Dear Family, I have news. I recked our tuck...
Just kidding, not even close. Nothing at all happened, I just thought I'd give y'all a heart attack haha
This week has been incredible, maybe a highlight of my mission. We had zone conference this week, and we were putting a lot of things that we learned with Elder Bednar into practice, so a lot of role plays and a lot of discussions. We broke up into groups of about 1 to 12 missionaries and talked over things and role played how to approach different things differently. One of which was contention. The APs and Traveling Sisters (six missionaries in total) were rotating through our groups doing things with us, and President Slaughter was as well.
So, President Slaughter came in to role play some things with us and give us feedback. The point of role playing contentious situations was because President Slaughter wanted us to learn to be in control of the situation and to not start bashing with someone, but to help them resolve concerns in a professional way. So President Slaughter was the contentious person first, yelling a bit and telling us we weren't Christian, and then he switched and he was the missionary, and we were the contact. He might have challenged us to be really hard and mean and try to make him lose control of the situation, then he picked me to role play with him. As we were talking he was very composed, but at one point he paused, speechless for what to say, then he grinned and told us to back up so he could try it differently haha got ya! We all had a good laugh. So I was a stubborn enough contact to make the Mission President pause, haha he did good, he just asked for min. Afterwards we talked more about things as a Zone and President Slaughter gave us a training on Repentence. WOW. Blown away, man, blown away. We talked about a lot of things. I feel like I drool a little bit everytime we get into discussions with President Slaughter, my mind just get's blown away every time.
So since Hermana Rodriguez and I have been reorganizing everything, we started to put things into action this week and started contacting people no one knew on our ward list. ALLLLLL DAAYYYYY FORRRR EVERRRRRR. And no one wanted us around. Too busy, to late, not a good time, not interested, taking meds, working out, moved, on and on and on...missionaries were not good news in P-town that day.
So we ate dinner with a member and then we had a few minutes before we met with our Ward Mission Leader to coordinate things. While sitting in our truck, I asked Sister Rodriguez what things she had done in passed areas or in El Salvador. She then told me about a plan that her dad started to try in El Salvador. With a little bit of tweaking and adjusting to our area, we presented it to our Ward mission leader about 10 minutes later. He sat forward and listened very closely. Family, this plan is beautiful. I mean, really. So our Ward Mission Leader asked us to draft a written copy and we could meet again on Saturday to go over it again. So, I 've attached a copy :) It's too good not to share!
The last couple of weeks we have very slowly been working on putting all of the members in our ward into categories such as: no information, Part-Member, Less active, active, etc...we had done something similar in Del Rio with the Relief Society President and it was really helpful. TThere we already had a lot of information and we jsut had to condense and complie it. But here we were starting out BLANK, and we had about 8 or more cities we covered and about 3-4x as many people in the no information or less active sections than in the active section. Sister Rodriguez didn't quite get what I wanted to do with it, heck, I didn't know for sure... but for some reason, it was important that we do it and get it done.
So while I was drafting the plan, Sister Rodriguez got it finished, and on Sunday we took the draft, the lists and our new map to help make more sense to our ward council. we asked for 10 mins to presented and get feedback for if they wanted it or wanted to toss it. I think everyone was mostly relieved someone had some start to get things moving. And they all wanted copies of the lists, as well as copies of the maps. So tomarrow we'll be making copies of our map at Office Depot for them. The ward clerk handed me his notebook to write down an address for someone, and on the bottom I saw "wonderful mission plan presentation by Sister Montgomery" written down. And our Ward Mission Leader wants to meet Sister Rodriguez's dad to thank him :) Afterwards, our Relief Society President-side note, the relief society president's mother was the women the Sister Missionaries lived with before we moved, so I met her only briefly before we moved, but she passed away Friday night, so our relief society president was a little stressed and scattered to say the least-but she came up to us after and told us that we were literaly an answer to prayers since they had been trying to put together visiting teaching routes and were a mess and needed a good map of the ward, she'll be getting a copy of the map.
It was really interesting. In our Spanish Branch afterwards, I was thinking about things and realizing how prepared I had been for this area. Because I served in San Marcos, I learned how to help make a Ward mission plan and actually teach. Because I served in Palo Alto, I knew where/what to look for in making a good map, and also how to work with the members a more and learned doctrine of the things that I was teaching. Because I served in Hill country, I knew how to organize the white board and work with a family ward. Because I served in Del Rio, I learned how to organize information better for the ward and future missionaires and how to help people be familiar with the Hastening of the Work web site and information. I also could speak Spanish because I served in Del Rio. Things have just been built upon, each other and it was a bit intense to sit there and realize how God had been giving me some hard experiences so that I would be able to learn something to pass on to someone else. It was honestly humbling to realize that I sometimes complained when God was getting me ready to help somewhere. My mission has honestly changed everything.
We had a lesson Friday night with a part-member family, and when we got there the wife quickley sat us down to feed us some warm soup since it was cold outside. BUT, we had already eaten dinner. And well, you can't say no. Really, it'll offend them. SO we ate the Soup. And then the dinner. I was going to explode and Sister Rodriguez and I tried to hide our laughs as we gave each other a couple of horried looks. Ice cream was on the way when Hermana Rodriguez said that she was okay, but then looking at me and knowing I was in pain she said grinning "pero, tal vez la hermana lo quiere...?" I quickly explained I was good and gave Sister Rodriguez a dirty look while throwing away my garbage. She's funny. Daniel, the husband, had been taught before and usually missionaries stopped teaching him because he wasn't reading or keeping commitments. I had taught him once before and we had given him Nephi 31 to read and study about Baptism, but, he hadn't read it. In zone meeting, we had been parralled to angles bringing a message to people, and one of the APs asked us, "who is your audience, and what is your message?" He then went on to expound by saying that the Angles appearence to Nephi's while his brothers were beating him was probably a bit different than the angles visit to Mary to annouce the birth of Christ. True. So they asked us to consider more often, "who is your audience, and what is your message?" so while we were driving out to the house, this had come back to my mind and I thought of it again while getting out of the car. I also remembered a lesson I'd taught in the MTC to one of my teachers telling him he had to read his scriptures otherwise how on earth was he ever going to know if it was true. I was a little bold in that lesson and my teacher always refered back to it telling everyone to be more bold like la hermana Montgomery.
Both of these expirences came to mind while driving and getting out of the car. And then in the lesson...I'm not even sure what I said. We read the introduction again, especially the part when Jospeh Smith states that it is the most correct book etc...he responded by saying that Jospeh Smith was only a man, and that that was only a man's opinion. We kept reading a little bit and I explained that if we never read or prayed about these things, then yes, to us Joseph Smith would only be a man. BUT, that was not true, he was a prophet called of God and it was not just his opinion when he said "that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth...and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” Daniel was definitely a lot more vocal this lesson and asked more questions than before Sister Rodriguez told me. He was more interested and said that he had to understand more about Jospeh Smith before he would make a decision. Did I mention this whole thing was in Spanish? I led out in the lesson in Spanish, that's a milestone. And the thing is, I KNOW I couldn't have done that alone. WHOOOOOOO!
We got to go to the Temple last Saturday with our Spanish Branch since Sister Rodriguez had only been to the Temple once on her mission. I ALMOST did the session in Spanish. Not quite there yet haha maybe next time :)
Well, family, that's about all I think. Take care
Les Quiero!
La Hermana de Pleasanton
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