Ola todo mundo!
Goodness gracious, I can not believe that it has already been one whole transfer out in the field. It just flew by so fast. Even for being in the MTC for the same amount of time felt much much longer than this. I think I'm beginning to see how everyone says that the 2 years of mission service just fly by. The days truly feel like weeks and the weeks most definitely feel like days.
Even though time has flown by that doesn't change the fact that things have gotten very difficult, for one reason or another. Perhaps the biggest struggle is the struggle to find people to teach. With most of our teaching pool already baptized, and the rest of the people not very interested anymore, it has been a struggle to find new investigators. When we had a trainer/trainee meeting I talked to President Weston about it. I expressed to him that finding was tough and he said something pretty much to the effect of well of course Elder that is why it is called missionary WORK. we then talked about how we had been finding and then how I told him we had been trying to avoid tracting because of it is not super effective. He then said something that really changed the game I thought for me. He said that trying to avoid tracting was not a fulfillment of your purpose as a missionary. He said as a representative of Jesus Christ, you are supposed to go out as Christ did, sharing the gospel to everyone, not just the ones that came to him or were referred to you. Going door to door and house to house is what the Savior did and taught when he said, "Go ye therefore, and teach ALL". Our President told us that we have to do at least one hour of finding a week, and well what President says is inspire and what we need to do.
With that has come added discouragement as well. Door after door of refusals can take a toll on someone's drive and energy. Basically the way my companion and I have been doing things is we schedule an appointment, have several backups in line, and even several lessactives to try and see, that way if something falls through we have a good list of people we can see. Sometimes though, everything falls through. Those times can be the worst and the biggest traps for laziness and ineffectiveness. You just have to keep working, and so when eveything that we could possibly do falls through, we then switch our focus to finding. Of the many and many doors we have tried we have only gotten 2 potential investigators and placed one Book of Mormon, and both of the potentials said that they were no longer interested when we came back at the time they asked us to. I remember after a particularly rough day just feeling super down. I felt that everything was working against us and I was slowly loosing the drive I had for the day, and it was only
4 o'clock in the afternoon. I had just lost all motivation to do anything because everything had fallen through, and no one was receptive to the message. My companion and I then read several scriptures that I had read before and understood, but really helped to turn the day around. We read Alma 26: 27 which says,
"Now when
our hearts were
depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success."
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