Hi family! It was a good week!I will describe a normal saturday
and sunday.
The most important indicator that an investigator is going to get baptized
is whether or not they go to church. Therefore, almost everything we do in
the week is to get investigators to church. In the Chilean culture, this
can often be kind of difficult. The idea is that we pass by their houses
at least three times a week to remind them. We aren´t going to force
anyone to go to church, but as a missionary I have really realized the blessings
from going to church, and usually we just have to get them to fight the
laziness. So we pass by them on either Tuesday or Wednesday, again on
either Thursday and Friday, and then we pass by EVERYONE on Saturday. So
Saturday looks like this:
7am: Wake up and do exercize for 30 minutes.
Then we have an hour to get ready. I usually spend part of that time
writing in my journal from the previous day.
8:30-9:30 we have personal study. I usually read
the Book of Mormon for about half of that (in Spanish) and then Conference talks
or Preach My Gospel.
9:30 We sing a song among us four and have
companionship study, where we read from the White Handbook and then share what
we learned and then plan for our investigators for the day. Because we´re
doing training, we do an extra hour of that.
11:30 We leave. Mornings are generally pretty
crappy to work, so we usually visit the old grandmas who can´t go to church.
We sing a hymn or two with them and share a scripture.
1:30 Lunch. you have an hour for lunch (weekends
with members) and then another hour for additional study, ideally the language
you are learning.
3:30 Leave again. You must pass by everyone you
want to come to church, or they probably won´t come. Even if you can´t
share a lesson with them, you´ve got to make contact somehow. Saturday
ususally ends up being a ton of walking around because if the investigator isn´t
home, you´ve just got to keep trying, and if you call them, chances are they
will say they´re busy. It´s a lot easier to convince people when you´re
face to face. That´s anouther thing with knocking doors. The closer
you can get to the door, the more likely they will let you into the house.
That´s another reason why the rich sectors are hard, the gates are always
locked and oftentimes you have to talk through the speaker thing. That´s
an extremely small sucess rate.
10 pm- back at the pension. You have a half hour
to plan the next day slash figure out who is going to church. The district
leader calls and asks for numbers and the names of the people coming to church
the next day.
11- asleep.
Sunday:
7am- wake up and get ready. Sunday is
interesting because you can´t start calling people or passing by to get them
ready until about 9 or so, so you end up having plenty of time to get ready,
although you´re usually stressed about who is going to come. At 9 or so
you start calling investigators to wake them up. We usually don´t give
them an option- ¨we´ll pass by in 40 minutes¨or they´ll say no because they´re
tired. You also call the less active members and recent converts in your
sector. If an investigator is particularly lazy, we don´t bother calling
them because we know they´ll just give excuses so we leave and yell at their
door to wake them up. This is when most of the stress comes through, when
people don´t answer or give lame excuses. The best is when you have a ward
mission leader or a member go with you so that you can take them in a car.
In Iquique we had nothing but here our WML is really great. Sunday
morning is a TON of running around.
10am- Church. You CANNOT miss the sacrament, so
you have got to get there before the sac. hymn. If you see your
missionaries coming in late every Sunday, don´t judge them. And you should
probably offer to help them. There are so many menos activas that could go
if someone would just give them a ride, but I recognize that the states are
different than here. Church is normal, except that you go to Gospel
Principles.
After church we go eat lunch with members again, and then at 3:30 we go out to work again! Sunday is a good
day (I think) to visit the members, especially the ones who didn´t make it to
church.
We have an extra half hour on Sunday nights so that the numbers can be
taken and the assistants can get to bed before 3 in the morning. P-Day
Eve! We usually make treats. Well a lot of the time we are dead from
the week so we go to bed early. :)
As far as what we teach. We always start with the Restoration.
Usually when you don´t, people usually end up having questions about the
Restoration anyway. On Saturday we taught a little family lesson 3 (faith,
repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure) and then when we talked about baptism
and the authority they didn´t understand, so we had to go back to lesson 1
anyway. The Restoration really does clear up so many doubts if it is
taught clearly. Whenever we teach Lesson 1 (100% of the time) for the
first time, we always ask at the end ¨When you pray, if you feel that the answer
is yes, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really does have
the authority of Jesus Christ, will you follow His example and be baptized by
someone holding that authority?¨ (poorly translated). I love hearing
people´s answers to that. I love teaching the Restoration SO MUCH!
It just makes so, so much sense! You eventally learn how to lead
people to discover for themselves what is going to happen by asking good
questions. My favorite one that I learned from Hermana Joglar is ¨y si
mataron a Jesucristo, que era el Hijo de Dios, que cree usted que hicieron con
Sus aposteles?¨ (And if they killed Jesus Christ, who was the son of God, what
do you think they did with His aposteles?)
The gospel really is simple. I hope you all at least read about the
big missionary conference a couple weeks ago. I want you all to come up
with a goal for references for your family. YOU are
the ones who need to be finding. We missionaries are not called to find
but to teach! Yes, even you mom and dad who don´t have neighbors.
Even you James and Matt who live in Utah. And Kara, now that you are
moving you should be confident to give a ton of references of your neighbors
because if they don´t like it- who cares! We´re past the age of
pass-a-long cards, although I´m still proud of you for doing it. If you
think someone might really be interested, get their contact information.
Callie and Andrew, you guys should be the power houses of references,
living where you live. Get to know your neighbors!!!!
I love you all!
Hermana Catron
and sunday.
The most important indicator that an investigator is going to get baptized
is whether or not they go to church. Therefore, almost everything we do in
the week is to get investigators to church. In the Chilean culture, this
can often be kind of difficult. The idea is that we pass by their houses
at least three times a week to remind them. We aren´t going to force
anyone to go to church, but as a missionary I have really realized the blessings
from going to church, and usually we just have to get them to fight the
laziness. So we pass by them on either Tuesday or Wednesday, again on
either Thursday and Friday, and then we pass by EVERYONE on Saturday. So
Saturday looks like this:
7am: Wake up and do exercize for 30 minutes.
Then we have an hour to get ready. I usually spend part of that time
writing in my journal from the previous day.
8:30-9:30 we have personal study. I usually read
the Book of Mormon for about half of that (in Spanish) and then Conference talks
or Preach My Gospel.
9:30 We sing a song among us four and have
companionship study, where we read from the White Handbook and then share what
we learned and then plan for our investigators for the day. Because we´re
doing training, we do an extra hour of that.
11:30 We leave. Mornings are generally pretty
crappy to work, so we usually visit the old grandmas who can´t go to church.
We sing a hymn or two with them and share a scripture.
1:30 Lunch. you have an hour for lunch (weekends
with members) and then another hour for additional study, ideally the language
you are learning.
3:30 Leave again. You must pass by everyone you
want to come to church, or they probably won´t come. Even if you can´t
share a lesson with them, you´ve got to make contact somehow. Saturday
ususally ends up being a ton of walking around because if the investigator isn´t
home, you´ve just got to keep trying, and if you call them, chances are they
will say they´re busy. It´s a lot easier to convince people when you´re
face to face. That´s anouther thing with knocking doors. The closer
you can get to the door, the more likely they will let you into the house.
That´s another reason why the rich sectors are hard, the gates are always
locked and oftentimes you have to talk through the speaker thing. That´s
an extremely small sucess rate.
10 pm- back at the pension. You have a half hour
to plan the next day slash figure out who is going to church. The district
leader calls and asks for numbers and the names of the people coming to church
the next day.
11- asleep.
Sunday:
7am- wake up and get ready. Sunday is
interesting because you can´t start calling people or passing by to get them
ready until about 9 or so, so you end up having plenty of time to get ready,
although you´re usually stressed about who is going to come. At 9 or so
you start calling investigators to wake them up. We usually don´t give
them an option- ¨we´ll pass by in 40 minutes¨or they´ll say no because they´re
tired. You also call the less active members and recent converts in your
sector. If an investigator is particularly lazy, we don´t bother calling
them because we know they´ll just give excuses so we leave and yell at their
door to wake them up. This is when most of the stress comes through, when
people don´t answer or give lame excuses. The best is when you have a ward
mission leader or a member go with you so that you can take them in a car.
In Iquique we had nothing but here our WML is really great. Sunday
morning is a TON of running around.
10am- Church. You CANNOT miss the sacrament, so
you have got to get there before the sac. hymn. If you see your
missionaries coming in late every Sunday, don´t judge them. And you should
probably offer to help them. There are so many menos activas that could go
if someone would just give them a ride, but I recognize that the states are
different than here. Church is normal, except that you go to Gospel
Principles.
After church we go eat lunch with members again, and then at 3:30 we go out to work again! Sunday is a good
day (I think) to visit the members, especially the ones who didn´t make it to
church.
We have an extra half hour on Sunday nights so that the numbers can be
taken and the assistants can get to bed before 3 in the morning. P-Day
Eve! We usually make treats. Well a lot of the time we are dead from
the week so we go to bed early. :)
As far as what we teach. We always start with the Restoration.
Usually when you don´t, people usually end up having questions about the
Restoration anyway. On Saturday we taught a little family lesson 3 (faith,
repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure) and then when we talked about baptism
and the authority they didn´t understand, so we had to go back to lesson 1
anyway. The Restoration really does clear up so many doubts if it is
taught clearly. Whenever we teach Lesson 1 (100% of the time) for the
first time, we always ask at the end ¨When you pray, if you feel that the answer
is yes, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really does have
the authority of Jesus Christ, will you follow His example and be baptized by
someone holding that authority?¨ (poorly translated). I love hearing
people´s answers to that. I love teaching the Restoration SO MUCH!
It just makes so, so much sense! You eventally learn how to lead
people to discover for themselves what is going to happen by asking good
questions. My favorite one that I learned from Hermana Joglar is ¨y si
mataron a Jesucristo, que era el Hijo de Dios, que cree usted que hicieron con
Sus aposteles?¨ (And if they killed Jesus Christ, who was the son of God, what
do you think they did with His aposteles?)
The gospel really is simple. I hope you all at least read about the
big missionary conference a couple weeks ago. I want you all to come up
with a goal for references for your family. YOU are
the ones who need to be finding. We missionaries are not called to find
but to teach! Yes, even you mom and dad who don´t have neighbors.
Even you James and Matt who live in Utah. And Kara, now that you are
moving you should be confident to give a ton of references of your neighbors
because if they don´t like it- who cares! We´re past the age of
pass-a-long cards, although I´m still proud of you for doing it. If you
think someone might really be interested, get their contact information.
Callie and Andrew, you guys should be the power houses of references,
living where you live. Get to know your neighbors!!!!
I love you all!
Hermana Catron
Also, she wrote: "Callie is my favorite!!!!"
know why?
Pouch came and I got PICTURES!!!!!
And all the ones I wanted!!!!!
I was so excited. I can finally not be embarrased to
show pictures of my family to people! I have more than one picture of my
family!!!!!!!!
know why?
Pouch came and I got PICTURES!!!!!
And all the ones I wanted!!!!!
I was so excited. I can finally not be embarrased to
show pictures of my family to people! I have more than one picture of my
family!!!!!!!!