Teach Lessons, Not People. Teach People, Not Lessons

We have a phrase that sometimes gets used as missionaries and it goes something like "Teach People, Not Lessons." The idea is that people are most important and, while you may have a specific idea in mind to teach them, you should not let that become the sole focus of everything. This is important because in missionary work because it really is all about people. On the other hand, our mission president asked us an interesting question: "If you aren't teaching these people lessons, what are you teaching them?". With that in mind, in this zone interview president Hughes had everyone teach him a short 3-5-minute lesson. He did this to make sure that everyone was teaching in a way that would make people feel comfortable and understand what it is that we are teaching. President Hughes is very concerned with people, how they feel, what they go through, and how to best help them. I have learned a lot from him as he has explained to me what I can do to make people more comfortable with my presence. Personally, I feel like these skills will make a nice difference in my life in the coming years. Life is good. 

God really wants to help us, He really wants to forgive us, He wants us to feel peace in our lives. I want to you look at the last few weeks or months or even years. Were you peaceful? Did you experience peace? Was it an overarching feeling? Or a seldomly felt experience that never seemed to stay? God wants you to have peace in your life today. I recently gained a better understanding of the peace of repentance, what God is willing to give us, and what He expects of us. We have an expression in the mission which comes from Sister Hughes: "Repent in real time." If you make a mistake, why would you sit around feeling bad about it? Just get back on the bike and get going to where you are going.

This mindset will change your life. You will be affected by the grace of God and you will feel a peace in your life that you can’t explain. I know that we worry about things, I know we experience different things, but my life can’t be that different from yours – and if it worked for me, chances are it will work for you. Keep up the good work and never give up. As for the not good work we all do, focus on the things that you want and where you want to go – everything else falls into place. Keep on keeping on.

I love you all and I really hope that you will be able to apply that in your life. I believe in you all. Life is good here, I pray for all of you. Keep it going.

Love

Elder Faulkner

She made it out alive!

First things first: Sister Calapini made it out of the hospital! And as of now, has no bad effects from the dengue – except the fact that she is really tired, which is to be expected. She had dangerously low platelet levels and she still made it through just fine. As Elder Yates says, "There is no Sister like a Fairview sister." We saw the miracle of her recovery. Now she is back in her area and working hard. She started working again (in her area, not the office or light duty) only one full day after being out of the hospital she is a champion.

This week was a quick one. We are getting a lot of time to work in the area and we are even seeing a lot of miracles in the time that we have. Brother Pasco went to church again and we are really pushing to get the rest of the family to church. The scheduled baptism of Brian and Karen Pasco is August 25; we will be helping them prepare for that these coming weeks.

I really love the work and I have seen so many great things in my life and in my mission because of God's plan. God lives, and He wants us to change. He wants us to change and He wants us to use our free will to choose what is best for us. He knows our setbacks and our shortcomings, and He just wants us to be able to overcome those. There is no other way for us to become clean and whole, except through the atonement of Jesus Christ. He can make us whole and He can heal us.

I love you all and I hope you are holding up well. Keep on doing what it is that you need to do.

Sorry I dont send enough pictures. I really should work on that. As of right now, I am just so focused on the area and the zone and I always forget to get out my camera when things happen. I know that I am wasting opportunities, well sorry.

I love you all keep on keeping on.

Elder Faulkner

French Toast

For all of you that plan on going on missions, might I make a suggestion:

Learn how to cook things with only 3 ingredients. There are plenty of things that only require 3 ingredients, let me show you one.

French toast:

Bread

Eggs

Syrup

That easy

I taught my companion Elder Pajarin about this and he literally cooked French Toast every single day for the next week. Even now, it is usually a weird day if we don’t have French Toast. It makes it easy when you only have to mix 3 things and then you are done. Note, when counting the 3 ingredients – I don’t count rice, as most of what we eat is on top of rice. Chicken Potatoes and the sweet chili sauce you buy at Puregold is a counted 3 ingredient meal. It is pretty great. Makes cooking really easy. Try it and it will change your life.

