Pretty good week this week! I am currently somewhere near Yorkton Saskatchewan on the highway en-route to Saskatoon for an exchange. I am typing this on a Bluetooth keyboard connected to my I-Pad. Pretty crazy what technology can do these days.
Anyways Monday was a good day for us! We taught a lesson to our baptismal date Emmanuel with Bishop Smith. It was great! The lesso went well and Bishop did great! DOn't get too excited though, he lunched us on Wednesday and we have not had contact since. It blows my mind how people just don't talk to others. They don't tell you their concerns or if they are busy, they just cut contact and ignore you. It seems like a very shortsighted thing to do. You might be able to avoid the missionaries because of caller ID and not answering your door but that doesn't work in life. I think some people are in for a very rude awakening in the real world.
Tuesday was District Meeting and after that we met with President Craig to discuss some things, particularly training for MLC on Thursday. We were assigned to train on Maintaining baptismal dates. That is what we trained on last time but it is still on the training plan this transfer so we took a different angle at it this time. The rest of the day consisted of getting lunched and tracting. I don't think I will ever enjoy getting lunched. I try to have the view of "come what may and Love it" but it is like losing, it hurts every time haha.
Wednesday we did service for a man in the ward named Brother Ip. He is from Hong Kong and he is key going forward! We power reared his lawn and helped him build a little garden ledge. They also fed us a nice lunch. We were rushed though because we had a lesson. That night we taught a black lady named Sylvy. We took Brother Kinnear and the lesson was interesting. In the Book of Mormon we learn that the Jews are blind be use they Look beyond the mark. In the best way possible I think some African immigrants are a bit blinded to the gospel because they don't look far enough. They love Jesus so much that nothing else matters. Which in a sense is true but by accepting everything we say they really don't accept any of it. They believe in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and the restoration as true but they somehow miss the connection that because of this they need to act. They just g on about grace without doing anything differently. If repentance is change then these people are hard to help repent. It is interesting how the adversary works in different ways according to where that are at. Sad because they probably are "happy" at their church and all but they are stuck in their ways and because of that will not progress toward true conversion..
Thursday we had MLC and an exchange with the Brandn ZL's. As I mentioned we had trained on this topic before. Last time we made a document with 5 things hat improve maintaining of baptismal dates. We focussed on how to effectively leave commitments at the end of your first lesson. WE had some super interning statistics that I came up with about dates dropping. Something like 70% of new baptismal dates are dropped within the first 7 days. If you can get back in that 2nd and 3rd times then more than likely you will see them progress. So anyways we trained on effectively setting a return appointment and informing them of expectation so there are no surprises. (Things like church, scriptures, Prayer, Bringing members in the future, needing to meet 2-3 a week before baptism). Since then we have seen a better retention in the first 7 days but an increased drop of dates after day #7. So this time we trained on the next stage of it, being follow up and effective daily contact. We did not talk for that long but then we demonstrated part of the daily planning session where we focussed on the investigators we had left commitments with. We then demonstrated a follow up phone-call. I thin teaching others how to do it I easier than actually doing it. Te rest of the day was spent finding. We found some good potential investigators!
Friday was a great day. We had a lesson set with this Chinese man at the church. I would say that when people agree to meet you at the church or anywhere the % of time they show up is less than 20. But Yong showed and we taught him about God. He speaks decent English! I think he will get baptized, he is so happy to be in a place where he can learn about God because obviously in China that was a big No no.
Saturday we did some service for possibly the best members in the mission. The Demarchis are a couple from South America. They are hilarious and feed us every Sunday. Anyways we did some service and they fed us. We the. Did some home teaching and some finding. We met a bunch of Seventh-Day Adventiststhat day. It was weird, I had never met any in Winnipeg but that day we found multiple groups of them.
Sunday we had a joint Dalhousie-Waverley Sacrament because of thee Youth conference which was here all weekend. It felt like a ward back home because there was 216 people there. Yong came to church and liked it! Brother Ip was so good as a member fellowshipper!
This coming week we have exchanges and 2one Conferences. 1 in Stoon and 1 in Regina! Lots of driving!
Have a good week!
Love
Elder Stewart
(Sorry for the terrible grammar and scattered thoughts, I have typed this n chunks while on the bumpiest roads in North America.)
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