwards on the support of religious freedom and so we are trying to determine the best way to help our religion and other religions in those two countries.


Dinner and games with Penny and Grant Owen from Australia. Another great couple in our Zone.







Words will do this group an injustice. They are called the Brown Hymbook Singers and they perform original and arranged Church music all around New Zealand.  This was their semi-annual concert.  To be honest, not sure I have heard a better, more talented, perfectly blended music group than this one.


Dinner with the legal counsel missionaries. 3 of their wives are out of town so we went to dinner with them. Kelly and I love to listen to the stories of what is going on in their department. It's so interesting to see how members of the church can get into legal trouble!! They have heard it all. Great men fighting everyday for rights and protection. As a service.


Look these nacho in a huge taco shell.



Meet Sister "T" from the Cook Islands. She is smiling here. The first time a meet her I asked for her name and she told me this huge 5 word name. When I said "seriously?", she laughed and said, "you can call me Sister T."



This is Derek and Maria Good, they are the national communication directors for New Zealand.   Wonderful people. 

We have been task with setting up budget plans for all of the communication directors in the Area. They have lived very fugally here in the Pacific but most country projects and events were approved and paid for one at a time through out the year. We are trying to set up a budget system from ground up where national director can prayerfully decide what their region needs "to accomplish" annually to help strengthen interfaith and government relations and reputation and support the Area focus. Too many meeting to figure this out.


Father's Day dinner with the Shaws, Shaws, and Poultons.


Father's Day Waffle Dessert will all of the missionaries.

We love you and miss you.

Elder and Sister Shaw




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