weekly letter 15

This week was such an awesome week! The new companionship is going well! It is different having start from ground zero since we do not know how to teach with each other because we both teach differently. I guess his previous companion was pretty weak at teaching and so there was legit one lesson where I did not say a single word last week haha. All goods though because we fixed it and we are progressively getting better and he is coming along so it is all sweet! I have already kind of seen in what ways he is going to teach me things and also how I am going to teach him. 

This week was so awesome though because on Tuesday we got to have a ward activity! We had a little pioneer trek sort of thing haha. We called it The Walk Of Faith. We just walked to our bishops house and back so it was not like the treks back home but it was awesome! Instead of wagons we used wheelbarrows haha it was pretty funny though. Right after we left Bishops house though it started to rain like crazy though! The wind was so strong and I legit felt like I was swimming because we were in our Whites and we were soaked! It sucked but it was awesome because it sucked together haha. It was really just so nice to see the ward get together and to spend time with them!

Elephants!! We went and rode elephants today and it was too sweet! YO! It hurt my butt though because them elephants got some spiny rock hard backs and so it was totally ridin up and stuffs haha. It was awesome though because we got to ride it around like Zebras and some Kudus and things like that so it was super cool. We fed them and I guess a cool thing to say to people now is that I have had my hand in an elephants mouth so that is pretty cool I guess. 

So like I said last week, this transfer my companion and I are really trying to focus more so on the members, less actives, and the recent converts more. Not necessarily going to neglect investigators or anything like that but really focusing and seeing every member family. I have already seen a change in the ward and YO! The members are feeding us a lot more then when I first got here that's for sure haha so that is always nice. We are learning so much about the ward and about how it used to be years back. It is so hard because our ward is so unique for good but also for bad. It makes me sad to see that there is so much racial problems going on here. It is still so hard to get the two different cultures to just join each other. Outside in the world I feel it is expected but it makes me sad to see segregation within Christs Church. I even see it between Elders as well which is super disheartening. All goods though because that's what I plan to focus a lot on this transfer is helping the best I can with uniting the ward.

We are on track for our next baptisms which are going to be next week and I am so excited for these two! They are so awesome and when I found out that they passed the baptismal interviews my companion and I were so happy! I love these two but I will talk more about them next week!

This week we met this awesome guy named Lubabalo and man he is awesome. So we were kind of running late for a recent convert/investigator sisters lesson and so my comp was like 

"Should we just reschedule?"

I was thinking about it and we legit had like half and hour till our next appointment. I felt the need to go and so I finally just said

"We cant just bail on them lets just go and share a really quick lesson with them."

We change our lesson to sharing the Mormon Message Lift. (Awesome one about service) We walk in and they are with two other guys and so we ask them to join us. We do the lesson and it goes awesome and Lubabalo seemed to be the one most interested in our message. We end up setting up and appointment to go and see him two days later. So two days later before the apt we were like,

"Well, I hope this dude doesn't drop us"

This guy is actually waiting outside, we say whats up and we go in and teach him the First Lesson (Donaldson Style of course). Get this, towards the end we introduce The Book Of Mormon and then he goes

"Yea, I remember seeing that book. It is black and has like gold lettering right?"

I was like, "Yea, how did you know what it looks like?"

"Before my Dad passed away, he used to read it to me when I was a kid."

WHHHAAAATTT so we finish the lesson and then we invite him to get baptized and he said Yes! This dude is too legit. He said that he wants to join our church. He said that God lead us to each other and we could not agree with him more. He said that the only reason he was at our recent convert/investigators house was because he missed his transport and so he decided to hang out with his cousin who knew our RC/I. He then told us that he was hoping that he would run into us so that we could teach him. I am so happy that we ended up going to that house and not rescheduling with them. He is seriously so awesome and I can not wait to help the spirit to help him progress in this gospel! 

Yo though. Church is True I love all of You! Listen to the still small voice. It was telling you something for a reason!! 

