This week passed by so fast, I have no idea what happened to it, it’s like we were just leaving church to go home and eat 10 minutes ago and now it’s already the end of P-day again. It is amazing how fast the time goes by. The week probably went by so fast though because of how much work there was, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Elder Foster was here for zone conferences. I’m glad I was able to be in the office during the experience, we didn’t get to have a meeting with him or anything, but we definitely got a little more time to talk to him, chat with him as an office. It was really interesting the whole experience with him here and I really was able to learn a whole lot of things, one thing really stuck out, and one thing I didn’t even really acknowledge before, is how greatly important it is for the learner in a teaching situation to have the spirit as well, it doesn’t matter how full of the spirit the teacher is, even if it is a seventy, like Elder Foster, if the learners didn’t come prepared to learn.
It was amazing the difference of the spirit felt from the Monday meeting to the Tuesday meeting, we office Elders were even able to talk to Elder Foster a little bit about it. It was amazing how the same people can teach the same thing to different audiences and there be such a difference in the spirit. On Monday, to say the least, there was not much respect among the missionaries to the fact that there was a General Authority present at the meeting. It seemed almost as if the missionaries came that first day more to socialize with mission buddies they hadn’t seen in a long time than to really learn from the things being taught. That message was quite evident, much more then I think Elder Foster and President would have liked. On Tuesday it was just like night and day, the spirit in the room was so strong and we were able to learn and apply the things being taught. It was a lot of fun to see the difference. It was really a great experience to meet Elder Foster. If you don’t know who he is or don’t remember, he gave a great talk about mothers in the April conference of this year, I would invite everyone to go to lds.org and look for it because it really was a great talk. We didn’t even really notice who he was and then after he left we found the talk and remembered how much we had liked it when we heard it back in April. Anyway, so conferences were pretty much life Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had to set up, help with lunch, help missionaries, everything, so we didn’t really get to go out and work much those days, actually on Wednesday we had all the people from far away areas here and we had to drive them to the terminal and everything, so we didn’t get to work at all that day.
Anyway, so then after that Thursday rolls around, when President got to the office he called in his assistants and they were in there together in a meeting for over 3 hours, so all of us office Elders were sitting out in the office just thinking about what kind of interesting stuff could have been going on in there and the plans they could have been concocting, then they came out just in time for lunch and President told us he wanted to have a super confidential meeting with everyone, which has never happened ever, at least since I’ve been in the office, and I’ve been here longer than anyone else now, so we thought something really big was happening or something. President shared with us many things he had learned about mission organization from Elder Foster and thoughts he had of some changes which could be implemented. It was so very interesting and I felt privileged to be part of this special meeting.
Since then, really since the beginning of this week, we have been having great things happening in our area, all of our past investigators have just kind of petered out, including Laura’s family, who we still visit every once in a while, but they aren’t really progressing at all, it is so hard to not try and just teach them more and more though, because of how close we have got to them and how much they have come to mean to us, but the more we get out in our area the better things get and people literally are just coming out of nowhere. We had a man show up at the church and ask when we have church, so we got his number and just taught him yesterday for the first time and put a baptismal date with him. He has a family too that we haven’t met yet we are hoping he will bring to church tomorrow, but if not we will meet them after. We have been getting into a lot of houses and finding receptive people, it is so interesting because I really felt like we have just contacted everywhere. I have been in this area longer than any of my other areas and now there are things just popping out I hadn’t seen before. It is awesome because we have really been struggling to get things going these last couple weeks. Yesterday it was 7:00pm and we only had one lesson and one new investigator, so we put a goal to both do ten contacts and finish the night with one more lesson and one more new investigator, at 9:05pm we both had done 14 contacts and hadn’t been received by a single person. So we were thinking about just going home and then I asked my companion to just contact this one last house, so we did and the lady came out and it started like she was just going turn out like all the other contacts we had done, but we started to solve some of her doubts and testify to her right there at the front gate and after about 5-10 minutes of talking and discussing things at the gate she let us in. We sat on her porch and taught her and two of her daughters, met her husband and had a great lesson and in the end we left them with 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and they seemed really excited to read. They can’t go to church tomorrow because they are traveling this weekend, but they said we could come back on Monday when they get back and they would go to church with us the next week. We have had so many things just like that happen to us lately, just miracle after miracle this last week, we even got into this super nice house, nicer than the average house in the states, with nice couches and a huge flat screen TV and everything, and taught a great lesson to a 16 year old guy that by the end of the lesson accepted an invitation to be baptized. Hopefully all the work can turn into people in church tomorrow, right now we should have one man in church for sure, and hopefully we can get a few more than that though.
So all in all it has been a great and really spiritually uplifting week, I hope everyone is doing great and everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, I almost forgot my biggest news, after that meeting with President on Thursday we broke out the Christmas decorations and went crazy, it was so much fun, and I even got to put the star on the tree, I pretty much did everything though, being the one that was the most eager and into doing it, but I had help, so we are all ready for Christmas here, only 5 more weeks! I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
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