That sounds like a crazy week back there with all of the changes! I feel a little dumb asking but I was under the impression that usually the bishop was the one who called the Elder's quorum president? But that is awesome that they got all that done within a week! I love all of these changes! It hasn't effected our branch here much. In most of my areas the High Priests and the Elders usually meet together because there are not many high priests here. In my branch, apart from the branch president and his first councilor, there is only one other high priest so he always was with us in Elders Quorum. I actually don't think I will see the full affect of these changes until I go home. But I am excited to hear about them in the mean time!
Zone Conference was super awesome! I am going to go back like 9 months to when I made a comment but it was reinforced this past Friday. I have received many confirmations that President Smith has been called of God to lead this mission and will help us further the work of the Lord if we would let him. President Corbitt really focused on the amount of work we did and working really hard. In January of last year the mission baptized 256 people in one month. In 2016, over 2000 people were baptized in our mission boundries. That is enough to form various stakes. But there wasn't even one more branch formed. That means that most of them were going inactive, or as one came into the church, another was leaving. I received a confirmation that President Smith is going to help us improve the quality of our teaching and with that experience of working hard, helping them really be converted.
This goes hand in hand to what dad was talking about, the importance of the spirit. In Zone Conference we were trying to find a way to improve our teaching to really just let the Spirit do the teaching. As many of you know, us missionaries have different pamphlets (I don't think I have used that word in over a year...folleto) that help us convey the message of the lessons that we teach: the Restoration, The Plan of Salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Law of Chastity, The Word of Wisdom and The Law os Tithing and Fast Offerings. We decided as a mission this past zone conference that as we teach, we are going to go for a goal of teaching each lesson shorter, preferably no longer than 15-20 minutes (the actual teaching part) and we are going to teach our lessons just based out of the pictures in those folletos. For example (openening the folleto of The Restoration, there is a picture of a happy family) "What do you see here?" "A happy family" "Why do you think they are happy?" "Answer" "That is because and we testify that when we live the gospel of Jesus Christ, our families are immensely blessed." It is kind of long to explain but Elder Arnold and I put it into practice and it is SUPER effective in bringing the Spirit. It basically helps the investigator teach themselves the lesson as we kind of guide them along and lets the Spirit testify of what they are teaching themselves. It is super cool. Basically, President Smith is awesome and receives some awesome revelation for the mission.
Then we had interviews and it was super awesome. I always love interviews. We talked a lot about the importance of the Spirit and how we need to continue studying the conference messages during these six months!
So I was also protected by the Lord yesterday. Our ward mission leader, Antoni, stopped in his car and said hi to us while we were walking. It was around 7:30 at night. He pulled over to the side of the road and we ran over to say hi. We weren't there for long but Elder Arnold was on my left closer to the front of his car standing at the drivers window. Out of nowhere a drunk guy, teaching his girlfriend to drive stick came speeding behind the car and hit the back of Antoni's car. I had the impression to jump backwards, but something made me step even closer to Antoni's car, as soon as I did it the car bounced off and went to the left, right where I was standing. If I would have jumped backwards it probably would have broken something and probably would have ended my mission early. I don't tell y'all this to worry, I tell y'all this because I know that the Lord protected me. Everything in my body wanted to jump backwards away from the harm but something kept me close. The Lord knows what he is doing and obviously still has a purpose for me here in the DR. I have to do my best to find it!
Quick thing, if y'all could send out some prayers for President Smith that would be awesome! He had a fall a little while ago, while nothing appeared to be damaged, there were some unseen fractures in his tibia and from walking on it for a little bit it ended up breaking so now he is in a cast. He wants to operate on it as a last option so he is going to see if it will heal up on it's own. Like I said, the Lord will take care of his servants but some prayers would be appreciated!
I love y'all a ton! It is crazy that it is already April! That is cool that LT swept the District Meet! I remember back when I was there when LT one the meet for the first time ever! That makes me happy that they are still doing pretty well!
Stay tuned because this week we are waiting on a huge miracle so next week should be an awesome email!
I LOVE YALL! MAKE THIS WEEK AWESOME!!!
Love,
Elder Robertson
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| Our Zone Conference (and Pres. Smith with his cast) |
