Hello there everyone, What's going on?? It sounds like everybody is doing well and staying busy. The same goes for me here. :)
We had a good and productive week here. The highlight of the week
for sure was a Conference with various Zones in Caxias on Friday. There
were some doctors there that came and gave a presentation for all of
the missionaries on how we can stay more healthy
here on the mission. Then the new Assistants to the President gave a
really awesome training for us. They taught us a lot of new techniques
that can help us in our proselyting and shared some really motivating
experiences. They and President Wright talked
a lot about how the mission is entering a new era. President told us
that he received revelation that every missionary can begin baptizing
weekly and if we do our part the best we can, the Lord will help us find
the people that are ready to hear the truth.
This is a very high bar for us in this mission to baptize weekly, but I
know that Pres. Wright really does receive revelation for our mission
and I'm going to aim to reach this goal. But it really was a great
conference and all of the missionaries left there
more motivated and ready to work.
A great thing this week was that we had some of our investigators
come to the church on Sunday. It was a little discouraging a few of
these last weeks when we had so many investigators that promised to come
but then didn't end up showing up to church,
so I was super excited when he had some of our investigators show up.
We had a couple that we have been working with named Vagner and Marcia.
Vagner is the son of a recent convert and the missionaries visited him
in the past, but he never seemed to show
much interest. We went back to visit him this week and he received us
well and we invited him to come to church. We were both really happy
when we he came with Marcia to church, and even more happy while we
talked with him and they both told us about how
much they liked it. We visited them that very afternoon and again we
had a great lesson, this time talking about baptism. We invited them to
be baptized and they both accepted. It was super great and we are
really excited about them, but we still need to
work a lot with them because I don't think they are legally married, but
I can really see that they have a strong desire to do what is right.
We also had another one of our investigators that we have been working
with a bit come to church on Sunday. He is
a young adult named Jussir and is a really cool guy. He is a reference
from the elders quorum president and already has a good friendship with
him and also us. He is a really good investigator that has been
reading the Book of Mormon frequently and has already
told us that he has a testimony of it. We have been teaching him for
about 3 weeks now, and the only thing that was lacking was going to
church, so again we were super excited for him when he came. Daniel,
the elders quorum president, sat with him there
and he seemed to feel really comfortable and told us he really enjoyed
his visit. He is really progressing now and we are going to visit him a
lot to help him prepare for his baptismal date that we set in the
beginning of April. Another cool thing is that
we have been receiving a lot of references lately and will have various
to contact this up coming week, and references are always awesome
because they seem to have a lot better chance of progressing than other
investigators that don't know any members. Coisa
boa!
But I'm really doing well here in Bento Gonçalves. I'm enjoying
the work and all of the great experiences and feel very privileged to
help out with this marvellous work. Thanks for always being good
supports! Have a great week and Ill hear from you
all later. Tchau tchau!
Elder Gee
Monday, March 25, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Busy week; Didn't quite reach the Standard of Excellence; Getting investigators to church is hard
Hello there everybody, how has everybody been? It sounds like
everyone is keeping busy with school, work, and other activities.
We had another busy week here in Bento Gonçalves. We worked really hard to try to reach our goals with the standard of excellence, but we didn't quite reach all of the key indicators. It was a little harder for us this week because we had to follow up with a ton of our new investigators from our last week so it we didn't have as much time to focus on finding more new investigators. We still were able to reach our 120 contacts which was good and I am sure that it will help us find the people that are ready to hear the gospel. Even though we didn't reach all of our goals we are still going to continue to try to reach these goals because we are desperately needing some investigators that will progress.
The biggest problem that we facing here is trying to get our investigators show up for church. This week we invited everybody we talked to make a visit to the church and many people said they would go, but on Sunday all of our investigators that have baptismal dates didn't show up. It was a kind of frustrating and discouraging for us, but we are still ready to work just as hard this week so we can help out as many people as possible.
The good news is that we had 2 friends of members that came to church and seem to have a lot of potential so we will start working with them right away. This has been really different here in Bento then it was is Vera Cruz. There are so many members that usually every week somebody brings somebody new to church so that is good, but its always hard to have to people we are teaching come to church. But, I'm really enjoying the work here, I am just hoping that we can start having more success with some of our investigators.
Anyways, sorry for the really short email this week, we did a lot of work but not much progress from investigators to tell for you guys. But I hope you all can continue doing well and have an awesome week! I love you all and wish you the best. See ya later...
Elder Gee
We had another busy week here in Bento Gonçalves. We worked really hard to try to reach our goals with the standard of excellence, but we didn't quite reach all of the key indicators. It was a little harder for us this week because we had to follow up with a ton of our new investigators from our last week so it we didn't have as much time to focus on finding more new investigators. We still were able to reach our 120 contacts which was good and I am sure that it will help us find the people that are ready to hear the gospel. Even though we didn't reach all of our goals we are still going to continue to try to reach these goals because we are desperately needing some investigators that will progress.
The biggest problem that we facing here is trying to get our investigators show up for church. This week we invited everybody we talked to make a visit to the church and many people said they would go, but on Sunday all of our investigators that have baptismal dates didn't show up. It was a kind of frustrating and discouraging for us, but we are still ready to work just as hard this week so we can help out as many people as possible.
