The Mission Tour

Hello All!

 

Surprise! I am emailing a day early! I didn't know that I was going to be doing this either until this week, so sorry for the lack of notice. Oh well.

 

The reason why is because tomorrow we have a thing called, "Mission Tour" in which the Area Authorities will come to our zone and give us some training and see how the area's doing (and also inspect our apartments. Luckily we get to deep clean a few things today). Since tomorrow will be completely busy, we get P-day today. Yay! However, we are spending half of it going to teach a turn-over lesson in Tung Chung (an investigator in Tung Chung has a referral from Yuen Long to give us). Exciting, huh?

 

Well, I figure I should probably tell you what this week has been like, shouldn't I? It's been really really good. It's felt focused and wonderful. I feel like we have been improving as teachers and have been given some ACTUALLY progressing investigators, and we have better priorities. It's great.

 

Part of this is we have a Plan. Our zone leaders, in coordination with our mission president and stake president have put together a plan of how we are going to get more families to church (less active and otherwise). It's nothing radical - in fact, I feel it's just implementing things that we've just forgotten. But I feel very excited. Basically, we are prayerfully working to bring less actives back, focusing on part-member families. We are trying to eventually get whole families back to the temple. The nice thing is that having such a clear, stated goal helps me to quit worrying so much about numbers on a paper, and worry more about how to actually help my area. I realize that I might just have 4 more weeks left in the area, and I really want to help the area grow. And also get our member records in order. And it has so little to do with numbers, really. It's also nice to be working more with our members, trying to visit them, etc. Before we basically would just try to find people on our own on the street and help them get baptized. Guess what. That's not the best method. I think it's made for a lot of less actives (over 20,000 of them). And so it's nice to start focusing on better methods to do this work. And we're trying to rebuild and build this part of the kingdom.

 

Well, sorry for all that technical-ness, but it's what's been on my mind lately. Getting refocused. And it feels good.

 

So what does that mean for all the people whose progress we all want to hear about? It means they're doing really well. Yay! So, here are the stories:

 

Bessie came to church again for the second time, and had a great experience. She had a friend sit with her the whole time, and her reaction afterwards was that things made much more sense after hearing them at church as well. She said it seemed very much worth it and she'd come next week! In fact, she said that she just had a good, happy feeling at church. I told her that that was the Holy Ghost, giving her answers. Because it was. Wow. I also told her that I wished she could talk with ALL of our investigators about how church helps so much. If only all of them were so prepared. :) She's amazing. We are doing our best to encourage Bessie to keep doing what she needs to, and she is doing it. It's so exciting.

 

Also, I don't know if I told you about Hoi Yi, an investigator we found a few weeks ago. She's 16 and very smart and very very reliable. She calls US to confirm appointments. Well, when we first started sharing the Restoration with her, her reaction was that she was going to read the whole BoM in a week, because she was really curious to know about it. And she's made it through 2nd Nephi already. We were worried at first that she'd just take it intellectually, and try to 'figure it out' but after some lessons, she seems to understand that she needs to invite Heavenly Father's help in understanding it. In fact, she's really very earnest in wanting to know if it's true, and has accepted a baptismal date for Nov 11. We are so excited for her! And she's so reliable, she'll be sure to work for that date, and we are here to help her do that.

 

Also, yesterday we saw Sherman and his mom! We love them. They are both so cute. When asked how knowing Heavenly Father loves us would influence them, Sherman's mom said it would give her a feeling of safety, and Sherman said it would give him a feeling of closeness to God. They are so sweet and willing to listen. We are seeing them on Friday again. We keep our messages short and simple with them, but I really feel they are a prepared family. I hope we can start teaching the father soon too.

 

Well, the last thing of note is that we had an awesome talent show in Yuen Long 2nd ward on Saturday, and it brought all sorts of people. Turns out you can get almost anyone to come support a family member performing. Remember that. Anyway, we got some referrals, and we are excited to see what comes of that.

 

Lastly, I just want to share my testimony of the power of the sacrament. Every week we can become a completely new person, and it's through this ordinance. I think that is one of the biggest blessings of the gospel, and it's too bad so many people choose to miss out on it because they are too tired to come to church, or don't want to, etc. I hope we all treasure that blessing. It's made me a very happy person.

 

Well, I gotta go, but I love you all! You all mean so much to me. Take care!

 

Love,

Sister Nielsen

 

P.S. We went to the temple last P-Day. It was lovely. And a good reminder that we are trying to get families there.

P.P.S. Thank you, also, for your concern about my illness. I am feeling completely better, and didn't spend much time feeling sick at all. It seems that some 24 hour thing was going around because lots of people got sick as well. But we are all better. It was also really sweet to have some members come up on Sunday and ask if I was feeling better. I don't even know how they heard that I wasn't feeling well earlier! They are the sweetest.