This week is one of those short weeks. We'll see what I can squeeze in.
We had a very busy week starting on Monday, when we had a volleyball tournament, where my team surprisingly took second place and I turned into a lobster. It was pretty fun, but a lot of stress went in to booking the travel for it. For some reason booking travel is just really stressful. On Friday we got the all clear signal to book Transfer Travel. Transfer tickets have to be out before Monday morning, because that's when missionaries can download them. So we had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to plan out travel, book tickets, and send them out. The goal is to not let a missionary be alone, which is extremely difficult when your mission is roughly four times the size of California and missionaries are spread out all over that 407,000 square miles. This transfer was less stressful than last because we had about half as many people moving, but we have 9 going home, and 13 coming in. It usually takes a full day to just plan and book everything(10-9:30). That's if everything goes smoothly. We decided to break it up and take half on Friday, and half on Saturday. We had a nifty little program that throws all of the information into a spreadsheet so that it is easier to go through and plan out who's going where and when. Strangely, that program broke that day. Being the programmer I am I went into debugging mode and tried to figure out why it couldn't read our source files. After about an hour of debugging I decided it wasn't worth it, and we'd have to put the worksheet together by hand. Which took a long time. We ended up spending all of Friday just preparing to start the planning, and took all of Saturday planning and booking, and sent everything out on Sunday. But if that wasn't bad enough, This morning we were having our busy P-day, and start getting texts saying, "our tickets won't print." Apparently something went wrong with the files so we had to re-download and send everyone's tickets. We also finished up some of our other big time-consuming projects, so this transfer should be calm and a lot of finding and teaching, and hopefully baptizing.
Elder Burke is the new companion coming in. So we will be three in the office, and two assistants. Elder Noso, the Finnish one, will be leaving. As a touching last minute of work together we went out and did splits, and I gained a last few pieces of his wisdom and outstanding finding ability. I'm going to miss him. I have 2 of my companions leaving this Thursday. That will be weird to see them go. We did a lot of great work this week, and our numbers are starting to reflect that. Apart from our usual office duties, we went out finding almost every day this week. That is incredible considering all that happened. Aside from regular contacting and tracting we were out and visited a few people, including an old lady that we've been doing a lot of service for. Last time we talked about eternal life and eternal families, and it was kind of weird because she already believed what we were saying, but the member told us to take that route. It didn't go as the member probably hoped because the lady was not at all more interested in our church after that conversation. So we were thinking, and the member said, "talk about her dead husband and son, but whatever you do, don't just give her a Book of Mormon. It will freak her out and make her think you're trying to baptize her too fast." Hmm... Teach her, but don't bring up the Book of Mormon. We talked about it with our district and discussed ideas, but ultimately we discovered that we can't teach without the Book of Mormon. That's part of the unique message about our church. That God didn't just speak to the people in Jerusalem, but he speaks to all of His children. So we taught her about prayer by using the Book of Mormon, then forgot it on her table, and when she called, it was a perfect time to just say, "We have plenty, you can keep that one, and we'll be back later." She said ok, so we're hoping she'll get curious and read a little bit before we come back again.
This Sunday was great. Wonderful fast Sunday, the Spirit was really strong. We had a dinner with a member family that night, and taught this young family about prayer with a fun object lesson. We told them that God is our loving Heavenly Father, and is always waiting to bless us in any way He can, but sometimes, we need to just ask for those blessings. The object lesson kind of flopped, but they got the point in the end, and all felt the Spirit as we testified of our church being founded on the principle that we receive revelation today. That God still talks to us. After that was that last minute of finding with Elder Noso, and as we talked to everyone we could, we got a referral from some kids, and went by the lady and she was really positive. I learned three important lessons that night. 1. Talk to everyone you can. EVERYONE. It doesn't matter how awkward it may be or how big of a hurry you are in, or how young they are. Talk to them, they are God's children. 2. Be friendly and introduce yourself. Rarely will someone not shake your hand as you extend it, and suddenly, you're not a strange preacher, you are a person. 3. Ask for referrals from everyone. Even if most people don't give you a name, some people will, and that person could be someone you were meant to meet. I'm excited to work even harder this transfer and I know that as I focus on the example of my Savior, and do all that I can, and rely on God to do things beyond my own capacities, He will magnify me to the fulfilling of promises he has made to all His faithful servants. Have a wonderful week, and seek diligently for opportunities to serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Love,
--Äldste Liddle
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