Elder John Wilson

This week was pretty good. We've had a little more success in our area with getting investigators to attend church. Yesterday we had 2 priesthood show up, where one was inactive and the other nonmember. So it was great to se that, since this ward seriously needs more priesthood to bear the load. Some quorum presidencies aren't complete here, and it hurts the effectiveness of the quorum. Thanks Covey for the advice on working better with the bishop here, it's something that's been on my mind a lot and that I'm going to work on. 

The lady named Susana that we've been working with has been progressing niecly. She has a huge amount of faith and desires to get baptized and share what she knows. In fact, the inactive priesthood that came yesterday we didn't even know until the other day we were going to visit her and she was talking to him about how he should come. But I just realized that I think I wrote that last week.

This week I've been feeling like I have a lot of weaknesses as a missionary that impede the work. For example, Our companionship isn't very good at all at using time effectively, and I think it comes down to the fact that we never get references. We ask but not very well. There's a great training video from Pte Monson that says right there that you won't get references just by asking "Do you have references?" So we're working on planning an activity with the ward to get references. But I feel like we need to meet with the bishop and make a ward mission plan that involves the members. So that's one thing that my companion and I have been thinking about all week. 

And now we're going to do it. Basically it's really hard to identify the major problems that we have in a companionship when I haven't seen an example of someone doing them well, but luckily that's exactly the purpose of the Spirit and PME and the church PME videos. And my companion is always really willing to make big changes in the way we do things. We also made a 1st visit lesson plan that works great for when you keep in mind that in the first visit they don't listen to you very well and that they kjust want to talk. We only teach about a living prophet a little and focus in the LDM and prayer. And that leaves us extra time for the baptismal invitation, since when we ask they typically go off about whether or not each member of their family is baptized, a neighbor they know with a cool experience, and why we're both named Elder. So the new plan is better for that.

I've been studying a lot from the New Testament about the teaching method of Jesus Christ. Mostly I've learned about boldness, and authority. Because we have the same authority to teach as Jesus had. So I can tell people that they need to be baptized in the only church with the authority of God, and there is no room for misunderstanding.

I've learned a lot about obedience so far, since there were some problems when I got here. The biggest one was taking an hour and a half for lunch, because the members don't eat with us and sometimes we hae to wait for them to finish preparing or to eat after. But what I've noticed is that the Lord always provides a way. It helps me teach my investigators. For example, 2 Sundays out of 5 the members have given us money to just go buy lunch. But we just go eat whatever's left in the apartment, and we have the energy we need for the rest of the day. Well I love you, I hope school goes well, and make sure to read Scriptures every day.

Elder Wilson