I’ve Hit my Year Mark & it Feels Like it was Just a Blur in the Timeline of Life!
I'm Amazed by the Artistic Graffiti Here
I Appreciate this One
(May 24, 2010) Things are going great! It’s good to hear from all of you and can you even believe that this week I am hitting my year mark?!?!?!? I know crazy right. It blows my mind away – it feels like it was just a blur in the timeline of life. It is really interesting that I am hitting my year mark and what has happened to me this past week to prepare me for my next year. I was incredibly blessed to be able to go to a meeting with Brother Allred (manager for mission department) and in this meeting he trained the leaders on the most important thing we can ever do as missionaries. It blows my mind away, not because we’re not getting it, but rather it blows my mind about how easy it should be. In this training he told us how missionaries are going “too deep, and too broad, and we are losing people in the valley of lost souls.” What he meant by that is that most missionaries are focused on teaching lessons… not people. All of a sudden things just started taking off as he helped our mission out. It was incredible. Probably the most incredible meeting I have ever been in my life!!!! I wish I could be with you guys in person to explain it because typing it just isn’t getting my point across. Along with Bro. Allred’s calling he does missionary video productions, so any church video that the missionaries use for teaching (like the restoration dvd or Finding Faith in Christ, he helped produce). Kelsey you might have seen the Preach my Gospel training dvd’s, well he helped produce those. Anyways they just finished this past month a new preach my gospel training segment and he showed it to us for the first time ever to missionaries and it was hitting home for me on what missionaries need to be working on. We often get too caught up on teaching lessons and making lesson plans and sticking to lessons…etc. But it’s really not about lessons, it’s about people. The people are the ones we are teaching and everybody is different and has different needs and so no lesson should be the same. But how do we know what to teach? Well Bro Allred gave the coolest training on using the holy ghost and it was incredible to see. He really got it across to me when he asked everybody how we would like it if we could go on exchanges for one day with Elder Uchdorf as our senior companion. Of course we all thought that would be awesome and we would of course find more people and teach better and baptize a lot more. Being the second counselor we would for sure do much better if he was the senior companion. … we have something even better, we have the second counselor for all eternity with us. We have the holy ghost, a member of the God head, the second counselor and Brother Allred drilled it into us that he better be the senior companion for everybody and when you walk into a lesson, you put your lesson plan up on the shelf and you teach the person not the lesson by carefully listening and following your senior companion. I could go on forever about what I learned this past week but let me just tell you that this week has been the biggest learning experiences of my life and never before have I been so guided and lead by the spirit. I have never gotten so many concerns out from people as I have been more dependent on the holy ghost and been listening to it more. It has been really neat to apply it and I am so excited to still have a year left to be able to use it. Kind of funny because everybody who came out of that meeting which was all zone leaders and district leaders came out saying that we needed to repent on how we have been teaching lessons and not people. I felt the same way and speedily repented! So that’s what my past week has been like and it has changed everything. I feel like I’m as green as can be as I’m totally learning on how to do missionary work again and what it truly means to ask an inspired question, one that comes 100% from the will of God and not your own will. It is really fun and there has not been one person this past week that has been left in the “valley of lost souls” as my companion and I have applied it. Each person is different and has needs and concerns that only our senior companion the holy ghost knows about.
That is about it, this work is the best!. My new companion, Elder Canova is great – we are working hard. We got another baptism date this past week, we lost another date. So far we have 4 with a date and this Saturday is one of them. Singles ward is where it is at, let me tell you the younger generation is on fire with missionary work and that is where all our stuff is happening right now. Well I have to run right now! I love you all and hope that you can ponder the things that I have briefly mentioned above on how important the holy ghost is, even to non missionaries. Love you all and you’re in my prayers!
Elder J
Preaching Around Oak - Town 