Good morning! This week was not exactly earth shattering, but we
had some good stuff happen, and a couple of miracles so obvious that I'd
have to be completely blind to miss them. We've been doing a lot to
prepare for Eddy and Marlon to be baptized, working with the ward and
such. This time, it's going to happen and nothing can stop us!
On
Tuesday morning for excercise we got to do my all-time favorite sport!
We went hiking! Even though there was snow further up the trail as the
elevation rose, the weather last week was nice enough that we decided it
would be ok to check out this trail we stumbled upon last week. It was a
really fun hour an a half, and we covered about four miles during that
time. Not a bad pace at all. Then we had a nice lesson with Eddy and
Marlon and planned some details for the baptism.
So,
on Wednesdays, Elder Valladares has to go to ZLC (zone leadership
council), which is supposed to last an hour. I usually practice piano
during that, since it's practically my only chance to play uninterrupted
for any length of time. Well, this week, I played piano for an hour
straight and they still weren't done. Of course after a solid hour my
fingers start to hurt, so I just sat on the choir chairs and took a nap.
A whole hour later, they finally finished. I asked my companion what
had taken them so long, and he said that he had an argument with the
zone leaders about... Drumroll please... Numbers. I probably haven't
mentioned this in my emails before, but that has become a constantly
recurring problem. The sisters in our district, of course being
encouraged by the zone leaders, are becoming extremely numbers focused,
and they get mad at us when we don't follow along. The most common
source of tension involves this one member named Marco. He loves going
out with missionaries, and the sisters (keep in mind these are the same
sisters who were in my area before I got here) have a habit of bringing
him to all the lessons they have in a given afternoon, so he'll just be
with them for four hours and go to three or four lessons. They do this
because "it's better to have a member at lessons than to not have one."
But the problem is, Marco isn't an asset to the lesson 100% of the time.
In fact, in some lessons we had him at, he's completely derailed the
lesson and made the whole thing a waste of time. In others, it's been
really good we had him there. My point is, you can't just bring any
member to any investigator and assume it's going to make the lesson into
a goldmine, but the sisters do just that! And now Marco is getting
offended because we don't take him out as much as the sisters do. This
is like watching a replay of my transfer with Elder Shin, but from the
outside. We did exactly what the sisters did: teach 10-15 minute lessons
with a member there, so that we could proudly report our 20 "withs" and
20 "La/Rc" lessons a week, even though we taught almost no doctrine and
the member was just a prop. I don't know if you remember as well as I
do what happened that transfer, but it's easy to sum up. NOTHING.
Literally the only good we did that transfer was Selena Guerrero, and
she would have progressed no matter what we did.
The
real source of this problem, I think, is an old idea that was passed
down to this mission by previous mission presidents: that a lesson is
worthless unless a member is there. Back with President Hansen we used
to only count lessons with members, even less active lessons (which is
totally against what PMG says, by the way). So most of the mission got a
habit of bringing any member they could get, rather than spending the
time and effort to get each investigator and less active a true
fellowshipper. If I were a mission president, I think instead of saying
"you have to have a member at every lesson" like President Hansen, I
would say, "you have to have a good fellowshipper for each person you
teach" and the problem with having members at lessons would solve
itself. That's treating the cause instead of the symptoms. As proof,
look at the case of Marlon and Eddy. The Hernandez family cares so much
they unfailingly offer their home for lessons, so we've never struggled
to have a member at those lessons. The member with part came by itself
because they had a good fellow shipping family who cares about them.
That's the real way to do it, not just bringing the same member to every
lesson you have that day regardless of whether he or she makes a good
fellowshipper for the investigators.
Ok, my
rant is over. On Thursday we had a great lesson with Julio and Keyshla,
and on a side note, we actually brought Marco to this one. That's
because he's their fellow-shipper. We picked him for that because he
lives just a floor above them and is able to easily contact them to
invite them to activities and things. Anyway, we started over with the
lessons and taught just the first three points of the Restoration. Since
we have plenty of time, we wanted to break the lessons up a bit and
dive more deeply into them to make sure Julio and Keyshla get a good
understanding of the doctrine. It worked beautifully, and we had a great
discussion about prophets in ancient times and their modern day
counterparts. Then Elder Valladares had to go to a baptismal interview
for the zone leaders, so I played piano a bit more and practiced for the
zone meeting on Friday.
Zone meeting was
really good, and we had some interesting trainings. The zone leaders did
a cool object lesson with a lamp representing the light of Christ, and
the sister training leaders gave an awesome training about finding the
elect. During that, Sister Platt said something I want to put on my
wall. It was very witty. She said, speaking about the people who aren't
ready yet to progress, "If we spend all of our time herding cats, we
won't have any time to herd the sheep." I though that summed up the
training quite nicely. The other fun thing that happened on Friday was
during lunch, we got tracted into by a pair of Jehova's Witnesses
(J-dubs). They ran off like scared rabbits after giving us a pamphlet,
which I did end up reading. Since the first time a J-dub knocked on our
door back in Rose Park, I decided I'd always read whatever they leave
simply out of respect. But this time I noticed a pattern between the
stuff in this booklet and the last few I've read. The people that write
these things have this attitude toward their readers that I don't like,
cause it's really condescending. They present simple messages straight
from the bible, things that pretty much every Christian person will know
already, and then act like they just changed your world cause there was
no way you knew what they just told you. Cause they're just so much
wiser than the rest of us, being the only ones that can interpret the
Bible correctly. I mean, every pamphlet has an advertisement on the back
for a book called "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" For
goodness sake, have some respect for the rest of us! It's exactly the
attitude that PMG specifically warns us not to have. We are not supposed
to tear down others' faith, just build it by adding the power of modern
revelation. It drives me nuts that people actually confuse J-dub
missionaries with us...
Saturday was pretty
busy, with a lesson followed by a correlation followed by dinner
followed by another lesson. We went through a little more of the
restoration with Julio and Keyshla, and I had to laugh because we
stopped just before teaching the part about the first vision, so it was
kind of like a cliff hanger. "The world was in darkness, without having
the light of revelation, and then... That's the next lesson! See you at
church tomorrow!" That was pretty much what we did, and it was
hilarious. They did come to church, and show no signs of stopping there.
They've become our constants at church every Sunday.
This
Saturday is Eddy and Marlons' baptism, and I'm psyched! They're so
solid, I can't even imagine them going less active. And the ward is
excited too, since there hasn't been a baptism there since before I
started my mission. I'll take lots of pictures!
Love,
Spencer
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