In other news. My Dad sent me Umbrellas. The rainy season just started so they showed up just in time. We got umbrellas out to our whole zone and then another zone as well. A lot of missionaries needed umbrellas and we didn’t even know. So, shout out to my dad who has always had a knack for doing things spontaneously and doing things that have a good impact. Pictures to follow.

This week we have a missionary with Dengue in the hospital, her name is Sister Calapini. Pray for her.

If you don’t know about Dengue it is a killer disease; it literally kills people. It lowers your blood-platelet count and it makes you throw up and have a fever of like 104-105 degrees. If I have learned two things on my mission it is

1. God loves us all as His children and

2. DO NOT GET DENGUE.

Wow.

Lots going on. We did the ward JIFFY and we got the members to write down more than 400 people that they know (collectively). The next few weeks will be about following up on each of these people – individually -and going to them with the members. It is good to see members getting involved; we will be doing that for a long while now.

Anyways, I am gonna head out. Love you all

My cousin Christian is getting back from his mission in a week or so. He is a really cool guy so hit him up.

Love you all

Elder Faulkner

NIMP

We have started something new, and it kinda worked. 

It is called NIMP

NIMP means New Investigator Member Present.

We have been tracking every time our missionaries teach someone new with a member present at the appointment.

We have seen our missionaries almost double the amount of people that they were adding to their teaching pools! Over half of those people were found with a member present in that lesson.

Now if you don’t really understand what that means, here is a small explanation:

As missionaries we teach a lot of people. A lot those people we stumble upon. Sometimes find someone that is already familiar with the church and even knows someone that is a member – this is important, as it gives support to that things that we teach.

Through tracking this, we see that the missionaries can better fill their calling by getting members involved in the finding and teaching of new investigators.

This also helps the members to change their perspective on missionary work. They can see that they can be a big part of the work, even in just 30 minutes or an hour. And through that first lesson, more people understand the nature of the church, and the purpose of the missionaries.

Well that is that, what else happened...

This week we focused on finding more members that would help us with the work and we are making plans to hit high goals. We aim not only to change things temporarily, but to make goals that will change things in our current ward on a long-term scale. 

So far in the work, I feel like I have not been as successful as I could have been. I am always learning, and I feel like the first half of my mission was spent being unable to completely influence the work because I hadn’t yet learned what I needed to; whether in the language, in teaching, or in so many other things. Now I feel like I know a lot more and the struggle is to apply it at all times. I learned an important lesson about that this week it goes as follows:

Knowledge is to Wisdom as Belief is to Faith

This holds a lot of meaning to me, as it describes the difference of having knowledge and actually using it. Someone could know everything in the world, but if they never use and apply that knowledge it is literally useless to them.

Oftentimes our lives boil down to the question of: How effectively do I use what I know to get something that I want?

Then the question can be asked: What do you actually want? Is the problem in the amount of knowledge you have? Or is it just a problem with how much we are actually applying what we know?

Those are important questions. We should all start asking ourselves and finding out what we want and what we gonna do to get it...

Well good luck with that love you all

Peace

Elder Faulkner

Getting Back to Normal?

This is the time that things might be getting back to the normal schedule in missionary work. We finally had a good few days in the area to visit those that we are teaching. We actually have a lot of people to teach right now, but they are not coming to church. A lot of them are interested in the church but are still having the set back of not taking the necessary step of church attendance. We have created a specific plan for next week: Ask a member to go to the home of an investigator on Sunday morning and personally invite them to church. We will do this for every single investigator.

This week with Elder Pajarin was great. I have started speaking Tagalog again about 95% of the time, allowing for the occasional English joke. He really wants to get better at English, and I want to get better at Tagalog. Having a companion who is a native speaker of the language you want to speak, really helps improve your language skills. One thing I have noticed is that even over a short 5 days, I am already starting to think in Tagalog again. I missed that a lot. It is very different to have random thoughts in a different language, even if it was not my intention to think in that language. I know that happens more in places where people are completely surrounded in the language that they speak.

This week was overall very good; our zone is looking very solid. We have a few companionships that are doing amazing work and exceeding many expectations. As zone leaders, we just praise them and enable them to do their work better.

Well, I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week. Things might be changing soon, so I will make sure that I update you on that when it happens.

Love

Elder Faulkner