Well anyways, on to a happier note. This week has been fantasmigorically awesome. It's been super busy, which I guess is the reason that it has been so awesome. On Monday night I got to go on an exchange down in Mandurah with Elder Taumalolo. He served in Girrawheen right after I did for 6 months so we had some really good chats about people in that area. I found out that one African lady that Elder Richards and I had found got baptised. Her name was Catherine and to be 100 % honest, I had no idea that she would ever be getting baptised. He told me that the Mains have moved as well, so that means that there is a chance of serving in their area again, a small chance but a chance nonetheless. I really liked it down in Mandurah though. They have a massive area down there but it's really nice. I'd love to serve down there, but then again, I'd like to move around a bit as well. I'm really hoping to get to go serve down in Albany or something someday, something really far away so that it would just be me and my companion and that's it. I think it would be a lot easier to get a lot of work done that way. People say that country areas are hard to get baptisms in, but Elder Happel, our last zone leader, who just got transferred out to Northam (an area that has been shut down for 18 months or so), they now have 3 baptismal dates set out there. So I think an area is exactly what you make of it. There's no such thing as a dead area, just dead missionaries. That would be a quote from Elder Metekingi that he used in his 3 minute talk on Enthusiasm last week in our Specialised training meeting. I think it's so true, aye. An area is only as dead as you make it out to be. I'm going to try to remember that throughout the rest of my mission. Just ignore what people say about certain areas. Because usually if they tell you it's a dead area, you'll probably believe that and won't get much work done, if they tell you it's a great area you'll believe that and get heaps of work done. So if I just believe that every area is a great area, I'll get lots of work done. That's the theory anyways.
We've had lots of meetings this week. One meeting that we got to go to that was completely unexpected was Zone Leader Council. The reason that we got to go to that was President Cahoon invited Elder Jorgensen to share some of his insight on tracting that he received while he was in the Alabama mission. He was able to share some really good stuff that apparently President Eyring shared with the mission president over there. Some things that he shared with us are, "tracting is not only for the salvation of the souls of those people that we meet, but it's also for our salvation. There's something that pleases the Lord about tracting." Before I got with Elder Jorgensen I wasn't really a big fan of tracting either, but since becoming his companion we've tracted heaps and found a lot of success from it. Not only do we find investigators going door to door, but the Lord blesses us when we're diligently seeking those souls that are waiting to hear the message of the gospel. He blesses us as well as our families in more ways than we even recognise at first. He blesses us with new investigators that we find through other ways other than tracting. I think the attitude of this mission is that there's no point in tracting in God-less Australia so we're just going to sit around and wait for a member to find us somebody to teach or something like that. That's sort of the attitude that I had even adopted for a time. But Elder Jorgensen and I have been extremely blessed and I believe it is because of the amount of tracting that we have been doing. Tracting just makes you feel like a missionary more than anything else I think. Getting out there, getting those doors slammed in your face, all that good stuff. So yeah, Zone Leader Council was great. I'm really excited for the things that are coming up here in our mission. We've got a lot of good things happening. And a lot of the new missionaries coming up are so much better than some of the past generations of missionaries. Past missionaries sort of got lost in the traditions of their fathers, but not these new missionaries. They are so on to it. They'll probably all reach leadership positions at some point in their mission because of how on to it they are. So yeah, I'm way excited.
So that was Wednesday. On Thursday when Elder Jorgensen and I had our weekly planning we had one of the most intense weekly planning I've had on my whole mission. Because we spoke so much in Zone Leader Council on the importance of Key Indicators (which is just a fancy way of saying numbers) and how we can get those numbers up, Elder Jorgensen and I set plans to reach all of our goals and it's just going to be a great week. I think setting those goals makes us even more accountable and accountability is the best way to help us reach our goals. For every goal that we set we had a name to go with each number (besides new investigators of course). My whole mission I haven't been that gun with setting goals, but now I think I realise the importance of it and I'm just going to try harder from now on.
Exciting news with Evelyn is that she is now praying for a baptismal date and we're hoping to set that date either this month or next. It's so exciting because awhile ago we thought it was going to be ages before she decided to be baptised because of her staunch catholic traditions, but she's definitely had a change of heart and it's apparent. We taught a super spiritual lesson on the importance of the Book of Mormon in conversion. We were finally able to get them a Tagalog Preach My Gospel and we did some reading out of there. I think we helped her realise that she really does know that the things that we have been teaching are true. Because she does read and she does pray every time that we ask her to, so she definitely has a testimony of the Book of Mormon as well as prayer and we explained that because you know these things are true, you know that this church is true and that you should be baptised. I just hope that she understands everything that we've taught her. But I'm sure she does. Arturo has been a great help as well. I'm sure he teaches her and helps her do the things that we ask her to do when we're not there. So we just gotta keep praying for the best and pray that we'll be able to see Evelyn get baptised soon.
In our Zone meeting on Wednesday we made Titles of Liberty from "rent garments". The Zone Leaders were talking about things that really frustrate us on missions and then out of nowhere they ripped their shirts off (don't worry, they had another white shirt on underneath). Then we made our own titles of liberty on their rent garments. On them we wrote why we came on a mission and what we want to do with the time that we have left on our missions. On the bottom they had us write Alma 5:26, which just happens to be one of my favourite verses in the Book of Mormon ever because of Pageant. I'll be sure to hang on to that Title of Liberty, help remind myself of the things that are on it.
Oh I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you about my experience city contacting this week. We went up to the city on Friday evening to do some contacting with about 20 other missionaries. It was SO packed. Friday night, everybody doing Christmas shopping, just heaps of people. While I was contacting somebody that turned me down anyways this old crazy drunk homeless man came up to me and out of nowhere hit me in the butt with his knee. He was yelling something in my face but I have no idea what he was saying because of how drunk he was. He smelled like pure gasoline. Looking back on it, it was a pretty funny experience, one that I love sharing with people because of it's hilarity, but at the time, i was just like.... whoa what's going on?? hahah funny.
Man! so much happened this week. Last night we had one of the best family home evenings ever with the Cook Islanders. I'm sure I've told you about them before. But they live in a house of 9 guys, 4 nonmembers. We taught them a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. I love teaching that because it helps build my testimony of it.
Anyways, gotta go, lunch time! Love you all!
This is Elder Tanner, and I close mine epistle to my family, whom I love and whom I keep in my prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment