So here's the scuttlebutt. We had a really good week this week. A lot of good lessons learned.
We had interviews with President Brum earlier this week which turned out really well. I was the very last to be interviewed by him, since we live relatively close to the chapel where he was giving interviews. Gonna be honest, he intimidates me a little bit. I think I already mentioned that he was a very high ranking official in the military, in while still be a very loving man, very dedicated to the gospel, he approaches things very much procedurally. Which is good for me, I can always use more structure because my desires can me somewhat whimsical. Oh, and by the way, I decided that I want to be an author now.
Anyways, back to my account of the interview. I was a little bit nervous going into it in the first place. And it didn't help that when we were waiting for the bus to go to the chapel a bird decided to green-and-white diarrhea on my clothes. Talk about nerve-racking. I don't think President noticed, because he didn't say anything.
My interview was good, but I did get a bit of a lecture from Pres about numbers. His vision is for every mission companionship to have roughly 30 lessons a week with 2 baptisms every month, which is definitely do-able, but Elder Rock and I have somewhat been falling short. President gave me a really good talk about the importance of measuring our effectiveness by our numbers, and it actually really helped in our work this week. Previously I had been somewhat skeptical about getting so caught up in numbers, because I felt like you seem to lose the people in the information. But it's pretty much the opposite. When you keep accurate information you don't lose people and you find more.
It's really interesting how quickly the numbers we set as goals turn into people. It is a desire to increase your numbers when you ask to enter a home to share a message, but you end up leaving with a new friend that you shared the gospel with. It sounds dumb, but I had a realization this week that we don't just do contacts for the sake of contacts. We do contacts for lessons. And we don't just have lessons just to hear ourselves talk. You have to teach clearly and simply so that people understand. We teach lessons to help people set baptismal dates. A lot of questions seemed to come together today.
It's raining like the dickens outside right now, good heavens. It's good, too, because it has been a while since we have had some good rain.
So I am going to hit my year mark this week. Elder Rock and I are going to wake up a bit early on that day and make a huge American breakfast. It's going to be delightful.
We found some really good people this week that we are teaching. One of them is named Chaieny, and I could totally see her getting baptized. She is very active in the Catholic church, and at one time was actually training to become a nun, but felt very distinctly that she needed to leave the convent. I think it was perfect inspiration that we found her this week after having had a training with President Brum, because everything that he taught was exactly the things that we needed to apply when teaching her. Until this week I never realized how gratifying it is to really explain things clearly and simply for others.
The language is doing really well, I just need to work on comprehension and getting rid of my accent.
That's my beef for this week, fam. Love you much!
Jacko
