I thought this experience would be appropriate to share
today as everyone is setting goals and really looking for how they can be
better.
Sister Christopher and I never thought we were better than
anyone or any other companionship. We did however believe that is they could do
it, so could we. We had no doubt in our mind that if others were having 5
lessons a day that we couldn’t do that same thing. It wasn’t that we were
cocky, it was that we could follow those who were leading the way.
On day Elder Ault called us and said, “Sister, we just
learned that the highest amount of lessons taught within a week is 20. We are
planning to beat that and get 25. Want to do it with us?” I’m pretty sure if my
memory serves me right we kind of laughed and said no. Then as we sat looking
at our calendar and thinking of the Elder getting 25 lesson we thought, ‘Well
if they can do it we can do it’. So there we were planning on getting 25
lessons in one week – we must have been crazy.
I don’t know how it happened but somewhere along the way
during our planning we decided that we were not going to be happy with just
doing 25 but we wanted 30 lessons that week. So we planned for 30. We prayed
earnestly asking the Lord how we could use our time wisely. We asked who He
wanted us to visit and when. We committed to our 30 lessons and told the Lord
that we wouldn’t stop until we had them. We had no idea what we had gotten
ourselves into.
Planning – we had the best planning day ever. We prepared
our map with dots of less actives, members, and investigators. We called
everyone we were currently teaching and set up appointments. We contacted every
less active around those areas to set up appointments. And we contacted the
members in those areas. We quickly learned that we needed to use our time
wisely so if we were in an area for a lesson we had to set up other
appointments in that area so that we didn’t have to waist travel time. We had
it all planned out and we were ready to go. We had 15 lessons on the books and
we were going to go on faith knowing the Lord would fill the rest.
I should note here that we didn’t tell the Elders we were
going for 30 and not 25. So we had a bit of a competitive edge in our
companionship but we were not going to be shown up by the Elders.
I think the best way to explain what happened during that
week is to tell you the things we learned;
-
We learned that our average door approach was 1
out of 10. For 10 people who opened their door to us and talked with us 1 would
let us come in and teach them or make a follow-up appointment.
-
We learned that 3 of 5 appointments will usually
fall out.
-
We learned that lunch was a commodity and we
could go without – sometimes this applied to dinner as well.
-
We learned that that no matter how much tea you
drink you will always be offered more.
-
We learned that our ward had a ton of less
actives that didn’t want anything to do with the church.
-
We learned that those less actives who let us in
had been waiting for us. Some had been praying hard for missionaries to come
and teach them.
-
We learned that a lesson won’t always be taught
in a formal setting sometimes the best lessons are taught on the street corner
or on the train.
-
We learned that while on the errand of the Lord,
all the elements will work against you just because they can.
-
We learned that with the help of the Lord all
things are possible – even 30 lessons in a week.
At the end of the week we were so warn out but energized
with heavenly power. It was probably the best week of my mission. We worked
harder than ever before. After that each week we pushed a little harder knowing
that we had done it before so it was easy. When challenged to add and extra hour
of tracking in each day we knew we could. When told to visit all the less
active in a month we knew we could. To find 5 new investigators in a day we
knew we could. Pass out 50 Book of Mormons, we knew we could. We knew we could
because we had done hard things before and the Lord had strengthened us.
mit freundlichen Grüßen
Jenessa
Jensen
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