3/3/14 What I learned this week changed my entire mission!

D&C 88:73, "Behold, I will hasten my work in its time."  This scripture is incorrect. --from President Packer.  For it to be correct it would have to say, "Behold, I am hastening my work now." 

Family,

THE ENTIRE WAY WE TEACH HAS BEEN CHANGED TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE!   This FridayBrother Donalson and Brother Hill from the Church headquarters came and had a meeting with all of the district leaders and zone leaders.  They asked all of us to leave everything, all the teaching techniques that we've learned on the mission behind and to embrace this new teaching method, and promised that our baptisms would double.  I felt like on Saturday when I was learning it, like I was going through the temple for the first time again.  Except instead everything was made a 10000000X simpler.  The spirit was so strong as we were learning and my mind was clear and the holy ghost was just plain helping me learn it.  We now teach the entire restoration in 7 minutes.  We don't use analogies and rarely even use scriptures.  We briefly explain our expectations and figure out from them and spirit how to teach to their needs, open with missionary saying the prayer, discover the pamphlet of the restoration with them, teach them to pray, they pray, then we ask them to be baptized, then we set a return appointment, ask for referrals, then get on mormon.org with them to show them where to find more.  The whole lesson is 20 minutes.  Immediately after we learned about this new method to teach we went out into the street we found 2 new investigators, a member brought his girlfriend to church, we taught her that night, so now we immediately have 3 new investigators who want to learn more and be baptized.  Jose, at the part right after the great apostacy, we ask him, "So what do you think needs to happen?"  and he immediately says, "God needs to come down and give someone that permission (priesthood) again and share it with everybody!"  The spirit led the whole lesson.  The whole feeling of the lesson has changed.  I've always had so much passion to share the gospel, but now it can be funneled in an effective direction.  I used to feel like I had to strive for people to understand how important this is, and force them to sit in an hour long lesson with them, but now I do even less and they are hooked, they immediately receive a spiritual confirmation, and THEY are the ones who want the return appointment and want to know more.  We don't have to commit them to read anything, they do it because they have tasted of a piece of the fruit and they want more.  I LOVE IT!  This is the best time to be a missionary!  We only learned how to do the first lesson, so on saturday we will learn more, and I can't wait!

 

EDGAR AND EDEL GOT BAPTIZED!!!!! This has been the most stressful and rewarding week of my mission!  We basically taught them everything in 5 days.  There were so many barriers that the Lord opened up the way for, like parent permission, and working with the ward, getting the baptismal font door open so we could fill it up, (Brother Richards saved us and broke in with his apartment key) The baptism was so incredible!  When Edgar stepped into the water I thought, "wow, he's my brother and I get to care for him spiritually for the rest of my life and eternity."  It made me so happy when the room was so full of people to support them that there wasn't enough space for chairs.  We will work on the rest of their family now.