I don't even know
where to begin this week. It seems like so much has happened, and yet we have
so little to show for it.
There has been a lot of stuff going on here in our area,
Elder W had a dentist appointment, and that was super boring! We were there forever!
: (
It’s been raining a lot, which is alright when you are inside, but if you’re
out in it for a long time it get pretty old, pretty fast. The highlight of my
week was definitely some of the miracles I was able to witness while on
exchanges with Elder M in a nearby area. Just to give you a REALLY brief
summary of what happened: While I was there we taught a really cool guy who
wants to learn about the gospel and make changes in his life for the better. It
was Awesome.
To give you a slightly
more in-depth version of what happened:
The Sister Missionaries this area found a guy named J and
taught him the first lesson. When Elder M and I went over there he really opened
up to us about some of the stuff that’s been going on in his life, and said
that he wants to learn about the message we share and wants to change his life around
for the better. He sounds super solid and has a baptismal date (I forgot the
exact date) here in the next month or so. It was an amazing experience and
reminded me that those "golden" people are out there, we just have to
keep looking.
Side note: There have been Sisters in that area for a long
time now, and they just recently put Elders in there as well, so now there are Elders
and Sisters in the same Ward. From what I've heard, with the increase in
missionaries, especially Sisters, the plan for the ideal situation is to divide
the area of the Ward into two areas and have a set of Elders and a set of
Sisters is the same Ward, that way if the Sisters come across a single guy who
wants to learn about the gospel they can just hand him off to the Elders and
vise-versa (which is the more likely occurrence). We will be getting Sisters in
the Willoughby Ward next transfer. We already found them an apartment and we
keep hitting up the members for stuff for the Sisters apartment. I just know
that as soon as there are Sisters in our Ward they are going to start stealing
all of our dinner appointments and having fantastic success and the members are
going to love them and completely forget that us Elders are even alive! Life isn’t
fair. :
)
As for our own area, we had plans this week to visit a lot
of Less Active/ Part Member families, and we did see some, but not quite as
many as we would have liked, and I feel like we wasted a bit of time trying to
get in contact with some of them. More inspired planning is something we will
really be working on this week. We have also been working with a list we made
of Former and Potential Investigators that there is no record of missionary
contact with in a while. We are learning that for most of them there is a good
reason why the Missionaries haven’t been in contact, but there are a few who
sound like their hearts may have been softened since they talked to the Elders
last, and we may be able to start teaching them again sometime soon. : )
Other than that we are just trying to develop any kind of
teaching pool. We will continue to
work with members and nonmembers to try and find those who are truly seeking
for the truth, and hopefully will be locating some of them here pretty soon.
Oh, another request for stuff to include in letters or
packages: Cool object lesson/game ideas to play with families and especially
children... Or even grown-ups! (One thing I’m learning on my Mission is that
even "grown-ups" aren’t all that grown up. They still like games. How
right the Lord is when he calls us (even his disciples) Children.
I've been racking my brains trying to make stuff up on my
own, but I’m only human and I wish I had a pool of ideas to draw from. The
other day we were invited to share a spiritual thought at a dinner/gathering of
a bunch of "adults" there were a bunch of members there including
(but not limited to), the High Priest Group Leader, the Young Men’s President,
the Relief Society President, at least one member of the Bishopric, all of their
spouses, a less active member who hasn’t been at church in 20 years, and somebodies
nonmember mom.
Needless to say we had a lot of different needs to cater to,
and we needed to come up with something pretty good. I don’t know if it was
inspiration or sleep deprivation but I had the idea of doing an object lesson
about the Book of Mormon. We gathered up a few books from round the members
house (The Magician’s Nephew, Moby Dick, some Tom Clancy book, and The Hunger Games)
we then told our "audience" that we were going to play a game that I
had just made up. The game was called "judge that book by its cover".
I would hold up a book and ask everyone who had read that
book to raise their hand. Everyone who raised their hand was then disqualified
and could not answer any of the questions about that book, I then asked the people
who had NOT read the book questions about the book i.e. the main characters
name, the name of the villain, the weapon of choice, the love interest, that
kind of stuff. The answers had to be specific or detailed (or else I would
ridicule them and put them in timeout, ha-ha!), after a few questions the
people who HAD read the book would get to tell everyone else just how wrong
they were.
We did this for several books, and the last book was the Book
of Mormon. This time no one was disqualified, I asked some of the same
questions, and then we talked about how people can judge books by their cover
and think that they know all that they need to know about that book. Then we
shared D&C 88:118 and the last two paragraphs from the Introduction to the
Book of Mormon. We bore our testimonies that The Book of Mormon is true and
that everyone who reads and prays with a sincere heart can learn of its
truthfulness for themselves. We closed in the name of Jesus Christ.
It went pretty well I thought and there was some good solid
spirit filled silence while we were bearing our testimonies, which in contrast
to the riotous game show atmosphere that I had created just previous, was
pretty potent.
But yeah, I need some fresh ideas! :D And that’s my week! Got to run!
Until next week…
LOVE YA, BYE!
Elder Thomson
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