So, Sunday was so great! The guy who spoke to us.. I cannot remember his name, but it was super weird! He talked to us about study journals and really trying to learn how the spirit talks to us and how we receive personal revelation and then acting on those promptings. He told us a bunch of stories from when he was a mission president, and how he had a lot of missionaries who kept study journals and they had learned how to recognize the spirit, and that when the spirit would tell them to go down a random dirt path in the middle of nowhere, there was a reason. Or if they were to go tracking in a neighborhood where no one was home, and right when they were leaving, someone came home from a jog and told them that she was ready to be baptized. Some crazy awesome stories, and I have really been trying to focus on how the spirit talks to me and how I receive personal revelation. I have been trying to act on those promptings as much as I can. Especially when teaching. It is amazing when we are teaching a lesson and then a thought pops into my head to say something that doesn't really have to do with what we are talking to them about, and when I say it, they light up and they really seem to understand what we are saying.
Tuesday's devotional was really amazing too. We had a member from the 70 talk to us, and he gave such a powerful talk. He told us that we need to be focusing more on the members, and the recent converts, and we need to make the Temple the end goal. Not just baptism. We need to still teach the converts and make sure that we stay in communication with them so that they feel like they are loved, and they feel like they made the right choice joining the church. A lot of inactive members are inactive because they haven't been welcomed into their wards, or the missionaries had stopped teaching them once they got baptized. This didn't really make sense to me, how missionaries could do this, but it made me want to go to the Philippines, find those less active members, and help bring them back, and hopefully bring them to the temple!
We hosted on Wednesday again, and that was really awesome! There were a lot of stateside missionaries that day, and whats funny is all those missionaries who came in this last week leave before we do. Hosting has helped me realize how far I have come since I got here.. Even if it has only been 6ish weeks. As annoying as the MTC can be, I have come to really be grateful for the MTC and the chance that I have had to learn as much as I have learned here. Being thrown out into the field, I feel that I would not have learned as much as I have learned here as quickly as I have.
We skyped with members in the Philippines on Thursday... That was so scary. My companion and I had so many blanks, that it seems that there were more pauses than actual conversing. Haha. Oh so fun!.. :P I really learned a lot from that though. Especially after talking to our teacher. He told us that it is totally normal for that to happen, and that we need to be ok with silence, and that we need to slow down, and really think about what we need/want to say, and it's ok if we aren't talking as fast as the natives at first. That will come with time. As long as we can somewhat understand what is being said, and we can somewhat tell the people what we are thinking, then we have succeeded. That helped a lot.
I can't believe that I only have 1 more full week here! Time is really flying, and I am going to be taking full advantage of this week, to make sure that I can learn as much as I can, so that when I get to the field, I don't have any regrets. ^.^
The gospel is true. EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!
Stay True,
Elder Walstad
My district in class
No comments:
Post a Comment