Summer Youth Missionaries!

We took some young ward members out to tract with us.  They were a 14 year old boy and 9 year old girl.  We had this idea a couple of weeks ago to take out youth in the ward to do missionary work during the day especially because it's summer and they have nothing better to do.  When we talked to the young members' parents, they thought it was a fantastic idea and practically begged us to do it.  It was really fun and they both loved walking around in the hot Texas sun and knocking on random doors for an hour.  We told them that they could knock any door they wanted.  As soon as that was out of our mouths, the young girl started saying, "Let's knock that door!  I think their house is pretty" as we passed EVERY house.  We eventually had to make a rule that she couldn't choose another door until her brother had chosen one so we could actually get the referrals we had planned on contacted.  She decided to rebel once and went and knocked on a door without us.  Luckily no one was home.  That contact ended in her brother picking her up and carrying her off their doorstep.  I think we're going to continue this until the summer is over.

This is seriously one of my favorite areas all because the wards down here are so mission-minded!

Trying to Hit Our Goals!

We can honestly say we did everything this week to hit our goals.  On Saturday night, we were confident that we'd have at least two investigators at church.  We had been preparing almost everybody we met from the beginning of the week for Sunday, we prayed every day that we'd be able to reach that goal, and we even stressed a lot this week the importance of having members present during our lessons. 

This Sunday was really important because in order to be baptized in the month of July, someone had to come to church this week.  Sunday came.  We had a family lined up, ready to come.  We prayed and fasted...and they didn't come.  We called them, went to their house, had members call them....no luck.  We then turned and put our faith in a miracle person showing up to church with a member.  As sacrament meeting started in our last ward, no one showed up.  Needless to say, it was kind of depressing.  We put our hearts, souls, and faith in hitting that goal. 

Back in the day - you know, like maybe a couple transfers ago - I would have gotten down because of that, but yesterday, instead of pitying our unsuccessful day, we got up and went right to work, trying to find and prepare people for church next week.  It was great to see how much we've changed since the beginning of our missions.

Are You Personally Converted?

We made transfer goals as a companionship this week.  We have a goal to speak Spanish 24/7 this entire transfer! Wish us luck!  I'm more excited about it than my companion.

We have a bit of bad news.  One of our investigators had to move, so she is no longer in our area.  We told her to let us know when she knew her address so we could send other missionaries to her house.  We were kind of bummed because we had put so much energy into helping her get baptized, but the ward members,  through their example, have helped us see the importance of just trusting in God's timing and plan for us and those around us.  She'll get baptized soon!

Other than that, our week went fantastic!  We had zone conference this week.  I was asked to give my testimony during it. I talked about how the biggest convert in the mission should be ourselves and although that has been said so many times, it is probably the best lesson any missionary can learn.

During zone conference, the recurring theme was that how much we learn on our missions (or even in life in general) depends on how we serve.  Our President kept saying that the mission is not about us, rather it is about everyone, but us (it sounds less-confusing and cooler in Spanish).  He said that when we do everything we can to make this mission about serving others and less about serving ourselves, then we learn the most.   In turn, the mission becomes about us.  It kind of sounds like a paradox, but it is really true.  As we turn out and serve others - especially during the times when we would really rather help ourselves - we grow tremendously and we actually end up helping ourselves more than anyone else.

With that principle in the back of our minds, my companion and I went off to work.   Immediately, we had just a no good, very rotten day.  It was pretty bad.  We got yelled at by multiple people all right in a row.  By 8:30 p.m. both of us were pretty upset at just about everything.  Having gone through all our plans that day, we rode our bikes back in the direction of our car.  We were both so frustrated that as we passed some people in the street, we didn't even stop to talk to them (I know, it's bad and we felt even worse as we passed by).  Finally, when we were almost to our car, we saw a cute little family.  We both decided we had had enough of this pity party we created for ourselves, so we stopped and had nice little conversation with them.  They gave us some referrals, and we were on our way.  Immediately, we felt so much better.  The contention that we had felt disappeared by the time we made it to our car.

Man, it's been a good week......

Hastening the Work: When All Else Fails, Just Love!

This week was my companion's birthday. We went over to a member family's home in our area. They are deaf so they taught us the "Happy Birthday" song in sign language than we sang to her in America Sign Language (ASL).  It was really fun!  Later, we enjoyed a nice cake.

Our English ward is the official deaf ward in the area, so during church, there is an ASL translator.  It's super fun to watch during meetings.

I gave a talk on Hastening the Work in the English Ward.  It was short and sweet, and went really well.  I shared Alma 13:24 and talked about how we have seen evidence of God preparing the hearts of his children.  For example, God uses the members to prepare his children - a few weeks ago, we knocked on the door of one house and the people who answered the door were super excited to see us because they had known several members of the church throughout their lives. They immediately let us in, gave us Cheetos, Cheez-Its, fruit snacks, trail mix, and water.  It kept us going for the next week!  We were able to talk to them about the Restoration and they were touched by the message.

