Hey y'all!
It's been a busy week, but not as crazy as last week, which is just fine
by me. I like a little excitement, once in a while, but last week with
all of our exchanges was a little hectic. This week was a little bit more
like normal. (if such a thing exists while you're on a mission, that is.)
We had a lot of our regular appointments with less actives, and a few
others that we were able to visit this week. I don't know if I've told y'all
about Connie - she is recently reactivated (as of yesterday! :) ) She has a
daughter with a lot of health issues, and she doesn't feel really comfortable
with leaving her for so long - about 4 hours with all of church and the travel
time in-between. But we've visited with her occasionally, and she has awesome
home teachers that have encouraged her to come to church. Last month she
realized that going to church is what she needs right now. So we've
helped her get there, and she plans on going every week from now on! It's
so awesome - I love being a missionary and being able to help people on there
way to conversion.
Speaking of conversion, we had a specialized training this week all about
conversion. It was really cool - President Pingree mostly emphasized how
we, as missionaries, are not here to baptize or get people to come back to
church. We're here to help people become converted to the gospel of Jesus
Christ - to become converted to Him. And we talked about how, in order to do
that, we need to be converted ourselves. We listened to Elder Bednar's
talk on Conversion from the October 2012 general conference (which was kind of
ironic - we had a Relief Society lesson based on that talk on Sunday, and it
came up when my iPod was on shuffle while we were getting ready on Monday, and then
we watched it at specialized training on Tuesday... I guess I really needed
that talk!) and we discussed how we can help our investigators and less actives
become truly converted to the Lord. And, President Pingree introduced a new
program for recent converts - apparently our mission is one of the pilot
missions for this new program for convert retention - helping our converts
continue on their conversion process even after they are baptized. The
whole idea behind the program is to have the missionaries and the ward work together
to set goals to get to the temple; continue learning, praying, studying, and
going to church; start family history work; start missionary work; and other
stuff like that. I think it's pretty cool - it will make the transition
between missionaries and the ward smoother, and so converts are less likely to
get lost in the process. I'm excited to see how it works out.
(Here's a pic of Sister Ririe at specialized training this week - thank heavens her mission president keeps a blog that he updates with pictures every week! :))
As far as our investigators go... no one is progressing. We
have an appointment set with Tish this week, and we're hoping to see Brenda sometime
this week too. Tiffany hasn't been getting back with us, and we haven't
been able to set an appointment with Rosa yet. We've been working with
the members to encourage them to get involved with missionary work, so we can get
referrals from them. One thing
that we've been doing consistently is sharing a few quotes form Elder Ballard's
conference talk from this past conference, and inviting them to take the
challenge to reach out to "just one" between now and Christmas.
So far the members have been willing to accept the challenge, but I guess
we won't really be able to see any results from that for a while. It's
hard, because it seems like most everything moves so slow when it comes to
missionary work, and we, as missionaries, want it to move a lot faster. I
guess my mission is teaching me patience. Everything will work out the
way it is supposed to in the end, as long as I am doing my part.
We had an awesome surprise yesterday - Jermaine came to visit us at church!
He's still doing well and working towards his baptism. He's had a
job interview, and he has a secondary interview on Wednesday. We're all praying
that he'll get the job so he can save up money to move out so he can be
baptized! And I suggested that when he moves out, he moves into the
Westlake ward. ;) Or at least into the mission, so I can get permission to go
to his baptism! :) He's awesome, and he seems really converted already -
he was participating in the gospel principles class, and he said he loves going
to church. He's awesome, and I can't wait until he is able to be
baptized!
Well, that's all for the week. I love y'all and hope you're
are doing well! Have an awesome week. :)
Sister Ririe
Helaman 3:27-28
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