Ps. I Be Teaching That Elephant Dough

Weekly letter 14

What an awesome week! The beginning of the week was pretty hectic because we were scrambling around trying to get Elder Meijen to say all of his goodbyes! I can already tell that I am going to have the hardest time saying my goodbyes. I love these people so much and have gotten really close to them. The Members have been feeding us like crazy this week which has been awesome! I have so many different "Mamas away from home" now. Ill miss Elder Meijsen but I know that his help is needed else where. So my new companion is pretty cool. His name is Elder Mendenhall and he is a cowboy from Idaho. He is outgoing so I am glad because then it wont be all that awkward trying to get him to talk to the peeps out here. Teaching with him was a little rocky at first because I guess his last companion, teaching was not one of his strengths haha so he had to adjust to me and we adjusted nicely and I think that this is going to be an awesome transfer teaching with him. 

It was super sad saying my goodbyes to our Zone Leader though Elder Wells. He was seriously such an awesome missionary and I was seriously blessed to have the time that I got to spend with him. He definitely held our zone together because after he left there has already been some changes that bring up some concerns of mine haha. The new ones are super lame haha but it is all good because I know we can always find positives in everything! Hes going back to BYU and he is definitely up for grabs if any of the ladies are interested in an awesome RM born in raised in California! He is super awesome though. Logan Wells look him up haha. 

This week I finally got to go to a rugby game! It was super sweet and I really wanted to play just watching them. Our Ward mission leader and a guy in our YSA were playing so we went to support and it was awesome. The people in SA have so much energy and the crowds were going wild hah. It was funny because our Ward Mission Leader "Beast" he totally cheap shotted this dude on the kick off hah and got a yellow card so we were laughing at him haha. It was super cool to see the people there and to talk to them. Righteous Publicity is what I like to call it haha. I am sure that people were thinking that we were recruits or something haha. It is funny because when people find out that I was born in New Zealand its like they want to be my best friend because of the All Blacks haha. I am glad that I played Rugby back in the States as well because that is definitely the first question they ask me when ever they see me haha.

For this transfer I have totally changed my Focus Point for the area of Uitenhage. For this transfer, my companion and I are going to focus a lot more on less actives and also the active members as well. I am going to try my best and find a good balance of Investigator, Recent Convert, Less Active, and Active Member lessons. It will definitely lower the stats that I have been getting but no worries because, No point in bringing a lost sheep into the fold if the fold is going to kick it right back out into inactivity!!! 

Spiritual Thought:

One of the things that really stood out to me for this week was the wonderful blessing that we have is having a living Prophet of our church. What an amazing blessing we have in our lives to have direct revelation from Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. In Priesthood we were talking about how our church just seems to be not just one step ahead, but multiple steps ahead of everyone else in the world. So many different religions coming to talk and ask advice from our church leaders on managing welfare or the importance of family ect. It is all because our church is the only church in the entire world that is directed by Jesus Christ, whom is directed by The Father, Himself. The World is constantly changing, therefore we need constant direction in these latter days. That direction is giving through General Conferences and even Liahonas/Ensign magazines. These talks are given directly for our day and we need to be able to heed to the words and make changes accordingly. 

That is all for this week though! Well there were more things but I am too lazy to type them all but yup! church is true and Love and miss you all! Love hearing from everyone and keeping me updated!

weekly letter 13

Yo! What it do though!! This week has seriously been so freezing. I miss central heating so much. Every time I wake up my face feels ice frozen. It has been raining so much since we are at the beginning of Winter now. It doesn't snow or anything but man it gets super windy and is always raining. I feel bad for the Townships because I question if their shack houses can even handle winds and rain like this. Also since the roofs on our flats are just sheets of tin, when it rains it is sooooo loud. The winds sound like we are in the middle of a tornado or something like that. The weird thing about the rain here is that it is so insanely bipolar that it even kind of pisses me off. It will legit go from super heavy rainstorm to calm no rainfall just like that. Instantly the rain will stop and then come back on and it will go through that pattern for like an hour of going on and off on and off and it just makes me so mad. Like why... I mean I love rain and everything but like why cant it just continually rain and just stay that way..... -_- Super Dumb.