The good news is that we had 2 friends of members that came to church and seem to have a lot of potential so we will start working with them right away. This has been really different here in Bento then it was is Vera Cruz. There are so many members that usually every week somebody brings somebody new to church so that is good, but its always hard to have to people we are teaching come to church. But, I'm really enjoying the work here, I am just hoping that we can start having more success with some of our investigators.
Anyways, sorry for the really short email this week, we did a lot of work but not much progress from investigators to tell for you guys. But I hope you all can continue doing well and have an awesome week! I love you all and wish you the best. See ya later...
Elder Gee
Monday, March 11, 2013
Working HARD in Bento Goncalves; The Standard of Excellence! Letissia
Good Morning family and friends! How is everyone doing these days? I
have been doing well here in Bento. Can you believe that the transfer
has already ended? This last transfer just flew by. It was a transfer
of only 5 weeks, so a little bit shorter
than usual, but still doesn't feel like I've been here this long in
Bento. Neither Elder Marques or I were transferred so nothing much will
change for us. I'm excited that he is going to stay another transfer
here because he is a cool guy and a really good missionary
so it will be fun. Another reason I am glad that our companionship
will stay the same is because we both made the goal of reaching the
Standard of Excellence for the mission this month in March.
The Standard of Excellence is a bunch of goals in various of our Key Indicators as missionaries that we need to reach weekly for the month. Also part of this standard is to have 3 baptisms in the month which is a pretty high bar. So this week we both decided to focus on these numbers to motivate us to work extremely hard and accomplish the goals. This week was a great experience and I feel like we had a lot more results because of this motivation. Some of the interesting goals in the standard of excellence are 12 Lessons with a member present and 120 Contacts each week. I don't think I've ever had these numbers of these categories, definitely a different standard then normal. We had to force ourselves really hard this week to reach these goals, we had to invite a ton of members to go on visits with us and also literally talk to everybody we saw each day to have enough contacts. We both saw that by completing these numbers, we would also be finding a lot of investigators with potential and helping our other investigators grow some friendships with members in the church to help them progress more toward baptism. I think that if we can continue at this rate of completing all of our goals, our goal for 3 baptisms will also happen. Haha I think it was a great idea or maybe even inspiration for President Wright to make this standard because both Elder Marques and I feel like we are having a lot more success. We were able to mark 4 baptismal dates this week and also find 25 new investigators and all of our other numbers have risen significantly, so the work is going faster here, and I think we will have a lot more baptisms in the near future.
One of the investigators that was really cool that we met this week was a young woman named Letissia. We met her doing contacts and were able to teach her the restoration and the Book of Mormon this week. She really liked our visits and told us that she would pray to know that the things were true. The last visit we had with her she told us that she prayed and felt that the things were true. She accepted an invitation to be baptized and on Sunday Morning when we went to pick her up to go to church, she was standing outside her house waiting for us before we arrived. I think she is an elect investigator and she will be baptized this month so we are super excited. We also found quite a few other investigators that seem really interested.
This was one of the things that I think is part of President Wright´s vision. Talk to as many people as possible to find the elect investigators every week, and don't spend as much time with the investigators that aren't progressing. In order to reach this goal every week we cant spend very much time with investigator that don't have a very strong desire to know the truth or willing to follow the example of Christ, so we are trying to talk to everyone and find the elect investigators .
I'm really excited for this week and am hoping that we can continue to find the people that are prepared to hear the gospel and be baptized. We are going to keep working really hard to hit our goals to help as many people as possible. I really am grateful for this opportunity to serve a mission and serve God's children. I know how important this work is and its a privilege for me that I can help out a little bit. Thanks for the love and support from everyone. I just want you guys to keep staying awesome! Keep sending me emails and stuff and if you have any specific questions I´ll try to answer them all. But have a great week!
Love
Elder Gee
The Standard of Excellence is a bunch of goals in various of our Key Indicators as missionaries that we need to reach weekly for the month. Also part of this standard is to have 3 baptisms in the month which is a pretty high bar. So this week we both decided to focus on these numbers to motivate us to work extremely hard and accomplish the goals. This week was a great experience and I feel like we had a lot more results because of this motivation. Some of the interesting goals in the standard of excellence are 12 Lessons with a member present and 120 Contacts each week. I don't think I've ever had these numbers of these categories, definitely a different standard then normal. We had to force ourselves really hard this week to reach these goals, we had to invite a ton of members to go on visits with us and also literally talk to everybody we saw each day to have enough contacts. We both saw that by completing these numbers, we would also be finding a lot of investigators with potential and helping our other investigators grow some friendships with members in the church to help them progress more toward baptism. I think that if we can continue at this rate of completing all of our goals, our goal for 3 baptisms will also happen. Haha I think it was a great idea or maybe even inspiration for President Wright to make this standard because both Elder Marques and I feel like we are having a lot more success. We were able to mark 4 baptismal dates this week and also find 25 new investigators and all of our other numbers have risen significantly, so the work is going faster here, and I think we will have a lot more baptisms in the near future.
