Tuesday, August 5, 2014

8-4-14 President's Weekly Letter

Dear Elders and Sisters,

I am very pleased with some trends that are happening in the mission. Over the past two months we have seen a steady increase in new investigators and investigators with baptismal dates. These are two key areas that need to improve if we are to accomplish our goal of 60 baptisms per month. Many of you have mentioned in your letters that you have been praying and pondering about what you personally can do to help reach this goal. Thanks for your faith and prayers and for your diligent work. In order to improve, we need to do some things differently: if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting.

We have designated this week as a focused week of finding new investigators. You were each given an invitation to study chapter nine of PMG during the training that I conducted during interviews. I hope that by now we have already spent some time considering methods that inspired us. Perhaps we had forgotten about them or in the past had overlooked them, didn’t particularly like them, or didn't feel very confident about them. We must resist the temptation to just say “well...that’s just the way I am” (see Elder Donald Halstrom’s talk in the April General Conference). Let us plead with our Father in Heaven for increased capacity to do what we need to do in order to find those whom He has prepared. It is not so much about Him putting them in our path because He has already done so and they are there. It is about us following the Spirit and doing what we need to in order to find them and invite them. We are the hunters and the fisherman that the Lord was talking about in Jeremiah 16:16.

Let us also help each other this week. It is our desire that EACH companionship in the mission share in this great harvest. As districts and zones, let us watch over one another and give of ourselves to those who may need a helping hand. We hope and pray, as a result of our faith and works this week, that EVERY companionship will have additional people to teach and work with. Let us do all that we can to ensure that NO companionship is left behind as we go forth this week.

I will close today with a quote from one of your letters from last week:
This week I had a really cool experience. There was one morning in personal study when I shared about Christ going out to the fisherman and telling them to throw their nets back in the water even though they hadn't caught anything all day. I shared with [my companion] how this was just like contacting on the streets. At night, when we have been rejected all day, and there is that last person that on the way home that you don't really want to talk to because you’re tired, and just tired of being rejected. Well the day that I shared that, we were riding home and we had just gotten out of a rough lesson and were headed home. I was tired and ready to go to bed. We got to a light and I was sitting there, and with a few seconds left a lady and her child pulled up in front of me on their bikes. I wasn't going to talk to them but I knew I needed to, so I just pulled up and said hello and this lady was awesome. She had so much interest and I ended up talking to her for about fifteen minutes and she wanted to come to church and just is so prepared! …I ended up having that super cool experience because I acted on what I had learned.”
Let’s call down the powers of heaven this week!

President Blickenstaff
Mentor of Champions






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