April 23, 2012 Planning for Success

Alright, sorry for writing so little last week but it´s just been super hard in the mission right now. Not just in our area and our zone, but overall in the mission we´ve been struggling. I heard from Elder Bruce (ex companion and now assistant) that a lot of areas and zones are struggling. Right now what´s really hurting us is church attendance. The past couple of weeks we´ve found quite a few new investigators, but we haven´t had success in bringing them to church. So now this week our whole focus is getting people to church, at least everyone has a larger list of investigators to work with. Something I saw with Elder Bruce in this zone is that one week we aumented our church attendance a ton and 3 weeks later the baptisms burst up as well. There´s a direct relation with that so we are super excited to start hammering it into our missionaries this week to get their investigators to church by planning specifically each day what they have to do and teach and who is the right member to help that investigator get to church.  If there´s anything I learned in the mission, it´s that everything requires a lot of planning and detailed planning to have success.

That´s also great about West Point, but honestly I don´t know why but I just don´t feel the pressure or relief right now. Maybe when I get home and have to start a study schedule to relearn Chemical Engineering I´ll feel it all, at once! But yeah, huge miracle. That unfortunately means that I can´t get married until I´m 25. That´s another weird thing about the mission. I was never really huge on getting married, I mean I always wanted to and knew I had to do it, but I was never really excited about it. Then in the mission, not even because someone brainwashes us, I´ve started having super strong desires to have an eternal companion some day and start having a family. Blessings of the mission I guess as I´ve started to understand the doctrine of Christ and the Gospel more and to see the effect it has had on people here.

Actually President Gulbrandsen told us a story one time that a similar miracle about planting desires in someone´s heart. He said that when he was stake president there was a couple that didn´t divorce but split up. The wife didn´t want to have anything to do with the husband, but the husband was still hopeful that his wife would return. All that Pres. Gulbrandsen told the husband was that if he lived the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he would be blessed. He didn´t tell him that his wife would return and didn´t even actually think that she would. So then sometime later, still separated, Pres. Gulbrandsen had another interview with this brother who had completely changed his life around and seemed better. The brother said that he now understood that it didn´t even matter if his wife returned, by repenting and living the Gospel he realized that the most important thing was his relationship with God and that he wasn´t bothered anymore about his wife not returning. Then a bit later the wife had an interview with Pres. Gulbrandsen and told him that she was kinda scared because she didn´t want to have anything to do with her husband, but that morning she woke up and had the strongest desire of love toward him that she couldn´t explain. So yeah, that won´t always be the outcome but it is so true that the only thing in this life that matters is our relationship with God and if we are living the Gospel, then he´ll take care of the rest so we end up happy.

Thanks for your prayers and support and I´ll write more next week (just in case you were doubting).

Con amor,

Elder Arrowchis