Well oh well, look what the wind blew in. Hello family! How are you all doing? It sounds like you are doing good. That is what I like to here. I'm glad that you have written me.
So I have been thinking that the time here goes lightning fast. I am getting freaked out about what I'm going to do when my time is up. Because the year has already dwindled in unbelief. And all I've heard from RM's is that the second year dwindles in unbelief even faster.
I am feeling a bit down because I lost the first memory card about 2 months ago. But I wasn't too worried about it because before I lost it, I had saved all my pictures. I looked at my USB and a lot of them aren't saved for some reason, so that kind of made me sad, but I have all those pics I sent to you all, so try not to lose any of them.
We are teaching one right now. They are really cool. The guy is already a member and was baptized in Guatemala. He ended up getting into drugs and alcohol but is trying to clean up. We had been talking to them about marriage for about 2 weeks now and at an appointment we had with them last week, we just went in to the appointment with a goal of leaving them with a marriage date. Well, I am 20 years old and don't have too much experience with matters like these because well....I have never had a wife or family. We had a little prepared, and I wasn't too sure of how we were going to go about challenging them for their marriage. We sang the hymn, had a prayer, and my companion and I just opened our mouths and shared the scriptures we had planned. We felt an INCREDIBLE spirit and then we challenged them to accept a specific date and the lady finally said it would be OK. She was completely against the idea of marriage, so that was a huge change that we didn't do, the spirit did it. It was a neat experience to be made instruments in the hands of the Lord. In August, they decided on the marriage. They already have kids and have been together for like 9 years. We just talked about the consicuences of marriage, and the consecuences of just staying together without marriage and helped them realized they need to get married if they want to be blesed.
We also had a neat experience re-activating a guy this week that we found. He had become bitter and offended against the church because his house was sinking into the earth and the bishopric didn't get a service project organized. His house ended up sinking in completely. We just mostly listened to him and shared with him scripts about Jesus Christ's example in adversity and what he did when things weren't fair (1 Nephi 19:9 THIS IS A BEATUIFUL SCRIPTURE). Because he had plenty of unfair things happen to him. But we didn't tell him "Go back to church." We let the spirit do that part, and after the lesson, he's like, I think I'll go back this Sunday. And he did! I have learned that inactive members already know that they need to go back to church. Bombarding them with "go back to church" doesn't really accomplish too much. If the spirit whispers it to them, they will respond much better. We just listened to him, shared a message, and expressed our gratitude and love for the church and him, and it worked!
Taking offense is pointless. So many people do it here. When we visit inactives, it boils down to this: so-and-so said this, and I didn't like it. Or so-and-so did this. So I stopped going because I knew so-and-so would be there at church. We don't get along. We always ask them if they made the baptizmal covenant with so-and-so and they have nothing to say back to that.
Me and my comp. made some EXCELLENT plans for our investigators. We realized that the BOM is one of the most, if not our most powerful tool in the conversion process, so we listed all our investigators on my handy duct tape board, listed their challenges, and then listed a chapter or story from the BOM that correlates with their challenge. It will work like a charm. It has worked so far.
Elder Goodwin
So I have been thinking that the time here goes lightning fast. I am getting freaked out about what I'm going to do when my time is up. Because the year has already dwindled in unbelief. And all I've heard from RM's is that the second year dwindles in unbelief even faster.
I am feeling a bit down because I lost the first memory card about 2 months ago. But I wasn't too worried about it because before I lost it, I had saved all my pictures. I looked at my USB and a lot of them aren't saved for some reason, so that kind of made me sad, but I have all those pics I sent to you all, so try not to lose any of them.
We are teaching one right now. They are really cool. The guy is already a member and was baptized in Guatemala. He ended up getting into drugs and alcohol but is trying to clean up. We had been talking to them about marriage for about 2 weeks now and at an appointment we had with them last week, we just went in to the appointment with a goal of leaving them with a marriage date. Well, I am 20 years old and don't have too much experience with matters like these because well....I have never had a wife or family. We had a little prepared, and I wasn't too sure of how we were going to go about challenging them for their marriage. We sang the hymn, had a prayer, and my companion and I just opened our mouths and shared the scriptures we had planned. We felt an INCREDIBLE spirit and then we challenged them to accept a specific date and the lady finally said it would be OK. She was completely against the idea of marriage, so that was a huge change that we didn't do, the spirit did it. It was a neat experience to be made instruments in the hands of the Lord. In August, they decided on the marriage. They already have kids and have been together for like 9 years. We just talked about the consicuences of marriage, and the consecuences of just staying together without marriage and helped them realized they need to get married if they want to be blesed.
We also had a neat experience re-activating a guy this week that we found. He had become bitter and offended against the church because his house was sinking into the earth and the bishopric didn't get a service project organized. His house ended up sinking in completely. We just mostly listened to him and shared with him scripts about Jesus Christ's example in adversity and what he did when things weren't fair (1 Nephi 19:9 THIS IS A BEATUIFUL SCRIPTURE). Because he had plenty of unfair things happen to him. But we didn't tell him "Go back to church." We let the spirit do that part, and after the lesson, he's like, I think I'll go back this Sunday. And he did! I have learned that inactive members already know that they need to go back to church. Bombarding them with "go back to church" doesn't really accomplish too much. If the spirit whispers it to them, they will respond much better. We just listened to him, shared a message, and expressed our gratitude and love for the church and him, and it worked!
Taking offense is pointless. So many people do it here. When we visit inactives, it boils down to this: so-and-so said this, and I didn't like it. Or so-and-so did this. So I stopped going because I knew so-and-so would be there at church. We don't get along. We always ask them if they made the baptizmal covenant with so-and-so and they have nothing to say back to that.
Me and my comp. made some EXCELLENT plans for our investigators. We realized that the BOM is one of the most, if not our most powerful tool in the conversion process, so we listed all our investigators on my handy duct tape board, listed their challenges, and then listed a chapter or story from the BOM that correlates with their challenge. It will work like a charm. It has worked so far.
Elder Goodwin
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