When the cameras arrived, training ended. Now it was time for us to use our own judgement in our finding and teaching efforts.
The cameras followed us almost everywhere. Not all of our appointments were filmed. If we were teaching someone who didn’t want to be filmed, the cameras stayed away.
We quickly got used to the cameras. It was easy to think of the filming as almost a home movie to watch later. If I thought about it much more than that, I freaked out, so I just tried to stay focused.
All together, we had trained for about 3 weeks. Now we would be filmed for about 4 1/2 months. As the days went by, we settled into a little bit of a rhythm.
The schedule usually worked kind of like a modified normal schedule:
Mornings
We woke up at 6:30, exercised, showered and started studying while we waited for our hair and make-up lady to come. If our study time was being filmed, she came early.
Side note: Yes, we had a hair and makeup lady. I know, I know, that wasn’t normal. If it makes you feel any better, it took a chunk of time of every day. And I got some infections because I hadn’t worn that much makeup every day like ever. And my hair… was not as I would have chosen to have it. And let’s just be honest between us for one minute- if you were going to be filmed and watched by thousands of people, I think you would appreciate professional makeup. Thank you to our makeup lady for patiently doing our makeup every day for a few months.
Teaching Day Begins
We headed to our first appointment and met with the sound guy to get mic’d up for the day. We usually had to wait a minute for everything to be finished, then one camera guy followed us to the door and the other waited inside for us.
During the Lesson
Outside there was a big van with a transcriptionist recording overviews of what was going on and a member of the missionary department watching.
We greeted the person we were teaching, then sat down and started teaching. Lesson time was wonderful. The cameras faded and the pressure melted. Sister Zaldivar and I could just focus on who we were teaching.
After the Lesson
We left for our next lesson, maybe grabbing some snacks from the camera van. Sometimes we didn’t have time for lunch and the camera crew was nice enough to share. Sea salt chocolate covered almonds from Trader Joe’s will forever take me back.
We usually tried to alternate non-filmed and filmed lessons so the crew had time to pack up and then set up the next one. If we had back-to-back filmed lessons, our camera crew swapped lessons with another companionship’s crew.
At Night
We ended the day with planning, sometimes so tired that we fell asleep in the middle of it. But no matter what, after planning, we talked on the phone with a member of the missionary department to review our lessons. They basically asked us a lot of questions, and helped us come to our own conclusions on what to improve. Finally, we gave them our finalized schedule for the next day.
And then it was lights off. The next day it started all over again.
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