Hi!!
This week was a solid week. We were able to keep working with Jud. He’s now in 1 Nephi 14 and we’re seeing great growth with him. He came with us to general conference at the stake center and he really enjoyed it despite how cold the air con was haha. He said he’s rarely been in air conditioning his whole life so he was freezing! Funny because I remember complaining of the heat half way through because they turned off the air conditioning to try to satisfy a few of the Filipinos haha.
We had a sweet service project one morning cutting down banana trees and picking up trash at a member’s house. I’m getting pretty good with the machete despite my lack of time on Palawan throughout my mission haha ;)
Thursday night we had a sweet turnout for the basketball! We had more RM’s there as well as priests. They brought some buddies and all in all there were about 40 of us there at the church!! While people were waiting to play we were talking with kids and giving them Book of Mormons. Lots committed to going to church with their member friend and we’re going to try to track down some of them this next week. Gotta admit it’s still nice being the biggest guy on the court- ill keep taking advantage of it while I can.
Elder Mitchell has had some struggles with his toe these past few weeks. He got a nice ingrown toe nail and we got home one night and it was bleeding pretty bad. He ended up at the hospital one morning with the mission nurse and he’ll get surgery in two or three weeks here. We had to go to a Korean store to buy him some toesie socks haha. I liked when the lady told him to “check the woman’s section.” We then got him some sweet flip flops so he now proselytes in one church shoe and one flip flop with those funny socks. We made a bet one night and I told him at least 5 people/groups of people would notice his foot and ask about it. I wasn’t allowed to mention it but I could be creative to try to get others to notice it. Before lessons would start I would drop my pen by his foot and a few times I pointed my flashlight on my little phone towards his foot. Sadly he won the bet and I had to get him a large slurpee on the way to the car haha!
General Conference was amazing. I hope you all got the opportunity to listen. I’m excited now to go back and continue to study the words of our church leaders. The main thing that stands out to me after this conference is the fact that God prepares and calls the people He needs to fulfill His work. I think we can all say with confidence that President Nelson is THE MAN. But to my surprise my testimony and trust in my mission President was strengthened more than I could’ve ever thought. Since he has been here in our mission, he has gotten rid of many walls and rules that used to be implemented here in our mission. We are still expected to fully follow the missionary handbook and expectations are still high, but we have more agency now and opportunity to learn and grow in new ways. In a way, he got rid of the “Law of Moses” in our mission- a law in the past in the scriptures that was used due to the hard hearts of the people. Now instead of being obedient due to the many rules structured around us, many are obedient because that’s our desire.
We also began to “minister” more as a mission just this past month. Instead of leaders calling a structured three times a week like how it’s always been to “follow up” missionaries, we now call whenever we feel we want. At lunch, after a personal study, and instead of asking specific questions about numbers we can now simply just ask how they’re doing and better minister to their needs. Many of the calls now are just a minute or two to simply strengthen them. We have gone way with the phrase “follow up” and now refer to it as “ministering.” District leaders also minister to the companionships in their district now by spending 5 minutes or so before or after district meetings to talk to companionships to see how they’re doing and mainly focused towards how their investigators are doing.
Changes were announced in the church to where now “home teaching” and “visiting teaching” are done away with. Instead of having to visit once a month to share a lesson, it’s now doing whatever you feel is necessary to address the needs of the person. No set structure and not some many reports and numbers. The only thing that is reported is the amount of interviews the Presidents have with the companionships to discuss the members of the ward. The term used to describe these efforts is now referred to as the exact term- “ministering.”
It was quite a miracle in my eyes to think of all the similarities of the large scale of the church as well as the small scale of our mission. It showed me that my mission president is very responsive to the spirit and that the Lord is guiding all of His servants to do His will. I’m thankful for that experience I was able to have at general conference April.
Have a great week!
Elder Reber
This week was a solid week. We were able to keep working with Jud. He’s now in 1 Nephi 14 and we’re seeing great growth with him. He came with us to general conference at the stake center and he really enjoyed it despite how cold the air con was haha. He said he’s rarely been in air conditioning his whole life so he was freezing! Funny because I remember complaining of the heat half way through because they turned off the air conditioning to try to satisfy a few of the Filipinos haha.
We had a sweet service project one morning cutting down banana trees and picking up trash at a member’s house. I’m getting pretty good with the machete despite my lack of time on Palawan throughout my mission haha ;)
Thursday night we had a sweet turnout for the basketball! We had more RM’s there as well as priests. They brought some buddies and all in all there were about 40 of us there at the church!! While people were waiting to play we were talking with kids and giving them Book of Mormons. Lots committed to going to church with their member friend and we’re going to try to track down some of them this next week. Gotta admit it’s still nice being the biggest guy on the court- ill keep taking advantage of it while I can.
Elder Mitchell has had some struggles with his toe these past few weeks. He got a nice ingrown toe nail and we got home one night and it was bleeding pretty bad. He ended up at the hospital one morning with the mission nurse and he’ll get surgery in two or three weeks here. We had to go to a Korean store to buy him some toesie socks haha. I liked when the lady told him to “check the woman’s section.” We then got him some sweet flip flops so he now proselytes in one church shoe and one flip flop with those funny socks. We made a bet one night and I told him at least 5 people/groups of people would notice his foot and ask about it. I wasn’t allowed to mention it but I could be creative to try to get others to notice it. Before lessons would start I would drop my pen by his foot and a few times I pointed my flashlight on my little phone towards his foot. Sadly he won the bet and I had to get him a large slurpee on the way to the car haha!
General Conference was amazing. I hope you all got the opportunity to listen. I’m excited now to go back and continue to study the words of our church leaders. The main thing that stands out to me after this conference is the fact that God prepares and calls the people He needs to fulfill His work. I think we can all say with confidence that President Nelson is THE MAN. But to my surprise my testimony and trust in my mission President was strengthened more than I could’ve ever thought. Since he has been here in our mission, he has gotten rid of many walls and rules that used to be implemented here in our mission. We are still expected to fully follow the missionary handbook and expectations are still high, but we have more agency now and opportunity to learn and grow in new ways. In a way, he got rid of the “Law of Moses” in our mission- a law in the past in the scriptures that was used due to the hard hearts of the people. Now instead of being obedient due to the many rules structured around us, many are obedient because that’s our desire.
We also began to “minister” more as a mission just this past month. Instead of leaders calling a structured three times a week like how it’s always been to “follow up” missionaries, we now call whenever we feel we want. At lunch, after a personal study, and instead of asking specific questions about numbers we can now simply just ask how they’re doing and better minister to their needs. Many of the calls now are just a minute or two to simply strengthen them. We have gone way with the phrase “follow up” and now refer to it as “ministering.” District leaders also minister to the companionships in their district now by spending 5 minutes or so before or after district meetings to talk to companionships to see how they’re doing and mainly focused towards how their investigators are doing.
Changes were announced in the church to where now “home teaching” and “visiting teaching” are done away with. Instead of having to visit once a month to share a lesson, it’s now doing whatever you feel is necessary to address the needs of the person. No set structure and not some many reports and numbers. The only thing that is reported is the amount of interviews the Presidents have with the companionships to discuss the members of the ward. The term used to describe these efforts is now referred to as the exact term- “ministering.”
It was quite a miracle in my eyes to think of all the similarities of the large scale of the church as well as the small scale of our mission. It showed me that my mission president is very responsive to the spirit and that the Lord is guiding all of His servants to do His will. I’m thankful for that experience I was able to have at general conference April.
Have a great week!
Elder Reber
No comments:
Post a Comment