Hey everyone! I've got lots of stuff to update you all on. Lots of changes in the way missionary work will be done and in our personal schedule. Last week there was a worldwide missionary broadcast lead by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, one of the Apostles. He was very excited for our new schedule and lots of missionaries (myself included) are really excited for it too. There are quite a few changes but I'll just run you through some of the basics. First off, with our preparation day. As some of you know it begins at 10am and ends at 6pm every Monday. This is when you have some free time, are able to explore your mission area, and take care of stuff that will help prepare you for the coming week. So instead of starting at 10 amthey pushed it back to 8am! So we have two extra hours on pday! As you can imagine we are all pretty excited for that.
Along with that they changed our morning schedule so instead of now leaving our apartment around noon we will leave every morning at 10am to start proselyting. Which will give us lots of more time to find new investigators and give us the opportunity to talk to a new group of people that most likely haven't contacted missionaries before. Then at night time we still come back at 9pm but instead of planning for the next day like we have usually done in the past we won't be planning until the next morning and get an extra 30 minutes of personal time to prepare for bed and make calls to confirm appointments. On top of all that, as missionaries we keep track of lots of "numbers" as far as contacting people, having lessons with them, how many Book of Mormons we give out, people invited to be baptized, etc. But moving forward we will only be reporting 5 indicators to our Mission and they will likewise do the same to the Missionary Department in Salt Lake. These key indicators have been stripped down to help us focus on the most important key factors in order to help others come unto Christ and be converted.
The main theme of all these changes is for us as missionaries to be more responsible and to be "agents unto ourselves". With all these changes the Lord really is putting lots more trust into us and allowing us to choose for ourselves what is most effective for our individual area in helping us fulfill our missionary purpose (help others come unto Christ). This is going to be a really big change and lots will be different moving forward but I am super excited for it! It is so cool to see what the Lord does to move His work forward. He is in charge and He knows what is best to help His children receive this wonderful message of the restored Gospel. I'm so excited for the new success I know we will begin to see. I love being a missionary and all of the amazing blessings that it brings. Speaking of which, Kinjo, our investigator passed his baptismal interview so he is planned to get baptized this Saturday! He asked me if I could baptize him but a member suggested that my companion Lyutsov perform that ordinance and then I give him the gift of the Holy Ghost so I think that's what we will do so we can both participate in it :) I'm definitely pretty nervous because I've never done it in Japanese before but I know the Lord will help me.
I love you all, have a great week!
Elder Sherrill
No comments:
Post a Comment