Then, I talked about what we needed to do to prepare ourselves to take part in this work.

1) We need to start with ourselves - it's like personal study hour for missionaries

2) We need to help out our families - it's like companionship study for missionaries

3) We need to help out others - it's like when missionaries go out to work each day

Three other missionaries and the Ward Mission Leader also spoke.

A success we had this week:

We stopped by to visit a family, within the first five minutes we were "reprimanded" for asking too many questions.  Things weren't looking so great, but we decided to just listen to them for a while.  The tension eased, then we sang them a song and shared a scripture with them.  We ended with a prayer and told them we loved them. The lady of the house responded that she loved us, too. She also gave us some delicious cookies and little pies to take with us as we walked out the door.  Mission Accomplished.

Moral of the Story: When all else fails, just love.

"Adversity is Necessary, Misery is Optional"

We had another great week!  We found more new investigators in these two weeks than I have found in my mission!  They have been fantastic!  We have seen so many little miracles and we have been blessed to work with wonderful less-active members who are willing to act, investigators who easily accept the invitations to pray about Joseph Smith and be baptized, and an absolutely fantastic ward that is sooooo mission minded, it doesn't seem possible.

Needless to say, I am very happy with where I am at right now.   I'm still learning so much every day!  Yesterday, my companion and I were able to go to a meeting where a general authority was present.  He said something that made me think a lot:

"Adversity is necessary, misery is optional...Our salvation is not dependent on whether or not someone loves us, but it is dependent on whether or not we loved them."

I know that no matter where we are in life, we always are given opportunities to make us happy.  It's up to us to take them and be grateful for what we have.

They're Finding Us!

Well, this week, it was a lot of fun!   We are trying to do what we as missionaries should be doing - finding and teaching new investigators, preparing them for baptism, the works....

BUT.........

The only people who really want to talk to us and spiritually progress right now are our less-active members who we didn't know existed until they came up and contacted us on the streets! They're also the only ones we can get to consistently come to church.  :)

I personally think it is a very good take on missionary work. Probably about 75% of the members in our area are less-active. The only problem is, we want to reach the goals we have set for  "investigators at church" and "members present at a lesson".

We're still working on a good balance between the two ;)

Well, this week was really successful when it comes to less-active work, and pretty okay when it comes to investigator work, so I say drop of awesome for us!

Lessons Learned!

Well, this week was really tiring, but really great!  My companion and I got this crazy idea to set really high goals for ourselves this week - higher than either one of us has hit in our entire missions!  Well, we worked our tails off, and ran into a ton of problems, and although we weren't able to hit all our goals, we learned some valuable lessons in the process.

1) It's hard to plan and balance time, but it's worth it!

Along with setting almost ridiculously high goals for ourselves, we also set goals to visit every one of our members and less-actives this week....and we have a lot.  We have to really be dedicated and focused on our goals because there is a lot of work to do and not very much time to do it.  One of the biggest reasons for not hitting our goals was because we didn't use our time as well as we could have.  But luckily we have this week to redo everything and fix the mistakes we made last week.  We already have appointments set with almost all of our members and we've identified others who are willing to meet with us and keep commitments!  Talk about golden members!

2) We need to simply focus on the basics

Having so many solid appointments in a day means we're planning lessons like crazy.  Sometimes I think that the next day's lessons are supposed to make our members and investigators make huge, leaping strides in their spiritual progress, making daily planning stressful, long, and exhausting!  But one thing I realized this week as I was reading "Act in Doctrine" by Elder David A. Bednar, was that our individual lessons don't need to be life-changing moments, but rather they just need to bring the Spirit.  Lots of subtle, spirit-filled moments go farther than huge, elaborate discourses.

This changed completely the focus of our lessons and the commitments we are having our members and investigators keep.  This week, we created a small Book of Mormon reading chart for all of them.  Every time they read and pray together as a family, they just check off a box for the day.  It only goes for a week, so they won't get tired of it and we promised them all a prize on Sunday if they can read every single day.  The kids are super excited for the challenge!

3) It's more important to love the investigators than to worry if you're doing everything right.

I think this is a lesson I still have yet to learn!  Often, I am so worried about if I am teaching well or if I am doing every little thing possible to get these investigators to baptism that I forget that these are people with their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.  We should really be helping these people get baptized because we love them, not loving them because we want them baptized.  Keeping this in mind has helped us more easily shift our focus to what is most important in this work: bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of our brothers and sisters (Moses 1:39)

Teaching Reflections, Part 2

I think what truly made the lesson great was that we had some amazing members with us that could help explain how the gospel has blessed their family.  What they said was just what the family needed to hear.  We were concentrated on getting them to feel the Spirit.  When you forget about yourself, how well you're teaching, and what others may think of you, and you focus completely on what the investigators need (which is the Gospel) and what the Spirit is telling you, it's amazing what difference it makes!  You truly feel the love God has for His children, and you feel the overwhelming desire to help them find the blessings that come from living the commandments of God.