One of the investigators that was really cool that we met this week was a young woman named Letissia. We met her doing contacts and were able to teach her the restoration and the Book of Mormon this week. She really liked our visits and told us that she would pray to know that the things were true. The last visit we had with her she told us that she prayed and felt that the things were true. She accepted an invitation to be baptized and on Sunday Morning when we went to pick her up to go to church, she was standing outside her house waiting for us before we arrived. I think she is an elect investigator and she will be baptized this month so we are super excited. We also found quite a few other investigators that seem really interested.
This was one of the things that I think is part of President Wright´s vision. Talk to as many people as possible to find the elect investigators every week, and don't spend as much time with the investigators that aren't progressing. In order to reach this goal every week we cant spend very much time with investigator that don't have a very strong desire to know the truth or willing to follow the example of Christ, so we are trying to talk to everyone and find the elect investigators .
I'm really excited for this week and am hoping that we can continue to find the people that are prepared to hear the gospel and be baptized. We are going to keep working really hard to hit our goals to help as many people as possible. I really am grateful for this opportunity to serve a mission and serve God's children. I know how important this work is and its a privilege for me that I can help out a little bit. Thanks for the love and support from everyone. I just want you guys to keep staying awesome! Keep sending me emails and stuff and if you have any specific questions I´ll try to answer them all. But have a great week!
Love
Elder Gee
Monday, March 4, 2013
References from members, Janice and Gabriel; Evandro
Hey there family! How is everybody doing? How is school/work going
for everyone? It was really cool to hear about the baby blessing of
Celecta and see some of those pictures. Haha she looks really cute and
happy, so congratulations Celecta and Ryan and
also Grandpa and Grandma!
We had a pretty good week here. We focused on teaching our investigators that had already visited the church and have the most potential and also on finding new investigators. We received some good references that are friends of members which are always really good. We had 2 of the references come to church and they both said that they really liked it! One is named Janice and is a friend of one of the young women in the ward, and the other is named Gabriel and is a good friend of one of the young men. Both of them are youth and we are really excited for them because usually the youth have a good chance of continuing going to church, especially if they have friends there. We are going to work extra hard to teach them and hopefully they will continue to progress.
Also something cool happened as we were trying to find new investigators. We had a car pull up in front of us and the man inside told us that he wanted us to pass by his house because he had talked to missionaries before in another city. His name is Evandro and he gave us his telephone number and his address. We tried visiting with him a couple of times this week, but he was really busy this week and we couldn't meet up with him. But he is probably is interested because he stopped us and asked for us to visit him, and that's not something that is super common. We will try to visit him this up coming week and hopefully we can help him out.
One of the things that was kind of disappointing is that we had a baptism date fall because Leandra and her family still are having troubles coming to church, even though every time we visit them in their house, they say that they want to go to church. We visited them with a member that lives near by and we set up a plan that the member would pick them up on Sunday, but early that morning they called the member and said that they wouldn't be able to make it to church that day. Elder Marques and I are trying to find out what is stopping them and understand how we can help out the family. They are all really cool and receive us very well, always paying attention and participating in the lessons, but something always seems to come up for them on Sunday morning.
Well we need to run today because we are going to Caxias for this P-day. The plan is to go play some volleyball at a park but its really rainy here in Bento Gonçalves so maybe we are going to have to do an alternative plan. But I hope you guys have an awesome week! Take care!
Love,
Elder Gee
We had a pretty good week here. We focused on teaching our investigators that had already visited the church and have the most potential and also on finding new investigators. We received some good references that are friends of members which are always really good. We had 2 of the references come to church and they both said that they really liked it! One is named Janice and is a friend of one of the young women in the ward, and the other is named Gabriel and is a good friend of one of the young men. Both of them are youth and we are really excited for them because usually the youth have a good chance of continuing going to church, especially if they have friends there. We are going to work extra hard to teach them and hopefully they will continue to progress.
Also something cool happened as we were trying to find new investigators. We had a car pull up in front of us and the man inside told us that he wanted us to pass by his house because he had talked to missionaries before in another city. His name is Evandro and he gave us his telephone number and his address. We tried visiting with him a couple of times this week, but he was really busy this week and we couldn't meet up with him. But he is probably is interested because he stopped us and asked for us to visit him, and that's not something that is super common. We will try to visit him this up coming week and hopefully we can help him out.
One of the things that was kind of disappointing is that we had a baptism date fall because Leandra and her family still are having troubles coming to church, even though every time we visit them in their house, they say that they want to go to church. We visited them with a member that lives near by and we set up a plan that the member would pick them up on Sunday, but early that morning they called the member and said that they wouldn't be able to make it to church that day. Elder Marques and I are trying to find out what is stopping them and understand how we can help out the family. They are all really cool and receive us very well, always paying attention and participating in the lessons, but something always seems to come up for them on Sunday morning.
Well we need to run today because we are going to Caxias for this P-day. The plan is to go play some volleyball at a park but its really rainy here in Bento Gonçalves so maybe we are going to have to do an alternative plan. But I hope you guys have an awesome week! Take care!
Love,
Elder Gee
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