It's so weird that Christmas is only 6 days away, it's kind of unreal. I did receive the two packages you sent and I had Elder Herald open them to see if the things were wrapped. He took out all the gifts that were wrapped and then we duct taped the boxes shut to remove the temptation of peeking at the unwrapped items. I know this week will be rough on productivity with mission gatherings and holidays and all that sort of stuff, but you only have two Christmas's on your mission so you might as well make the most of them, right?
The mission Christmas Conference for the south half of the mission is on Wednesday, Decmeber 21. I'm accompanying some members of the Zone for their musical number, and then Sister Mullen asked me to perform a piano solo. I'm kind of nervous because I haven't done a solo on my mission, and I only had 5 days notice to find and practice a piece. It's a medley of We Three Kings/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. I have the first two parts down but the last part is more challenging. So the rest of today and after district meeting tomorrow will be spent at the church with me frantically working on my musical number. It can't be as bad as last year though when the page turner for Elder Beck and I dropped half my music. (There are no page turns for this song.) It really wasn't that bad last year because it was just my music as the accompanist, not Elder Beck's music as the soloist. But I won't be able to hide behind anyone this year since I am the soloist.
So being a District Leader has been very interesting. The first reason it's been interesting is that we haven't had a normal District meeting yet. Week one was a Zone meeting, and this past week was Multi-Zone Conferences. So this Tuesday will be my first week doing training and accountability with my district. The second thing that makes it interesting is that my district is just the Zone Leaders, who are doing good so I'm not too worried about them, and the bike Elders that cover the same Ward as I do. So I haven't really been making a whole lot of district leader calls, but I think once we've had a meeting and discussed their investigators, I'll be much more likely to make nightly calls. There is definitely less stress being a District Leader. It's not that I'm working less but I am more focused on pure missionary work rather than administrative issues and quotas. I feel more connected and our planning is more effective than in my last area. This week we talked to 111 people on the street; more than any week of my mission, so I felt pretty good about that!
So our teaching pool is developing slowly. This week we only found one new investigator, but she is someone that we will definitely be able to work with for a while. She was baptized Christian a month ago and she is currently recovering from surgery that removed a brain tumor. Those two things are kind of related - her roommate got her into religion, and she knows that God is the one that helped her become cancer free. Things weren't looking good, and then they did the surgery and they were able to remove all of the cancerous tissue. She has a very strong testimony that God cares about her, and because she is new to religion she just wants to know anything and everything about God and the scriptures. It's a slow process, we've mostly talked about prophets and priesthood, which she accepts. We've also talked about Joseph Smith a little bit, but we haven't had the time to introduce the Book of Mormon yet so that's the plan for next time we meet with her.
We are also working with less-actives quite a bit. So that might not be the most effective finding tool we have since the Senior missionaries did that recently, but it helps us save miles by giving us lots of people to visit in a single area. I guess the little miracle for the week is that it actually worked. There was a name on our list in the neighborhood where we had an appointment. The appointment fell through, which was kind of sad because we had a team-up with us, but we had this name to go visit as a backup. We went by and she was super nice and let us in, but her first question was "How did you get this address?". Apparently she didn't request her records be moved, it just happened to have been sent here by some friend or priesthood leader. So this was someone the Senior missionaries had never made contact with, but she invited us in and we talked about her life and her experience with the church. We're going to go back to see her and we left her with a reading assignment and she's going to see if her boyfriend will come to Sacrament meeting with her on Christmas.
Things are going pretty well here, in the past week and a half, we've had 4 team-ups. Apparently Elder Herald only had 1 team-up the whole time he was being trained in this area. The Ward seems willing to work with us, so now we just need to get people for them to work with. Because we had team-ups, we were able to go on splits a couple times which really helps us get a lot more done. It also saves us miles if we plan things right. So I'm a little less worried about our miles now, but we have a lot of zone activities and meetings because of the holidays which will take some of our miles. We may have to get permission to just stay in our apartment for some of those evenings because we can't spare the miles to drive to the Stake Center in Menifee for the activities. I'd be sad to miss out on the activities, but I'd survive. Plus with some missionaries close to us, we could have a great Christmas Eve with Elder Brown and the Heaton's who live in our complex. We'll just see what happens.
From the West Side . . .
Elder Cornaby
So being a District Leader has been very interesting. The first reason it's been interesting is that we haven't had a normal District meeting yet. Week one was a Zone meeting, and this past week was Multi-Zone Conferences. So this Tuesday will be my first week doing training and accountability with my district. The second thing that makes it interesting is that my district is just the Zone Leaders, who are doing good so I'm not too worried about them, and the bike Elders that cover the same Ward as I do. So I haven't really been making a whole lot of district leader calls, but I think once we've had a meeting and discussed their investigators, I'll be much more likely to make nightly calls. There is definitely less stress being a District Leader. It's not that I'm working less but I am more focused on pure missionary work rather than administrative issues and quotas. I feel more connected and our planning is more effective than in my last area. This week we talked to 111 people on the street; more than any week of my mission, so I felt pretty good about that!
So our teaching pool is developing slowly. This week we only found one new investigator, but she is someone that we will definitely be able to work with for a while. She was baptized Christian a month ago and she is currently recovering from surgery that removed a brain tumor. Those two things are kind of related - her roommate got her into religion, and she knows that God is the one that helped her become cancer free. Things weren't looking good, and then they did the surgery and they were able to remove all of the cancerous tissue. She has a very strong testimony that God cares about her, and because she is new to religion she just wants to know anything and everything about God and the scriptures. It's a slow process, we've mostly talked about prophets and priesthood, which she accepts. We've also talked about Joseph Smith a little bit, but we haven't had the time to introduce the Book of Mormon yet so that's the plan for next time we meet with her.
We are also working with less-actives quite a bit. So that might not be the most effective finding tool we have since the Senior missionaries did that recently, but it helps us save miles by giving us lots of people to visit in a single area. I guess the little miracle for the week is that it actually worked. There was a name on our list in the neighborhood where we had an appointment. The appointment fell through, which was kind of sad because we had a team-up with us, but we had this name to go visit as a backup. We went by and she was super nice and let us in, but her first question was "How did you get this address?". Apparently she didn't request her records be moved, it just happened to have been sent here by some friend or priesthood leader. So this was someone the Senior missionaries had never made contact with, but she invited us in and we talked about her life and her experience with the church. We're going to go back to see her and we left her with a reading assignment and she's going to see if her boyfriend will come to Sacrament meeting with her on Christmas.
Things are going pretty well here, in the past week and a half, we've had 4 team-ups. Apparently Elder Herald only had 1 team-up the whole time he was being trained in this area. The Ward seems willing to work with us, so now we just need to get people for them to work with. Because we had team-ups, we were able to go on splits a couple times which really helps us get a lot more done. It also saves us miles if we plan things right. So I'm a little less worried about our miles now, but we have a lot of zone activities and meetings because of the holidays which will take some of our miles. We may have to get permission to just stay in our apartment for some of those evenings because we can't spare the miles to drive to the Stake Center in Menifee for the activities. I'd be sad to miss out on the activities, but I'd survive. Plus with some missionaries close to us, we could have a great Christmas Eve with Elder Brown and the Heaton's who live in our complex. We'll just see what happens.
From the West Side . . .
Elder Cornaby