So I got the news about my new companion! His name is Elder Mendenhall from Idaho but I have not met him yet. Ill pick him up from the airport on Wednesday! Also guess what super sucks... You know how the we cleaned out the fridge with all the maggots and stuff growing in it... Yea apparently we have to move into that boarding because President does not want all us missionaries staying in the same flat with each other. At first I was like wow.... Because the flat that we are staying in now.... No one is going to be staying in it so it is just going to be empty... Lame... So I gotta move into the spider infested maggot spawning boarding with my new companion away from everyone else... But I guess the other Elders that I am really good friends with now like Elder Wilhelmsen and Elder Wall know Elder Mendenhall really well so I bet President was just really scared to have us all be living under the same roof haha. Especially since Elder Wilhelmsen was Elder Mendenhalls previous companion. All Good though... The Zone leaders are super sad about it since we wont be living right next to each other but I told them that Ill be fine haha. I told them that the week I get less than 20 lessons, then they know that something is wrong haha.

This week was awesome though. I have been getting some super awesome study hours in and have been really "Feasting" on the words of Christ. I have been studying a lot out of the the D&C Manual and the Book of Mormon Manuals with reading the BOM and all the other works and it takes a lot longer to read but it is totally worth it. One of the things I want to maybe make a goal for myself is that, well first off. My pattern for the decorating of my missionary planners are that I have a Jesus related picture on the bottom and a Temple picture in the top left hand corner, and then a picture of a prophet corresponding with what transfer number it is. So since this is my 3 transfer I have started, John Taylor is up there and I am maybe going to start reading all of the teaching manuals of the prophets each transfer as well on top of my studies. I think it would be cool and I mean if I am going to have their pictures on my planner for each transfer, I might as well know something about them hahha. 

We have been having really having so many blessings poured upon us in Uitenhage so far. We have been finding new awesome people to teach like crazy. It was funny because we have been having this guy coming to our ward for the past 3 weeks and he seriously is what we call a "True Seeker". He really wants to know some answers and he even lives in the next town over where the 6 other Elders work and he has been coming to our ward because he does not know where the Kwano ward is. He even went out and bought a white shirt and a new tie that he came to church in last week. I was like man Sibusiso you looking good in that white shirt ma man. In my mind I was like. It would look even better if you were baptized and were a member haha. So I went over to the Zone Leaders and got all of the Kwano Elders in a room and I was like yo.. I got this awesome referral for you guys and I told them his address and they were all fighting over him arguing that he lived in their area and stuff like that haha it was funny. But really this guy is legit and I really hope they don't mess it up cause then I be pissed na meannnn.

Spiritual Thought:

This week the spirit has been working wonders with me and revealing awesome truths to me. One of them being is comparing this life to a train. The Train to the Celestial Kingdom. The way I like to compare it... is... We want to go to the Celestial Kingdom, more importantly... we want to get to the Highest Degree of the Celestial Kingdom. I like to think that the train is the Work of God/The Second Coming. Regardless if you are ready or not, the train will continue to move and you will be left behind. In order to ride a train you need a ticket right. That ticket being baptism. Getting baptized and becoming a member of the church. So I thought. The ticket we want is not baptism... The Ticket we want is a temple recommend and getting sealed to our families forever! If we only get the the baptism ticket then we will have to get off of the train when we reach the baptism ticket stop or whatever you want to compare it too. We have been really trying to emphasize about how their eyes need to be set on being eternally married and getting sealed with their family. It is so hard since the closest temple to us is the Johannesburg Temple.... We still emphasize it though... Our goal should be to reach the highest Celestial Kingdom of glory to become Gods. Even though in life we sometimes get off of the train, we should always be constantly trying our best to get back on. I don't know about you but I would definitely rather be a God in the Highest Degree of Glory than a Ministering Angel in the other Kingdoms for all of Eternity.

I love all of you and really miss you all. I hope that everyone is doing well and having an awesome summer while I am over here freezing my face and toes off haha. Till Next Week!!! 

weekly letter 12

Hows it going everyone! This week was another awesome week! We went to the cheetah park on Monday and got to go and play with cheetahs and check out lions and stuff. I totally rode one and it was awesome. Just kidding but that would be sweet! This week was not all that extravagant but it is so crazy to think that in a few days I will have already been on my mission for three months! Transfers are happening next week so this coming Saturday I will find out who my next companion is. It will be crazy because the eight elders that I live around, four of them will be leaving and so it will be super weird not seeing some of the Elders around the flat. All goods though because I know that who ever comes in will be super awesome.

My deepest regards to L. Tom Perry's family. That is so crazy how things can change so fast! He was definitely one of my favorite Apostles. I remember seeing him and church and having him complement me on my tiger that I had hanging around my neck. I definitely throw in a brag every now and then if I am given the chance. Definitely a constant reminder about how short life is here on Earth especially in the eyes of God. I always think it is so cool to picture past prophets and apostles cheering and rejoicing when they have another prophet and apostle pass on into the spirit world. I bet they go crazy because they get another amazingly strong and powerful missionary to help further the work. 

This week we had some interesting things come up with the ward. First, apparently I have some admirers whom have pictures of me on their phones or something like that haha. I guess they have pictures of me from back home and also some of Vaughan and Rylee and the baby or something like that haha. I think it is funny and actually kind of heart warming because then maybe they will tell me that it is them so we can talk about how cute the baby is or something haha. So there is that, also I guess there has been a lot of past drama in the ward as well. A lot of grudges and gossip I guess has accumulated within the ward for a very long time. It is sad because these little grudges seriously do hinder the work and it is definitely something that I am going to try and get to the bottom of. One of the things that this ward truly lacks is definitely love. Love is one of the things that I noticed it lacked the first time I had come here but I never was told why but I got a couple of stories out. We never do ward activities and then the small times that we do, no one shows up. Apparently there are going to be changes being made to the area of Uitenhage though so we will see how that goes. I am excited to try and help with it though.

This week we had the baptism of Abulele! He was the young man that I invited to be baptized my first day out in the field on mission! He is a super cool dude and I am excited to watch him grow in the gospel! His family as well are maybe interested in joining our church "wink wink" So we will see how that goes. One of the coolest things that I really love seeing is watching the growth of a persons prayer. Sometimes we will be teaching someone and their prayer will literally be 5 words. Over time though as we teach them it slowly progressively gets longer and more heartfelt which is so amazing. It warms my heart to see and feel my investigators draw closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I can truly feel their love for the savior grow more and more day after day. 

Sorry that is all the time that I have today but I still love all of you! K Bye!

Weekly letter 11

Yo! What an awesome week this has been! Towards the ending it got super stressful but no worries. We went to the aquarium for P day and that was pretty fun. A squad of like 14 of us elders went and it is always super cool to get with other Elders to spend time with them. We got to the aquarium early and so we went and just sat next to the beach and watched the ocean which was really nice. Still cry a little/die every time I see the ocean because I am so close to it and still can not even go in. 

This week, so our area is supposed to have 4 Elders in it but since a lot of the missionaries the were supposed to come did not come due to visa problems there is only my companion and I. So, there is another boarding for the other two elders and it is just down the street from us. We are supposed to be checking up on it every now and then just to make sure that it did not burn down or anything like that but we are lazy and so we just never went over there to check it out. So we finally go to check it out and so we walk in. Everything looks fine and clean except for the fact that there are 70 billion spiders running around like 4 year olds in primary so that was disgusting. We continue to investigate the boarding and we realize that the fridge is dead quite. We then realized that the power had tripped and the fridge had been off for the past 2 months. We do not know if there was anything left inside the fridge and so we hoped and prayed that there was nothing. We were scared to check the fridge and so we decided to check the freezer first. BAD IDEA!!! We open up the freezer door and instantly a flock of flies just dart out of the freezer and it seriously smelt so bad. There were like hundreds of maggots completely covering the freezer it was nasty. They were all wiggling and ugh it was so gross. On top of that, There was Frozen Meat in the fridge and so since the fridge had defrosted there was a pool of blood at the bottom of the freezer and mold everywhere. Disgusting. Anyways enough of that crap.

So yea this week was crazy! Taught 40 lessons this week which is crazy! I want to know what the mission record is so that can be my next goal but man this week was nuts! I also went on exchanges with my Zone Leader Elder Wells and that day we taught 11 lessons with him. He said that the highest he has ever taught in a day is 8 and so I was like YO! Since you coming into my area, we breaking 10 and so we managed to get 11 which is super awesome. I had a great time teaching with him, we flow really well together! It is super cool to see how other missionaries teach and what they know and learn from each other. It was stressful because I was so dead towards the end of the week and so I was struggling to get those last few lessons but it all worked out.

One of our investigators here name is Anthionette and she is awesome. She works as a security guard at the Volkswagen factory where Brother Mendu works and I guess he passes her every now and then when he goes to work and so he told us we should see her. We taught her the first lesson last week and it went well and we told her to pray and things like that. Then this week we taught her on the Book of Mormon (The Donaldson Papers Style) and so were reading the first chapter of The Book of Nephi. We get to the verse about Lehi seeing the pillar of fire/light and right after we read this she kind of gets a confused look on her face. She then said

"This story is reminding me of a dream that I had."

I was like, What.... Then I asked her to describe the dream that she had.

She then described that while she was living in the next city over, not in the house she lives in now, she had a dream. (Previous to this she did not know that she would be moving as well) She dreamed that she moved into the area of where she lives now and that she was outside of a house, The house that she lives in now. She said that she saw a pillar of light coming down from the heavens right over the house. She didn't know what was going on and so she looked up and she saw the heavens open. When the heavens opened she said that she saw God poking his head through the clouds and that he was staring at her. She then began to tell us that she has these dreams or visions all the time. She says that they always come true as well. When she was telling us I was super jealous because I think that the Gift of Prophecy/Visions is one of the coolest gifts. I then interpreted the dream and told her that her vision was God telling her that in due time she would move into that house and that when she moved into that house, The Word of God or Gods church, something along those lines, would come into contact with her.
She is so ready for this gospel that it is unreal. The crazy thing is that... 6 weeks prior my companion and I were standing outside of the Volkswagon Company waiting for Brother Mendu to come outside and give us some ward papers that he needed us to deliver. He was taking forever and so I was feeling a little impatient. We were parked in front of the factory and there was no one outside and so I wanted to teach someone so I wouldn't be wasting anytime. I prayed to Heavenly Father and told him to send me someone whom he has placed and knows to be ready to receive the gospel and I said that I will teach that person. I ended my prayer and looked around ready to go and teach whoever came around the corner of the street or anyone that came out of the building. Now, I was looking for a Potential Priesthood holder, one in particular whom might be a source for a father led family. So I was standing there looking for a Male to teach whom I thought was the one that Heavenly Father had placed for me. A minute goes by and then finally I see someone walk out of the Volkswagon Factory. It is a security guard but the problem is that it was a woman! I was thinking to myself.... NO.... that can not be right I am looking for a potential Priesthood holder. I then felt my heart start to race as this woman started to walk closer to me. I was freaking out and my heart started to beat faster and faster. Just as she almost got to the front of our car she crossed the road. I was like... Oh not meant to be I guess.... Then I got the strongest impression that I needed to teach her but I kept thinking how weird it would be for me to run out to her and stop her and so I just stood there and watched her walk away. I was like dang... I am pretty sure that I just denied a prompting from the spirit. Then Brother Mendu came out and we got the papers and as we left and was driving away I was super disappointed in myself. So the reason I am telling this is because that lady that I had refused to teach was Anthionette! The spirit was telling me to go and teach her because she was the one that Heavenly Father had placed for me. I am so lucky that Heavenly Father gave me a second chance to teach her because those opportunities are very rare. I definitely will try my best and never deny the promptings of the spirit as well because as Alma 37 says: by small and simple things are great things brought to pass It just goes to show us that The Lords work truly can not stop. That His work will progress no matter what. It just depends on if we want the blessings or not. The Lord blessed me with a second chance to redeem myself. That is all I have time for today but I love you all and love hearing from you! Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Weekly Letter 10

Bee Bopp Sha Boodie Boo! Another awesome week this week! How about as I am typing this "Complicated by Avril Lavigne" came on in the email shop and so I starting singing it really loud totally blanking that there are 3 other grown men next to me and they just gave me the most confused death glare ever hahhaha! Swaggy... Anyways, this week was sweet, I taught all the other elders how to play touch rugby and we taught them how to play Ultimate Frisbee so that was sweet. It felt good to legit sprint and what not. Definitely should have stretched though because YO! my body killed for the next couple days. The Lord blessed us with more referrals and new people to teach so my companion are pretty stoked. This week was seriously like Drop Nation! we had made 40 planned appointments and probably 16 of them dropped so we had to scramble around and go find other people to teach and luckily we at least got 29 lessons this week haha. All goods though I just keep praying to Heavenly Father to legit guide us like one day we had 4 apts drop in a row -_- 4 Hours of just scrambling around so that we could still teach people haha and I was just like... Heavenly Father please tell me where we are supposed to go seriously... haha it worked out though.

I gave another talk in church on Sunday and it luckily went great! I swear the bishop likes to have me speak or something but no complaints because I love giving talks. I was super stressed though because the bishop called us at like 9 pm Saturday night and asked If I could give a talk -_- Come on Bishop -_- It worked out though! Spoke on the importance of baptism! It started off like this.

-There are over 15 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and that number is rapidly growing every day. They have many things in common but one of the things that they have in common is that each and everyone of them have gone through both, baptism by immersion in water, and baptism by fire being set apart as a member of the church and receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Regarding the baptism by immersion, if done properly, it takes no more than 15 seconds for the baptismal recited prayer to be said and the person getting baptized to have already come out and already on their way to get dried and changed. Now the question that comes to mind is what could possibly be so great about this 15 seconds? How can this 15 seconds change my life?

I didn't write it down but as I remember it went something like that haha so there is a little sample for those of you that missed it haha.

Now, regarding the new investigators we had. One of them, his name is Doug, and he is awesome. He is super open and has had some sweet experiences. So the missionaries found him months ago and then they called us and told us that we need to go see him. Apparently, he had prayed one night to God asking him to send help and guide him to the church where he should go and then the missionaries show up the next day knocking on his door. He also had another experience where he had been driving to a city 16 hours away and so he was super tired. 2 hours away from his destination he saw to people on the side of the ride whom looked like they were hikers and they were quite tall. He pulled over and they got in but they did not say a single word to him and so he assumed that they just needed to be dropped off at the next city so he didn't think anything of it. He started to doze off while driving and apparently he had fallen asleep at the wheel. The only thing he says he remembers is that he felt a small tap on his shoulders. He wakes up slowly and looks towards the direction of the taps. One of the guys had tapped him and without saying a single word and very calmly he points forward. Doug had drifted over into the other lane and was heading towards a 16 wheeler truck. Startled he swerves back into the correct lane and I doubt he felt tired or sleepy after that happened haha. So then he pulled over at the next city and the two guys without saying a word, get out and start walking away. 

YO! I strongly believe that those two guys are of the many translated beings here on earth today because... aint no way anybody normal gonna calmly not say a single word while you are headed towards a 16 wheeler truck haha. But man I know for a fact that God has some awesome things in store this guy and I am so excited to continue in teaching him! I asked him to get baptized and he said yes but as he comes to know it is true but I mean... Duh its true so hes pretty much in it to win it haha but he is awesome. We also had another agree to get baptized so that's swaggy but we will talk about her another time! 

That's all the time I have for now but thanks for everyone's email and things like that! Hope everyone is doing well and everything is going good! I love you all will talk to yous next week!

Weekly Letter 9

Mothers Day!!! Hope that everyone had an awesome week this week and did awesome things for their mother! It was so awesome getting to skype you guys even though I didn't get to skype the rest of the family because ran out of wifi data! South African problems! This week overall though was awesome! We went to a food place for lunch called Grillers which apparently is South Africa's idea of an American Diner. It was cool though, they had a bunch of license plates from the states all around the diner. Still always in awe at the conversion rate of the money because we ordered a burger meal with chips and onion rings for 26 rand. A full meal for like $2.10 or something like that. INSANE!!! I got to go to the beach again. Well as close to the beach as we are allowed. We cant go on the and so we found this walk way and so yea... got as close to it as we could haha.

This week we have been focusing and praying for new investigators. Since we are having so many baptisms and what not, our investigator pool is lessening. We found a lot this week so I am super excited to get to teach them. One of them, his name is Monde. It is actually pretty odd how we got into contact with him. We were received a referral from I think was from the mission office and it gave us his details. He received a friend request on facebook from some guy in England. I guess he was a missionary and he does online proselyting! How nuts is that! So crazy how this gospel is using technology for good now a days! So they started talking about religion and things like that and so yea! First lesson went awesome with him and then we will be seeing him again later this week! 

Our recent convert Jackson (Baptized two weeks ago) Is going to receive the Aaronic priesthood this coming Sunday! I am so excited for him. Seriously the lord has big plans for this guy! It is so cool seeing people that you baptized, and watching them progress in the gospel! I know that he is going to be such a blessing in his home as well. Blessing the lives of his non member family.

So this week we had multi zone training this week and it was awesome! We had David F. Evans come and speak to us and teach us! So Elder Evans has been a General Authority for 10 years now and is the Executive Director of the Missionary Department and so he is over all the missionaries in the world! Now he was a powerful guy! you could just feel the spirit radiate around him which was awesome. It was so strong that when I was giving the opening prayer, I was getting a little teary eyed with the spirit being so strong. 2 other elders and I even sang a special number and honestly it sucked and like the spirit must have been having him hear something else because after he finished he said it was beautiful so I really don't know haha but he was awesome. There were two things that he taught in which the spirit confirmed to me as most important for me to remember. 

1) On how we as missionaries need to build up the kingdom of god.

He focused on how Yes, we need to baptize but there is no point in baptizing people whom are going to become less actives. Missionaries get that a lot because every missionary wants to get baptisms but it does not help the Lords Church by baptizing his children into less activity. He taught us on how we need to focus on families. And by families, not just your immediate family, but also the extended families. He talked about how tracting and proselyting is one of the most ineffective tools of finding people to teach. Yes if the spirit guides you to certain people then by all means street contact. But, if that street contact gets baptized and has no friends/family whom are also in the ward and then goes inactive... then what is the use."it would have been better for you that ye had not known me." (2 Nephi 31:12)  Missionaries should focus on receiving referrals through everyone the come into contact with because that is building up the kingdom and allowing people to more likely stay in the church and be active if they have friends and family whom attend the church as well.

2) NOW THIS ONE HIT ME THE HARDEST:

Elder Evans was talking about how missionary work, or even anything in general pertaining to bringing people closer to Christ blesses not only us, our family, and also our future family. As he said this the spirit hit me with a question. The question that the spirit had told me was this.

"How bad do you want to bless your family?"

That question hit me so hard. The blessings that come from us not only as missionaries but also as children of God as a whole are very real. We may not understand what blessings we are going to receive from doing something as little as reading just a few more verses out of the Book Of Mormon or adding on that extra blessing to a prayer but it does affect us. Not only you but also, your family, and your future family. Then there comes a second question.

"What blessings am I restricting from giving my family because of my disobedience or lack of diligence?"

"Is watching a movie at 2 am really worth giving up the blessing that Heavenly Father would have given had you not watched the movie?" (Some missionaries do make that mistake)

Now what if that blessing that would have been given was to your mum. Or to your dad or even your sister. Your mum crying at night to feel love from her Heavenly Father or your dad pleading with God to please help him, give him the strength to go through another day in this dreadful hell here on earth. Or even your little sister, praying to Heavenly Father to please bless her with a friend at school. Sometime to just once say hi to her and to play with her. Obviously we do not know what blessing will come exactly, but why risk it. Once again,

" How bad do you want to bless not only your family, but also your future family?"

I think we can all take the advice from Elder Evans and use that in our own lives today regardless of being a missionary or not. 

The mission is going great and I am so grateful to be allowing God to shape me the way he wants me. Because I know that He can do so much more with me than I could ever do by myself. I love you all so much and cant wait to hear from you all next week!