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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