Learning to Teach

As much as I loved finding new people to teach the gospel to I think that my favorite people to teach were the Less Active members. Less Active Member are individuals who have been baptized and for some reason or another have stopped coming to church. They have had the full truth, that burning in their souls but have somehow forgotten and have strayed from the path. Then sometimes these individuals are put into this category because they haven’t been to church in a while. Sometimes they are too old to come or circumstances prohibit them from coming.  

While I was still very new to the mission and still not speaking any German we started visiting this lovely Less Active sister. She lived in a nursing home and needed help doing everything. She didn’t have many visitors just us and a select few sisters from the ward. There were some days when we came and should wouldn’t recognize us other times we would come and she would know exactly what was going on. She was lovely and I enjoyed visiting her.

My very wise companion saw these appointments as an opportunity to help me better my German and my teaching skills. After our first few visits Sister Christopher suggested that I start sharing the message when we would visit this Sister. Scared to death because I could hardly formulate two sentences in German let alone put together a full thought. Once again my very wise companion had a plan. We had these photos in our apartment that correlated with Bible stories – example: a photo of the Ark and Noah. I was to pick a photo and then share that story and bear testimony of the principle taught in the story.

As we arrived the first day after being given the assignment to lead the lesson I was sweating before we even entered the building. Terrified that I wouldn’t be able to express what I wanted to say. I had chosen to go with the story of Peter on the Water. One of my favorite stories that I had, had personal experience with so if nothing else I had passion for the topic.

The lesson went well. I had to turn to Sister Christopher anytime I wanted to stray from my written lesson plan but all in all it was good.  Week after week we would go and I would give a message with Sister Christopher there, always believing that I could do it. I finally go to the point where I could come with just an outline or scriptures I wanted to use and then go from there. It was amazing to see the change and the confidence I was getting from teaching this Sister.

I want to go back a bit I said that I loved teaching Less Actives more than anything. The reason is because as we would teach them the principles they already knew but had forgotten, once they saw the light again………………………you could see a physical change in them. I can’t put it into words but I can only think of it like pregnant women they just have this glow about them. Well it’s the same with these Less Actives, their spirit hears and recognizes the truth again and they just start to glow. This Sister was wonderful and even though she wasn’t always ‘there’ she was so loving and would teach me as I taught her.

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen