Monday, January 15, 2018

Can't Stop; Won't Stop


There are some things that we learned about Goals this week. In proverbs 23:7 we see:


Our mission president reiterated the importance of always thinking about goals until we achieve them. This means that you need a constant mental effort to accomplish that goal. It will not necessarily be easy, but it will be possible. We have set a goal for 28 baptisms in the month of March. We are doing everything in our power to constantly work and do things that should lead us to reaching this goal. It seems a little ridiculous, but if we are teaching enough lessons to progressing investigators and teaching the right people, it is not impossible. God does impossible things all the time. Our mission president said that most goals should catch your eye and scare you. If they don’t, you are not pushing yourself. We are striving to work differently; to work smart and to see the difference in the results. 

There is a lot that comes with goal like this. We make a constant effort to evaluate what we are doing in order to find those little things we can do to make a huge difference. Most of reaching a large goal involves starting off with a very sure start and not moving from that. It is very possible that we will not reach this goal – but we will fail forward at the very least. 

Teaching with Elder Ewing is a different experience. He is a better teacher than pretty much any other companion that I have ever had. But we realize that no matter how good the teaching is, you still don’t get anywhere without the spirit. We strive to only teach by the spirit, and hope and pray that our investigators feel it. 

We are really starting to push the members to be active in the work. We decided that it would be impossible to find 28 people by ourselves without members that are ready for baptism by march. The members will find more quality investigators. We are going to ideally make some family mission plans with some of the families in the ward. Which we will explain in the next few weeks as we understand what we are doing. 
We are trying to make the work more precise and more organized. I have always had a problem with organization in my life, but I am still pushing myself to make that into a strength. 

Yesterday we had a good experience. We were getting ready to head to a broadcast of the funeral service for prophet Thomas S. Monson. We had about 30 minutes. We prayed in the street to ask God to send us to someone we could teach in that short amount of time, who would accept the gospel. We walked down the street and didn’t really feel anything. We were just standing there for a few seconds and we start talking to the little kids coming by. One of the kids points us up the hill and tells us that his mom wants to talk to us. We looked up to see a lady that we had not noticed before, standing outside the large gate of a church. We go up to talk to her. Her name is Pearly, and she is a devout Baptist. Her cousin is the pastor of the church she was standing in the threshold of. We start a conversation about how she moved from Catholicism because of the activities and programs in her new church. We then start talking about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. She seemed to kind of understand the importance of such a book. We testified of it and she said she would read it every day. I don’t know how much will come out of that meeting, but we will follow up to see what she has learned. It was a good experience.
       
After that, we saw the broadcast of the funeral services of Thomas S. Monson. He will be remembered for his personal ministry and his love of individuals. I know that God calls living prophets and speaks through them today.

Culture: If you don’t speak the language correctly here, almost no one will correct you. As it generally works – the more correctly you speak, the more people correct you. I think it is because it is much easier to correct just the one mistake than many. Before Elder Bromley and I split up, I told him about this – the more correctly he spoke, the more people would help him learn the language. I saw him the other day, and he said that people were starting to correct him – so he must be making great progress in learning the language. I am proud of him.

Tagalesson: Some nouns made from verbs:
Prayer: Pagdarasal
Church attendance: Pagsisimba
Repentance: Pagsisisi
The act of Reading: Pagbabasa
Speech: Pagsasalita.

Alrighty everyone, keep up the amazing. I love you all and look forward to seeing what you all have to say next week ;)
Love
Elder Faulkner



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