Transfer 3 Week 4: Destroying stuff, zone conference, other exciting missionary work, MLC tomorrow

 

Over this past week I have:

-Accidently ripped a full-size church pew out of the floor during zone conference. 

-Almost toppled a piano the same day by trying to move it

-Broke a Treadmill just this morning, simply by running on it

-Snapped multiple pens in half with just my thumb while stressing about things way to hard. 

 

It’s been fun. 

 

Zone conference was awesome, we received a lot of clarification and greater direction as to what we are and are not supposed to be doing, especially with Covid protocol. It’s nice that we can get a lot of clarity on the work here, especially when thanks to everyone coming from all sorts of missions all over the world, and the coming of a new mission president, the grey areas of things have been massive. We are really happy that we just have gotten newly modified leadership packets, with instructions adapted to Covid. They also are clear and concise and that makes our jobs so much easier. When we are told and figure out "what is our part" it becomes much clearer as to how to "act it well". This doesn't mean though that our roles are done adapting yet. It has recently been brought to our attention that our Facebook specialists in our zone need a little bit of a clarifying and narrowing of their responsibilities, as they have kind of been biting off way more than they can, or even really should, chew. They are amazing, and incredibly hard working and conscientious. With those characteristics though, when they are given such a massive umbrella topic as Facebook work, in can tend to make them feel and act as if they have to be everywhere, in every meeting, doing everything, when they really don't, and they actually need to spend less time on Facebook and more time in their area, doing actual missionary work. This isn't a criticism by any means, they are incredible, we just need to help them by better defining their role, and helping the zone take on some of the responsibilities and thought processes that they run through.

 

Regarding FB work, we are happy to see a several referrals come through from it over the last month, and we working on the Stake level to very soon here train up the ward leaders on the same stuff in which the missionaries were trained. We just had a live music devotional on the page which went south when broadcasting went kind of haywire due to technical difficulties. It’s all good though. 

 

On a spiritual note, this week has been punctuated by remembering the simple things. Including believing that this is the Lord's work, and that we are supposed to have joy in it.

It seems like a lot of our investigators are getting kind of slammed lately, some are getting beat up, others are getting crazy sick, one of them has their spouse dying, another one's did die. Reporting our area’s work in district council is ridiculous. It basically goes something like:

 

"So, this person got hospitalized-

and this person got beat up in the night by their boyfriend-

and this person had their spouse died, or so we think, she won't answer us any more

-but we found some new people, so that’s been good."

 

"Well, how are you finding new people?"

 

"Well they actually came to us, after deciding they need to come to Jesus after getting shot half a dozen times, so..." 

 

Oh yeah, and this one dude referred himself today saying that he was a former Satanist and is trying to get over some problems of leaving the occult. So Yeah. Says he wants to talk, so we scheduled a time for Wednesday. This city is crazy. 

 

Anyway, things have been going okay, I have been feeling really good about these next couple of weeks. We have our work cut out for us and are looking forward to teaching our missionaries the skills of goal setting and planning so they can actually accomplish what they already desire.  

 

Love you guys, 

Have a great week.

Elder Shill