Thank you all for your letters, your prayers, and own missionary-work. I would like to share some interesting dreams with you that I had this past week to get my letter going. The first dream I had was I was back in St. Stephen with Elder Wolvers and we were tracting on the infamous Ross St. (it is pretty much the Ammonihah of St. Stephen) and we were passing the sacrament to all of our contacts. You know, why not? So that woke me up with a smile on my face. Another strange dream I had was I was at a zone conference and we were watching the clip from Thomas S. Monson with his famous quote "Now is the time for members and missionaries to come together..." and then I get up and start dancing in front of everyone to the tune of "We're all in this together!" from High School Musical. I think my conscience is fighting against my desire to be like Paul and put away childish things. Thought I might let you know about those funny dreams.
This was seriously the best week of my mission. I felt like I was serving in Brazil or something. We had an excellent mission leadership council talking about finding. We are always talking about finding. That's mostly what we do all day but there is a better way to do missionary work than just knocking or street contacting for nine hours a day. It was Elder L. Tom Perry who said "The way we do missionary work has to fundamentally change." I think members do more missionary work than they think. I know that you are working on someone. You have this delicate process and have thought out how you are going to bring up the gospel. What are you going to do when these people tell you 'no' after your hard work of being nice to them and talking about the gospel? On occasion we put the cart before the horse. We climb the wrong mountain. We start digging another hole for a fence post when we've already got one hole half dug. None of this makes any sense. Clearly we need some pleasantries and normalities before we invite someone to learn more, but if we are procrastinating invitation there is just no point in doing missionary work. It is so hard to invite someone to learn more. It just is. It will always be hard. This is Heavenly Father's work. Satan doesn't like that. He knows that if he can stop us from inviting then he can stop us. Heavenly Father's work will move forward. It just will. The question is "Are we going to be apart of it?"
We had a jam session with Brother Chatham, a less-active member who can really shred. And Elder Henderson, my new companion who I already live with stole my camera and was taking pictures of me during a leadership call we were doing.
We had a jam session with Brother Chatham, a less-active member who can really shred. And Elder Henderson, my new companion who I already live with stole my camera and was taking pictures of me during a leadership call we were doing.
I've been studying about real intent, agency, and accountability lately. Do we actually believe what we believe in? Do we seriously want answers to our questions? Or do we just sit on the sidelines doing Christlike things, but not actually being Christlike. Do you go to seminary or do you actually go to seminary? Do you read the scriptures or do you actually read them? Whole-heartedly not returning without the plates and getting an answer to your questions. Even in missionary work. Are we actually convinced that we can invite someone to learn more about the gospel? Or do we fall into this trap of 'I just have to be an example and then people will join the church.' If missionary work worked that way all I would do each day would be a fever-strut and not actually talking to anyone. Just sitting down, watching the world go by. Not even talking. Just be an example. That's so easy. Heavenly Father demands more. He knows we are capable of more. Wo unto him that say All is well in Zion! Invite and follow-up.
Another thing that we are afraid to do is account. Why are we afraid to be accountable? Because that is how most things get done in the church. Satan knows this. We are afraid when someone bears their testimony to us. Sometimes we feel like we don't need to be preached to or have someone bear their testimony to us. Reasoning out all of these excuses to get out of things besides the atonement. Sometimes we don't want to account to people that we have done nothing. That we haven't done our home teaching. That we don't hold family prayer or scripture study. That we just don't want to go to church. But accountability is how others will help us. There are three laws to accountability that I have observed. Observation-just looking at people or what they are saying, that is how we'll know how to judge them and then help them. Follow-up-this is where we proactively check up on people. Asking questions like "Have you done your home teaching this month?" "How is your family home evening going?" Then the highest law of accountability that we can live is returning and reporting. This is where we proactively report our labours to a church leader and to the Lord. This demonstrates our real intent. If we actually did something. I have more thoughts about this so I think I'll just write a talk about agency and accountability and send it to you all. Running low on time so I'll just paste a part of my letter to President Leavitt to you.
We were blessed with significant miracles this past week. We went through our potential investigator forms to see who was actually interested in learning more about the restored gospel. Out of the pages and pages of potentials written down, we only determined three people who actually showed genuine interest. We used the criteria from the training "Real Potentials, Real Investigators" from Back to Basics to weed out those who had real intent. We then applied this principle of judging who we think will progress to members (who will actually do missionary work), who will actually progress as part-member families, unbaptized children, less-actives, overdue priesthood ordinations (Brother Moses got us a great list from LCR-personally I wish we had access to LCR), and potential missionary couples. Then after we discussed most of the ward we attempted to set appointments with each of these identified people to teach them the missionary discussions. It relieves a lot of stress to see the next week fill up with appointments rather than just stopping by. Elder Corbett isn't a fan of the phone or setting appointments so he didn't enjoy our four hour weekly planning session, but we have member appointments and that is what matters. Actually discussing finding was great and judging who we think will progress brings forth miracles. We found one new investigator, Lana, the other week and invited her to learn more. She came for a church tour, Terry's baptism, church, and is committed to being baptized on the21st of February. She is going through a difficult spot with her family-single parent and living on her own while her kids are with her boyfriend. However, she has just begun to become more religious-reading the bible, praying, and now going to our church. To quote her during the church tour "I was actually looking for a church to baptize me." I feel very blessed and I feel like we are making progress. I still want to go through each former and discuss with Elder Corbett or now Elder Henderson if these formers were actually investigators.
I love you all!
HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!
Elder McGuire
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