(Speaking of wordplay - a favorite hobby of the Beauchamp clan:)
This week we were actually talking to an investigator about "stupors of thought" for when we're headed in the wrong direction, and I had your voice pop into my head saying "stupid of thought!" with a little chuckle. It was a precious moment. I love you, mama.
Speaking of investigators. This week we actually had training every day but one, so at least half our day was spent discussing how to be better missionaries. I kind of felt like I was back in the MTC....talking about missionary work all day but never actually doing it. The main topic of most of our training was how to involve members in missionary work. Presidente used velocity x mass=momentum in which velocity represents how hard we work, how obedient we are, etc.( i.e. our own efforts). Mass represents how many missionaries there are and momentum is how many progressing investigators we have that are having quality conversions (meaning that they don't get baptized and then just drop off the face of the earth--or get baptized but never confirmed, which incidentally has happened twice in the last year in our ward.....lame.)
So they figure that we're working pretty dang hard and we can't really request too many more missionaries, so according to our stats, we're working at full capacity and the missionary work can't get a whole lot better than this.
False.
You know how you always say "work smart, not hard"? In something as important as this, why not work hard AND smart? We can multiply our mass by a bajillion times if we involve members in our lessons and they talked about how many more quality conversions there can be if investigators have a friend (or more than one, even better) to relate the gospel to daily life. Yes, we as missionaries can share personal experiences, but since this is our full-time job, it often doesn't seem to carry as much weight as when a member is there teaching and testifying. Also, it seems like a lot of our lessons get stuck because of the language barrier. We speak just fine, but either the little tiny mistakes are super distracting or the fact that we're whities is sometimes just too much to take in, combined with our message which is soul-shaking, ground-breakingly amazing.
So this week we put in just a little extra effort to call members of the ward to come with us to our teaching appointments. We told them what we were going to teach, asked them to share a few specific experiences from their lives and their testimonies about certain principles, but more than anything to listen to the Spirit, since our lessons rarely go according to plan, and then let them go for it. The members in our ward are absolutely incredible. I'd say about 80% are converts of 5 years or less and so they still have the "this is something new and exciting and it's changed my life, please oh please let me share it with you" fire and it's so cool!! We have quite a few investigators who were starting to get into the perpetual investigator slump of either knowing quite a bit but just being afraid to act on their knowledge or were just having the hardest time understanding principles. Like Erick. We brought a recently re-activated member with us to one of our lessons, and it turned out that they had so much in common and they got along amazingly well (we actually had this member as a last resort because he's a bit older than Erick, but Heavenly Father is just so dang smart. I love His micromanaging skills.) Another man named Beto just doesn't seem to understand quite a bit of what we say, but we brought the Relief Society president's husband with us. We didn't have time to even tell him what we were going to teach or what commitment we wanted him to extend to Beto, but he was paying such careful attention to what Beto's needs are that he pretty much took care of the lesson for us. I love members of the church!! So please please please ask to go out with the missionaries. And start begging them to have lessons at our house. It's SUCH a blessing to everyone involved.
Here's how you can help us:
please pray for Martha. She's just the sweetest woman and we started teaching her a while ago, but she works nights and never has a set schedule. It's taking a toll on her relationship with her family and she wants to make more time to meet with us, so we've talked with her about asking for a more fixed schedule or maybe even a better job.
Also, maybe a couple prayers for Daniel would be appreciated. Sometimes I just don't know about him. He KNOWS it's true and he wants to build that relationship with the Savior and he knows he needs to get baptized, but it feels like he's holding out for attention's sake. You know how there are some people who want to be kind of martyrs in that they feel like their beliefs are so strange? My reaction: Get over yourself, man. Just do what God wants you to do. I got so frustrated with him last night on the phone because he kept insisting that he's not worthy to be baptized. I went over Mosiah 18 with him at least four times. I kept asking "Are you willing to do these things?" "Yes." "Then you're worthy" Just enter that gate, man!! Jeez louise!
Anyway, he's great, really. Just frustrating.
Things are awesome. I gotta run, but I love you bunches, family and friends.
Love you more than all the oranges in NoHo
Hermana Beauchamp (also known as Al)
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