General Conference Thoughts!

Conference was fantastic!  We had a blast watching it at church.  I really liked Elder M Russell Ballard's talk about missionary work.  I think we can apply a lot of the techniques he shared in our area.  I also really liked Elder D. Todd Christofferson's talk. I love conference!  This was my third and last conference in the mission field, and like always, it was much needed!

I hope you all take the time to read over the talks often.  Y'all are lucky because you can access them at any time during the week on the internet.  We as missionaries have to wait awhile :( 

A Wedding and Two Baptisms! I Love Being a Missionary!

A favorite couple of ours got married on Friday!   :)

The wedding ceremony was beautiful!  We had a lot of help from some wonderful members who have developed a strong friendship with the couple over the last few weeks.  They helped us enormously to plan and put together the perfect wedding.  A member from the Spanish Ward made the cake.  The groom bought the flowers and we, with some help from a ward member, made the bouquet.

 

Then, on Sunday, the bride got baptized.  Everything went smoothly.  It was a wonderful baptism and the spirit was so strong.  I am so grateful I had the privilege to be there.  The groom bore his testimony in sacrament meeting.

 

On top of all that, we had another baptism in the Spanish Ward.  The son of a member was baptized.  

I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know all of these absolutely amazing people!  They are incredible.  I love them soooooooooooo much!  It was truly one of the best weekends of my entire life.

 

We could not have done it without all the help we received.  The members truly played their part very well.  They took the "new bride"  under their wing and made her feel worth a million bucks.  The timing of everything was perfect.  In reality, we as missionaries did very little and that's how it should be. :)

 

I love being a missionary!  :D

 

Among other events this week:

• General Conference this weekend!  So stoked!
• I got proposed to --- long story, super awkward
• I got to watch the Women's Conference  :)
• One of the young members decided to make a service club and went around the neighborhood asking people if they needed help with anything.  One lady accepted their offer to cut the grass.  They didn't know how to use a lawnmower so they used scissors!  hahaha it was pretty funny!

Anyway, as you can tell, it's been a fantastic week!  Crazy busy, but super great!

 

I've learned a lot.  We saw a lot of miracles in preparation for these two miracles.  I'm grateful to have played just a small role in them.  I think everyone should serve a mission.  It's more fun than going to Disneyland!

Continue to Send Prayers!

Down here in South Texas, things are going great!  We would really appreciate your continued prayers for us and especially for our investigators!  Also don't forget to pray for the missionaries in your own ward!  They need it too! :)

The Work is Picking Up!

The work in this area is really picking up.  The Spanish Ward has heard our cries for rides to church and they have now created a very efficient system to get investigators and less-actives to the Sunday meetings.  Also, we have a wonderful older couple who is here from Idaho for the winter who have been called as Ward Missionaries in the English Ward.  They are helping us out a ton with visiting less-actives and recent converts in our area.  We're also going to start working with the Stake Relief Society  President to visit less-actives in our area.  I'm super excited.  The enthusiasm for missionary work in the wards really picked up after the amazing Stake Conference on members and missionaries working together.  The members down here are fantastic!

Ward Missionaries are Wonderful!

An adorable retired couple who lives in our area just got called as Ward Missionaries and they are doing incredible at magnifying their calling!  They are Winter Texans meaning that they are originally from Idaho, but have just come down here for the winter.  They are in charge of the reactivation efforts in our area and so this week, we enjoyed a wonderful little lunch in their trailer talking about some individuals.  On Sunday, they gave us a list of all the Less-Actives in our area with notes.  We were surprised to see that they had made a dent in contacting them all!  We gave them some more names of people who weren't on their list.

Super Mission-Minded Members!

It is so exciting to be with the members here!  All of them are super mission-minded and it's fantastic!  On Sunday, a member of the bishopric in the English Ward came up to us just to express his enthusiasm over reactivation.  A couple of weeks ago in Stake Conference, it was brought to everyone's attention that the stake has over 1000 less-active members living within its boundaries and the bishopric member told us that our English Ward alone made up many of those members.  He smiled and told us that we all have work to do and that he was excited for the members and missionaries to join efforts.

My Year Mark! Do You Need a Ride to Church?

So I hit my year mark on the mission.....I can't believe I've already made it this far!  This week was really eventful! 

We created a new plan to work with members that I am super excited to try out!  It's not super creative, but we think that it will work.  The motivation for this is that we're running into not very many people having cars and the church is a good 25 miles away!  So there are a handful of less-active members who are less-active for that reason: They don't have a way to get to church.  We've tried soliciting rides from members, but they already carpool in quite-full cars.  The only solution: find, teach, convert/reactivate people with cars!  And do enough of it that a branch will be organized closer to the people -----> Problem Solved!

