Overcoming Fears!

One thing that I have learned is the importance of overcoming our fears.  We all have fears in life or even just a bunch of little worries.  But part of life is learning to overcome them.  In order to do it, we have to do that very thing we want most to avoid.  For example, I strongly dislike OYM (open your mouth and talk to EVERYONE on the street).  I dislike it because it scares me.  But, the only way that I am going to learn to love it and to make it not scary is to do it.  After our interviews with President, we all made goals and plans to overcome our fears.  My district leader committed me to kill a spider by the end of the day.  I did it. #fearovercome

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.

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)

Baptism!

We had a miracle happen this week.  We had an area goal of two baptisms for the month of March.  We have one that has been planned from the end of April, and we were really struggling to get the second one.  A member in our area has child who had not yet been baptized, due to not having permission from the other parent..  We and the child's "member" parent fasted so the other parent would give permission for the baptism.  Then on Sunday, we were told the permission paper had been signed and the child is going to be baptized in the very near future!!! :)  I'm so excited!

Weekly Report - March 3

This week was great because we each of our goals, with the exception of one . The only goal we did not hit was "investigators" at church . We had everything lined up for our investigator family to go , but their ride to church "fell through".  We were in another town at the singles ward , so by the time we even found out there was a problem , it was too late to do anything about it . We were not super- happy about it , but there 's always next week!

On the bright side , we decided to pass the house of a part member family and were told that the non-member of the family wanted to be baptized ! ! : D: D: D Actually, this is my favorite family EVERRRRR ! So I'm really , really, really excited! : D: D: D The baptismal date in later on in March. Oh yeah , and we're planning a wedding for them! : D Hahahaa I am sooooooooo excited!

Also, we found out that the way in which the missionaries will  present the gospel will change. We received training in the new way of teaching . The zone leaders told us that we would need to change a lot, but when it was presented to us, there was not much changed . It's super fun because now we have to figure out this new way of missionary work; every contact is a trial and error run! It makes life interesting! :)

We're teaching this individual who has some interesting stories to tell us about his life . To help introduce the Book of Mormon , we shared the story of Nephi going to get the plates . Man, he ate that story up! He absolutely loved it! Periodically we'd stop to ask him how he'd feel if he were in the same situation as Nephi and his brothers . The insights he was giving were so unique . When we told him about Laban throwing Laman out and trying to kill him , we asked him how he would feel and he starts saying  "it 's one thing to mess with me , but when It 's with my family , That crosses the line! " Long story short  he really, really, really liked it . Telling him about  Nephi killing Laban was a bit interesting haha ! The scriptures teach us valuable lessons so y'all better read them! ;)

"Disfruten la Misión. No la Sufran."

President Maluenda is famous for saying, "Disfruten la misión.  No la sufran."  Which means, "enjoy your mission, don't suffer through it."  I've found that to enjoy your mission, you've got to let yourself have fun, don't sweat the small stuff, and constantly work to be better.  That's what I've been working on this transfer, and every day is more enjoyable.

Yes, life is great down here in Southern Texas...not without its stresses, but it's still fun! :D  Hope all is going well for you!

God Answers Prayer!

For the month of December, we had a goal of baptizing two people.  We had a handful of super promising people with baptismal dates scheduled for this month.  We felt like we had done everything to help them out.  As we looked back on our efforts, we felt like we held nothing back.  One by one, everyone fell through.  As the last week of December came, we had only one baptism.

So Sunday, we were in our last ward of the day, and we were feeling really bad that it was nearing the end of the month, we had tried our absolute hardest, we had fasted and prayed so hard and so diligently to hit our goal, but due to things honestly out of our control, we only had one baptism.  It was super frustrating.  We went into an empty room and prayed.  Then we went on with the rest of our Sunday meetings.

After church, a family in our ward invited us to attend the baptism of their daughter.  We have been working with their family a lot lately and had even had some missionary discussions with the young daughter to prepare her for baptism at the request of her parents.  It was at the same time as the convert baptisms of the other missionaries.  We got there, and the family immediately invited us to take pictures with them and we even had a small role in the program providing the music.  During the baptismal service, both my companion and I realized that although this baptism wouldn't count as a "missionary baptism", we had still taken part in it.  We taught her all the missionary lessons and now we were here with the other missionaries to watch her take that big step in her life.  The family even counts us as their missionaries.

It was a very sweet, simple moment to realize that God was aware of our situation and our prayers had been answered - in His way.  We had two baptisms in our area - we hit our goal - even though we're the only ones who know it.

Lofty Goal!

Well, what can I say?  This week was super fun and full of miracles!!!!

 

The mission made a goal to baptize 110 people this month.  It's more than we've baptized this entire year!  Every zone needs to do their part to hit this goal and since my zone is the smallest, it means that everyone in this zone needs to hit their goals.  It's quite lofty, but we have already seen so many miracles!