Greetings from the Great OCM.
So, this week
one of the highlights was going on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. The
Zone Leaders are some steller missionaries and we go on exchanges with
them once every transfer. While there we learned some valuable tips to
planning for our day. Usually when we have planned in the past it takes
about an hour, but it is only supposed to take a half hour. That night
when we were on exchanges they showed us what a planning session is
supposed to be like and ever since then we have had half hour planning
sessions with more plans than we can accomplish in a day. One thing the
zone leaders challenged us to do was to never tract again for the rest
of our missions. So, for the last few days we have been using the ward
lists to visit all the less actives and part member families. But for
the most part, tracting is dead. The key to finding people to teach now
is talking to everyone, and I mean everyone; trusting, and having faith
that the Lord will place people in your path who are ready to hear about
the gospel.
Yesterday was an awesome day at church, we had a lot of
investigators show up. One thing that can be stressful for a missionary
is having members give talks that go into deep or confusing doctrine,
but this Sunday the talks were so inspired and answered a lot of our
investigators' questions. One talk was about how the Savior makes us
whole, and another was about how we have a ward family. Not only that
but we had an awesome lesson in gospel principles where one of our
investigators started crying because they felt the spirit. At the end of
church we had our investigators telling us that they looked forward to
coming next week. That is really the goal for missionaries is to bring
the investigators to church and then the members do the rest. It is
always a struggle to get members involved in missionary work. When the
ward is involved the amount of people joining the church expands
exponentially. Members need to come to the realization that they can do it!
Everyone who has a testimony or "if they have desires to serve God" is
called to the work and whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.
This weekend we have a baptism and President Nilsen is
coming to it! (this is the man who waited 2 years to get approval to be
baptized). So the pressure is on, everything has to be picture perfect. I
love President and Sister Nilsen, I don't think I have ever heard more
powerful speakers/motivators. I will be sad to see them go next summer.
I hope you all have a wonderful week. keep fanning the fire of faith!
Love,
Elder Beutler