So, with that motivation behind us (we're not just baptizing and reactivating to hit a zone or district goal, but to make life easier for the members down here), we decided that we are going to invite every active and less-active member to find a friend (non-member or less-active) who needs the gospel and in the next week, contact that friend and make arrangements so we (the missionaries) can have a family home evening in their home.  This way, this investigator or less-active already has a friend, the member (active or less-active) has a responsibility in missionary work, and they can both be edified together.  

We've already talked to a few members about this and we're going to talk to more!  We've already had very positive responses.  Now the challenge is sticking to it!

Hastening the Work!

I am super excited for the push in missionary work!  I am super excited to have so many more ideas in how I can work better with the members in my area and that we have our own set of missionaries in our ward because that means when I get home, it won't be super hard to work with the missionaries!!!! :D 

Stake Conference!

We attended stake conference.  President Maluenda was presiding.  Elder Martino was the general authority and the topic was "Hastening the Work."  It was seriously one of the best church meetings I have ever been to!  They talked directly to both the members and the missionaries and gave us counsel on how we could better work in unity.  What was said there was gold.

President Maluenda left every member the commitment to ask everyone they know if they would be willing to listen to a message about Jesus Christ.  If the answer is no, just keep being their friends.  If the answer is yes, get the missionaries over there! :D  He promised that in the future, we will be very thankful that we had shared the gospel with those around us.

Elder Martino pointed something out very interesting.  He first defined that priesthood keys were the right to receive revelation to direct the church or an organization in the church.  He then said that the mission president has the keys to direct the missionaries and determine who gets baptized.  However, the keys over missionary work belonged not to him, but to the Stake President and the Bishop.  Isn't that interesting?  

He then read Moro. 10:31 and said that it's a commandment to us as members that we extend the boundaries of our stakes. There are three parts to this commandment:

1) Finding those who don't have the gospel

2) Retaining new members - they're babies in the gospel!

3) Reactivation! - these are people who have been baptized, but are not participation in the sacrament which means they're not renewing their baptismal covenants week after week.  Covenants are important because only through them can we participate completely and fully in the Atonement of Jesus Christ

He read Moses 6:31-34, which talks about Enoch being called to preach the gospel.  Enoch was super scared, but the Lord promised him that he would receive the help he needed and he would succeed if he worked, did his part, and opened his mouth.  The same is true with us as missionaries and as members.  We need to work, do our part, and open our mouth and we will have everything we need to participate in the hastening of the work.

The meeting was so awesome!  He shared with us the story of Alma and Amulek and pointed out that Amulek was a less-active member who became reactivated then he helped out the missionaries (Alma) by being a Member Present during the lessons and because of that, he was able to help convert more hearts to the gospel than Alma was able to by himself (Alma 8-12).  It's really good.  I encourage y'all to read those chapters with that in mind. 

Do It For the Story!

We are trying to look for ways we can improve every day in every aspect of missionary work:  Working in unity with members to making our contact approaches more and more fun.  We came up with a companionship motto to remember as we're contacting: "do it for the story..." which means that if we're really having a hard time feeling motivated to talk to someone, we just think about the stories we could have teaching them.  It's been fun to see our progress throughout just three short weeks.  As missionaries, we've gotten better in so many ways by constantly asking ourselves what we can improve on. 

Please Come to Church... :)

We are starting to work more with less-active members.  Here, the inactivity rate is high.  There are 800 people on the rolls for one of our wards, but only about 150 people come to church on a regular basis.  We have many less-active members in our own area.  Do you have any suggestions? It's hard to get people motivated about missionary work if they have seen so many people be baptized and go in active within a matter of weeks.  

Splits!

Splits this week were fun!  I went on splits with a member who really wanted some missionary experiences.  Needless to say, she was just giddy when we called her up for help.

"Hermana, can you come be Sister Bettinson's companion today?"

"Siiiiii!!!!!!!!" - Adorable (or qué cute! as she would say)

I introduced her to people from the English ward and she introduced me to her friends.  It was a win-win (win) situation :)

I also went on splits with a YSA who served her mission in Utah.  It was fun hearing the "Utah missionary" side of things.  Utah is a completely different world!  She said that tracting is extremely hard there so how they found investigators is they would visit members and get the run-down on the neighborhood from them, then go visit their non-neighbor friends.  We have to work very hard to find a good balance between visiting members and finding by our own efforts.  She was in charge of 11 stakes at one time....we're in charge of two wards down here.  She was a Spanish-speaking missionary so if they ran into anyone who spoke English, they would have to refer them to the English-speaking missionaries.  It's always interesting to hear how other missions work...all are so unique.