Last week of March!!

Hola mama,

 

This week was a little slow to tell the truth. We weren't able to meet with many of the people that had been to church the week before, but we did find some new people. There were some really exciting things that did happen this week.

Thursday we had a special leadership training meeting for the mission. Brother Donaldson who was the Mission President of the District 2, and Brother Jarman who works at the MTC came to the mission to train us on some things. What they taught changes the way we teach completely. To start out the meeting, they both talked about the doctrine of Christ. I learned so much about what they talked about. Afterwards, they taught us how to plan more effectively. I learned from this meeting that Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith on September 21st to tell him about the Book of Mormon. That day is significant, because it is called the first day of Fall, or the first day of the harvest. When you learn more and more about the history of the church, you come to find out that there was no way that Joseph Smith could have made it up.

Then came the big change. Normally it takes us about 30-40 minutes to teach the Restoration. Brother Donaldson taught us how to do it in 7 minutes. At first I was thinking that was crazy, but he showed us how he did it. To teach this way, you use the restoration pamphlet. He gave one pamphlet to the person he was teaching, and he also had one in his hand. They looked at the first picture and he asked, "What do you see?" Then he asked, "What thoughts do you have about this picture." He continued to do that through out the whole pamphlet, but he would stop occasionally to say one to two sentences about what they were reading. They also read a lot from the pamphlet. They finished in about 7 minutes. The reason why we teach this way, is because the missionary department is come to find out that the person who does the most talking in a lesson learns the most. So we have the other person read and we ask lots of questions. Also, we don't want to take up a lot of time at investigators' houses, so we teach short powerful lessons so they will want to have us back. It is a very different way of teaching, and it is going to take a lot of practice.

We had to show this teaching method to our zones the next day, and Brother Donaldson asked us to have miracles happen so that we would have evidence of this new teaching method. So that night I was on an exchange with a district leader that had also been to the meeting, and we set out to have a miracle. We only had about a half hour to find someone to teach, but we had a lot of faith in that moment knowing that we needed to see a miracle. We went to go knock when my temporary companion took a phone call. I stood there praying to know where to go, and I saw a man walking down the street on the opposite side from where we were standing. I felt like he was the one we needed to teach. All of a sudden he crossed the street and came walking right towards us. I was able to contact him, and we ended up teaching him and his friend who both felt the spirit strongly while we taught them. It was the miracle that we needed.

This new teaching method is hard, and my companion and I feel like we are new missionaries again learning how to teach. It is exciting, but it will take a lot of practice and repetition.

That was the exciting part of this week. I can't believe that March is over. The mission is going by way to fast, but that means that I am enjoying it. I am excited to go home, but I am not excited at all of not being a missionary anymore. It is too great. I have loved it. I am really excited for general conference next week, and I hope y'all enjoy it! Have a great week!

Love, Kyle