GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — As soon as young missionaries from Ecuador return from their full-time service, they go right to a two-day workshop hosted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Classes in the workshop cover skills to help missionaries successfully integrate into life after their missions.
The Programa de Inmersión a la Autosuficiencia, or Self-Reliance Immersion Program, focuses on three areas in particular:
- Education, through career guidance, access to affordable educational resources, and preparation for admissions tests to educational programs such as BYU–Pathway Worldwide.
- Employment, through learning personal marketing, resume writing, job interview skills and how to translate missionary skills into the corporate world.
- Entrepreneurship, through facilitating the development of business projects through initiatives such as “Business in a Box” and the Academy for Business Creation.
Having launched in June in Ecuador, the program has seen success in helping missionaries keep their momentum after returning home.
Dillan Torres, from the Guayaquil Ecuador El Cisne Stake, served in the Bolivia Cochabamba Mission before it split in July. He said the program helped him think more seriously about his future when he was released from full-time missionary service.
“Before I returned, I had a plan, but here many opportunities are presented with a clearer vision of what I should do,” he said. “Now I can see more clearly the steps I should take to be a better person. Thanks to the mission and the [Self-Reliance Immersion Program], I have strengthened my plans and have found more clearly what the Lord wants of me at this stage of my life.”
The workshops happen every few weeks as missionaries come home. This program is not only happening in Ecuador, but also in Colombia after the successful launch in Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela. (Venezuela is now in the Church’s Caribbean Area, while the other countries are in the South America Northwest Area.)
Representatives from the Church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance Services, business people and representatives from companies in Ecuador attended the first workshops in June and worked with the 15 returned missionaries who participated.
The missionaries had interviews, developed skills, learned how to improve their abilities and discovered their talents. Several received job offers by the end of the workshop — and since that first workshop, more missionaries are better prepared for their return home and are developing their full potential.
Fiba Simarron Añampa, a Chachi national from the Esmeraldas Ecuador Stake, served in the Colombia Bogota South mission and learned English but wanted to improve when she returned home. “Thanks to the [program], I am returning with a clear purpose and goals for my life as a returned missionary.”
Marina Valencia, from the Babahoyo Ecuador Stake, served in the Ecuador Quito North and Colombia Bogota South missions and attended the program when her full-time mission concluded.
It “has been something wonderful because it has helped me see from another perspective how everything we learned flows in my life. I believe that more than an opportunity, it is a privilege to know how the blessings that the Lord promises materialize,” she said.
