I've been in Georgia for almost a week now. I have eleven and a half mosquito bites, a weird sunburn on the back of my neck, and I have sweated in ways I thought I could never sweat before. Inside ear sweat is a thing.
Sounds glamorous, right?
It's been a weird transition. I will be honest. The parts that have been hard are not the parts I was expecting to be hard.
To begin, I'll set the scene: I'm serving in a trio with Sister Stock (from Pasco, WA) and Sister Boyer (from St. George, UT). We cover two areas in Acworth and Kennesaw, GA. The wards are called Acworth and Mars Hill.
The people in Georgia (well, most of them) are friendly and warm and open to talking about Christ and praying with us. Although, we've had a couple of times when people have called their kids in and locked their front door when they see us coming down the street. I guess we're intimidating in our knee-length skirts and sweaty hair? And a lady who yelled at us to "just turn around" when we started up her driveway.
The people who we do talk to are mostly kind and already have great faith in God and Jesus Christ. While contacting we've been instructed to briefly get to know them, ask about any worries/concerns they have, and then ask to pray with them and ask "as representatives of Jesus Christ" for a specific blessing to be upon their family and concerns.
Like I said, people are fairly receptive to this. After finishing the prayer, the challenge is then how to share principles of the restored gospel and set up a return appointment. We often set up return appointments to actually teach a sit-down lesson, but when we arrive, they're not home. On Saturday, all four of our scheduled lessons feel through.
My companions are frustrated by this and so I am. However, they are not making any efforts to change our approach. We obviously need to change something. I've been making suggestions and brainstorming ideas. We need to find the people who are truly seeking for answers we have and then teach them what they want to learn. We are not here to tell people that the their religion that they hold dear is wrong. And too often it goes in that direction.
I've been telling them that we need to better understand our contacts and investigator as individuals so we discover their spiritual needs and then teach to that. We need primarily to teach to their hearts (via the Spirit), not their intellect. Easier said then done, of course. But I've been explaining this to my companions and I get the feeling that they don't like the "greenie" telling them that their methods are wrong.
We are learning together though. They are frustrated with the work because they've had no progressing investigators for a long time. They have felt discouraged and depressed for some time before I arrived. So slowly, but surely as I have built trust with them, they have started listening to me. They realize they need new ideas. We are setting new companionship and teaching goals this week -- as per my suggestions.
We have some great potentials that we're seeing this week, if they keep their appointments. Hopefully, I'll have some stories to tell soon.
Our new mission president arrives this week -- President Foote. He's from Las Vegas. I'm excited to see what changes he'll bring to the mission because President Harding is a businessman and our mission plans right now are laid out like a business trying to bring in sales. And... I kind of hate that.
Anyways, must go.
Have a blessed day,
Sister Sutton
No comments:
Post a Comment