Please do not share any of this blog information publicly. Thank you!

1. Laws in the countries of our Area prohibit the online sharing of any “personal data,” directly or indirectly, pertaining to another person. Thus, we ask that you not share through social media tools any information – including photographs, names, addresses, contact information, or any other “personal data” – about individual members, nonmembers or missionaries. If you currently have a public social media site or Facebook page where Area related material is posted, please immediately remove all posted photographs of missionaries, members and nonmembers as well as any written information about them. If you wish to keep photographs on your site, please make that site private, and strictly control who has access to the site – by invitation only. Please ensure that those
invited onto the site can be trusted not to share or forward information made available on the site to ensure that we honor and uphold the law. Our missionaries are focusing on their missionary purpose, even on preparation days and we are asking them to be wise even regarding the number of photographs that they send home.

Church meetings.. .

 

Mom!  To answer one of your questions, we meet in a building underneath a restaurant. There are an average of about 35 members that come to church every week.  The meetings can be Hilarious sometimes!  They do things very differently than they do in America, but it's good.  

No effort is wasted

 

Dad, I know without a doubt that I'm supposed to be right where I am.  It's dang hard.  As one companion I've had put it, this mission is one slap in the face after another.  But I love it.  In PMG, it says that no effort is wasted, and I believe that.  

Building relationships with the members!

So this week was pretty dang good.  We had good stuff happen.  We're gonna get a baptism here, and not only that, we are going to change this area. (no date or anything, but our AWESOME investigator) We've been working hard, and we've been doing things differently than missionaries in the past, which is what the area needs.  We also taught a lesson yesterday in Church, and we talked about members and missionaries working together.  And we've been meeting with the members like CRAZY.  We are doing everything we can to build a relationship between the members and the missionaries I'll tell you what, since doin' that we've never had so much success in this area, and I feel that it's just getting started!  And it's not just our mission that it will work for. I testify that in order to get baptisms, in order to build whatever area we're in, in order to be an outstanding missionary (not just one that's good at contacting) we NEED to build a relationship with the members, so that they cry when we leave!  (But not by wasting time "hanging out" with them.)  Using them on EVERY lesson, serving them, siting by them at church, going to lunch with them, tracking down the inactive lost sheep, and becoming their friends.  We've just barely begun to do it, and I can't explain how much my view of the mission has changed.  I'll tell you success stories from it when they really start pouring in, cuz they're going to :)

I love you guys!