Thanks for the news. That was crazy to see all of the advertisements that the Church put up in Melbourne. Very cool to see. I also love the thoughts that yall heard from Sister Arnold- I´m really trying to trust in the Spirit more here in the mission. We just had some pretty interesting changes here in the mission that are going to require that we really follow the Spirit more.
Now that I have your interested piqued (I´m not sure if that´s how you spell that word), I´ll go ahead and give you guys the news! Maybe it´s news that you already have, but we found out this past week that the missionary schedule and our key indicators for conversion have been changed!
This past Thursday we all gathered together in the mission office and watched a worldwide training from the missionary council- Elder Oaks, Elder Bednar, and Elder Andersen all sit on the council as well as the young women´s general president (Sister Oscarson?). They reviewed and discussed a training from this past year called "Teach Repentance, and Baptise Converts" and then announced changes to the mission schedule and key indicators.
The training was really awesome and I felt really impressed by a lot ot the thoughts they shared to improve my teaching as a missionary. Then to finish- we got hit with the news- our schedule now means that we leave the apartment by 10 AM each morning and have to schedule for ourselves when we are going to have comp study and language study during the day, and when we get back at night we don´t have any planning to do.
Where before we had an hour of preparation time at night if we got back at 9:00 PM- we now have from 9-9:30 to write in our journals and then have the option to go to bed at 9:30 or to finish preparations and go to bed at the usual 10:30 PM. It doesn´t seem like much but I have been a lot more consistent with my journal now haha. Also, we have a bunch more time on p-day because p-day now begins at 8 AM and goes until 6 PM. I really hope to be able to use these changes to prepare myself better and work more effectively.
As for our key indicators we are no longer reporting how many lessons we taught! Every week we only report 4 things- baptisms and confirmations, investigators with a baptismal date, number of investigators that attended to church, and the number of new investigators found. It was pretty weird to do weekly planning and only set goals in these four categories- but I really felt like it helped us to focus more in on the needs of our investigators.
With all the excitement with the changes, and the renewed focus- Elder Steenblik and I had a really great week. The biggest miracle we saw this week was with a former investigator that we found and were able to begin teaching again- Mario. Mario is a 96-year-old man from Paraguay. He is in incredibly good shape for his age- he can still walk although he uses a cane at times, and he can see almost perfectly- he just can´t see sufficiently to read.
We really focused in on trying to help Mario progress and we scheduled several times to visit with him just to read in the Book of Mormon. We also planned ahead to pick him up Sunday morning with a member that has a car. Miraculously- the member said that it was totally cool, and when we got there he was all ready to come to church! He had gotten ready that morning and was waiting for us with a big smile! The real cherry on top was when he said that he really loved the meetings!
It´s going to be interesting to see how things go moving forward. I´m excited to adjust to the new changes and help more people like Mario progress and be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ. I´m grateful for all of the love and support that I have from my family and friends. I know that Jesus is the Christ, and I encourage you to seek his hand in your lives every day.
Much love,
Elder Lambert
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| Elders Steenblik, Soberanas, Lambert, Atwood. |
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| Mario with Elder Steenblik. |
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