Tuesday, August 27, 2013
8/27/2913 District Leader!
Hi everyone!
Transfer Calls came with a surprise this week - I'm going to be a District leader here in Toledo! For those who haven't served missions before, the mission areas are well organized with a number of zones inside a mission, and a number of districts inside each zone. These areas, of course, are led by leaders, and I'll be leading about 13 or so here in this district. The transfers are six weeks each, and after each there is changes in who's assigned where. My companion, Elder Gaerlan from Davao, will be transferred to open an area while training (I guess he might have been prepared by his experience here) and I'm going to be finishing up the training of Elder Painchoud (I was told it was pronounced Pen-show - don't tell him this, but French people don't know how to spell or sound stuff out :P ) I always thought of being a District Leader and training at the same time was something for Zone Leaders stepping down! But I know that the Lord has prepared a way for me to accomplish this thing which he has commanded me(1Nephi 3:7) because I've felt the spirit preparing and teaching me for this position, especially in the last few weeks.
Another thing I've been thinking about is extending my mission, even if for only a transfer or two. I've had a desire to do that for pretty much my whole life - I always wondered why it got shortened to 2 years, and I specifically remember when I saw "Other Side of Heaven", I remember hoping that something like that would happen with my mission. The reason it's been a bit more on my mind lately is that I found out that the date for going home has been moved to late April, and I really want to extend. I'm not sure if this desire is just me or the spirit, I'm not sure how to draw the line between those two yet. I feel that it would be a lot better to spend that transfer serving the Lord here in the mission.
I've got so many things running through my head right now that I need to find about and plan now that I'm about to be the District Leader here - I'm going to have to use that to do list in the back of my planner for all the things that need to be done and planned. I want to be as organized and clear as possible with planning things, and I want to do everything the way it's supposed to be done... I know I can't do it perfect, but I'm still just gonna do my best and leave the rest up to the Lord.
I'll write more next week with some more information on how Toledo District is doing!
A fellow-servant of the Lord,
~Elder Dallin Carlson
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
8/20/2013 Mission Life as Always, Just Saving Souls as Usual
mission life as always, just saving souls as usual
Hey Everyone!
with the baptisms we had the other week where there was 4 baptisms, we had three families completed - 1.a husband of a returning less-active 2./3.husband and wife 3. last child of a member family. That was a cool observation from our branch president. The next week, we had a woman baptized whose husband is taking the lessons! They are on fire with the spirit and the Gospel, inviting their friends and families to hear the message, because they have complete confidence in the power and truth of the message. It's cool to see them coming to Toledo Sacrament meetings; with how they live farther away it should be harder, but their faith and commitment is greater than the obstacles. This is why that area, Casoy, is now my favorite area in my mission.
one of our other investigators, Nap-john, really wants to get baptized, but the problems are that he's not sure about if he's received an answer that the church is true; he's also not fully active (misses church every once in awhile despite living down the road a ways); and he isn't reading the Book of Mormon at all recently. He needs to be fully active and reading daily if he intends to endure to the end - in our teaching to him, I made sure to not just say that he needs that to be baptized, but I told him he needed to do that to the end of this life, which I then and there committed him to do for the rest of his life.
We also have a family, Bacasmas, who is returning to activity after we taught them about true repentance and how we have to abandon the sin as explained in Mosiah 4:10 and then after their first time back we taught them about accountability with the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-29. It was really good to drive the point home that they need to not just have good excuses or "just try" - they need to fulfill covenants and keep commandments. And since then, they've been doing just that, and we've finally been able to teach them as a family - twice now. That hasn't happened at all in the time that Elder Gaerlan has been assigned here until now. There's a investigator that hasn't been coming to church or be taught for months, but now he's doing both! It seems to mainly be because of his..'partner' ... one of the girls in the Bacasmas family who's pregnant with his child. But the good thing is that they've finally gotten over their shyness and now they're coming to church and being taught the lessons by us!
that's about it for stuff going on here! Hope all is going well there!
~Elder Dallin Carlson
8/06/2013 Mga Bunyag! (the baptism)
kamusta tanan!
We now have 4 people who are going to be baptized then including the child of record from Casoy as well. But I sort of wonder if our district leader is looking for quoted answers like quoting the pamphlet and stuff like that - that's how he tends to teach in district meeting (taught repentance- it was straight out of the pamphlet). And I'm not sure how a slight confusion about the Godhead (saying lord in her prayer and not able to explain exactly how they're one when he whipped out the scripture in Matthew) keeps her from baptism - I'll find out on Saturday during Zone Interviews because I couldn't find anything related to that in D&C 20:37. I think we'll start teaching them individually maybe. or possibly just those two that have had their date pushed back. I'm just really confused now on how perfect their understanding and stuff has to be in order to be baptized.
On a brighter note, our kuyog/unofficial branch missionary, Lorenzo, has been continuing to go with us every day, thereby enabling us to teach the families while their husbands are at work all day. We would take the other kuyog-Ricky-but he's trying to take care of stuff for work and whatnot so we're going with Lorenzo daily. Without him we'd be struggling to teach people; especially with Zone Training meeting on Thursday and Zone Interview workshops on Friday and interviews on Saturday. So to make up for that we've been trying to teach as many people and help as many souls as possible the last few days to make up for the rest of the week because we'll be in meetings
Anyways I'm super glad that I've found the reason we have key indicators - it's to indicate how we've been helping souls - when people say not to focus on the numbers they just mean don't lose the focus on the people/souls. We do need to worry about how effective we're being with our time so we can help more people towards salvation; we just need to make sure that we're teaching people not lessons and Finding the Elect and not just doing FTEs.
I hope we can fulfill our responsibilities and keep the correct focus on getting ourselves and others to the Celestial Kingdom.
for now,
og kugihan nga misyonaryo,
Elder Dallin Carlson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)