G'Day!
Thanks
once again for a wonderful e-mail
this week! I look forward to each P-Day when I get to read it. Now that
I'm able to e-mail on the usual day I'll hopefully be able to include
more detail then last time. This past week was great and these first two
weeks in Geelong literally feel like a few days. It amazes me that the
time on the mission continues to go faster and faster even when it was
already flying by! Just means you have to make every moment count! So in
this Geelong area that we're in there wasn't very many investigators or
less-active members that were in the teaching pool, so we haven't been
teaching many lessons, just a lot of contacting and finding. We spent
the first couple of days (an hour or two each day) organizing the
teaching records for the area from the Area Book. We finally got all of
it sorted out nicely, and after removing some of the records from back
in the Joseph Smith era we were able to get a good, large list of former
investigators (people who'd been taught
either a bit or a lot but either stopped investigating the church or
weren't progressing) to go and try to contact again. So in these first
two weeks when we haven't been in Members' homes for meals or in a
lesson, we've been walking around contacting these people. It was
something that I'd never tried to do before in Pakenham but we felt
impressed that we should do a lot of it here. We've decided that we want
to contact all of the former investigators (and there's well over 100)
before we start just normally tracting. We've actually seen so many
miracles and blessings as we've done so and gotten quite a few new
contacts and investigators to go and teach. Most of the former
investigators we were going to contact had moved but out of the first 10
or so that we tried to visit, about 6 of the people now living there
seemed very prepared to hear the gospel. So that's been a big blessing
and has increased our teaching pool for the area. Almost all of the
former investigators that still do live in the same place have also
said that we can come back to teach them as well, which is fantastic as
well. We've also been using a pattern of contacting that I remember
learning from President Lifferth a while back where he talked about if
you go and try to contact a less-active member or a former investigator
and they aren't home or have moved, don't just rush on to the next
person on the list, but tract the house to the left, the house to the
right, the one across the street, or even the whole street because their
must be some reason Heavenly Father wants us to go to that certain
area. As we've applied that idea we've seen a lot of great blessings
come and we've met some really great people as well. Something that has
also really helped me in my missionary work was something that Elder
Pearson mentioned at the conference last week. He was talking about how
everyone is on a level between 1 and 7 of how prepared
they are to receive the Gospel, with 7 being completely ready and 1
being quite hostile. He was talking about how as a missionary you
shouldn't try and make every 1 that you see become a level 7 right away,
it's not often achievable. He said that every person that we meet
though that is like a 1 or 2 or 3, we should recognize that they aren't
ready for the Gospel but before leaving them we should just do or say
something to help make them a level higher for the next time they see
missionaries (by just being really friendly or saying something like "if
you ever need anything at all, service or help, just ask the
missionaries and we'll help you right away). That was something that
really opened my eyes because so far on the mission as I've assumed
myself and seen a few other missionaries do I've wanted every person
that we meet to become a new investigator to the church even if they
want nothing to do with it. But that's helped me realize that I need to
focus and think about more of the bigger and long term picture than
just the immediate one. I think that's helped us a lot since he said
that. So in Geelong, the main investigator we have is named Joe who is
the partner (soon to be husband in March) of a less-active member named
Camilla. They're the nicest couple and are really receptive to the
things we've told them and what they've learned since they've been
coming to church the past few weeks before I got here. Camilla is
actually the daughter of the former 2nd counselor in the bishopric of
the Pakenham ward so I'd actually met them 1 Sunday before when they
visited family in the ward there! Small world! But we'll start teaching
them the missionary lessons this coming Wednesday and Joe seems very
prepared to hear the Gospel so I'm sure we'll see a lot of blessings and
miracles there. Yesterday (Sunday) we had a big multi-stake conference
because they were also creating a new stake on this side of
Melbourne as well! So Elder Pearson as well as Elder Ireedin (not sure
if that's the right spelling) of the 70 were there to preside
(unfortunately they were at a different stake center so it was just
broadcast to ours (the Wyndam stake center) and gave some wonderful
talks. Elder Pearson's main point of his talk (he was the last speaker)
was that with the hard and difficult times that are in the future for
the church and its members, the only thing that will keep us from
faltering is by 'clinging' to the Iron Rod (from Lehi's dream) or the
Book of Mormon "Every day, Every day, Every day." I found that to be
very enlightening and I think it helped a lot of the members there. My
favorite line that he said which I think might be one of the best I've
heard from a talk was "I can't imagine Moroni having any sympathy for
anyone in our day saying we weren't able to read the scriptures because
we just didn't have time to get around to it, when records were
hidden and protected, the best blood was spilt, and the Prophet Joseph
Smith and his brother Hyrum gave their lives so that we could have this
to read every day, every day, every day. I just can't think of any
excuse that would cause him to feel that way." I found that to be so
profound! But anyway, my time is running out for this week, but I'm glad
I was able to include a bit more this time around! I hope that you have
a wonderful week ahead and that Heavenly Father continues to bless you!
I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!
Love,
No comments:
Post a Comment