P-Day

Buon giorno Presidente!

This week, we made it a goal to if not fully accomplish, then give our best shot at seeing all the referrals and assignments we've been given in the past. So over the weekend, we kept going by and calling our referrals at various times, and doing a bit of finding in the area. One especially, which we learned was actually out of the area until September, so that was a little disappointing. But we did it! We have seen, and/or called each of the people we have been given from referrals and assignments, and we have a prospective ex-investigator who seems like he would like to meet with us again, but we have to wait till he gets back from Rome for some sort of political thing. We'll keep talking with everyone that we didn't manage to meet, though.

One of the people we managed to see was a Marco Perra, who's inactive solely because he can't come to church on Sunday due to work. He works at a car-rental service at the airport, and summer is their busiest time, as well as weekends. But he still has a strong testimony, reads and prays consistently, and is trying to bring up his kid in the gospel as much as he can. I'm kind of wondering what might be the best thing to do to help, or if we should just have the branch president help a little more, or what. He has come to church when he can manage it, though, which is cool.

We've also been finding a lot, and have been trying to think of new ways to do that, to find the things that are most effective.

I am totally converted to the 12 Weeks thing, by the way. I love how it teaches, and how it's layed out. I'm learning a ton, especially simplicity and how to teach more by the spirit, as I help Anziano Loertscher learn a bit. We are being really diligent with that, and are starting to now refocus on Language study as well, putting more effort into that to make it more effective for both of us.

Thanks President!

Anziano Walker

Holy snap, a CANOE! =D

I'm pretty excited to come back to that, especially after it's been broken in. :) And before I get to writing about my week, I want to give my thoughts on Mom's question on parties: We're weird. Basta. Although, that's awesome that Cameron is un-weirding. Just do exactly what you did with me last year, and force him to have the best freakin' party of his life, and then he'll open up to it. :)

Anywho, what I wrote to President has kind of been our week. On those times without the car, not a heck of a lot happens. We kind of re-did our whiteboard that has all our investigators and contacts on it, and looking at the redone version........... we realized that we only have contacts, and that old couple in Capoterra are our only investigators. And we won't be able to see them this week, except they promised they would come to church on this Sunday, so hopefully they do! But other than that, the only real "teaching" we've done is finding people. People always say the work slows down to nothing in the summer, but dang........... However, we are working to come up with different finding techniques to get good conversation in, so that the people we talk with feel more comfortable with us and will maybe listen more.

One idea we've tried is a survey. A quick, 2ish question survey, which is perfect (I've found) to get people comfortably talking about religion. Questions like "If you could talk to God and ask Him a question, what would it be?" "If there were a book that was inspired by him that could answer this question, would you read it?" Or on various other subjects. So far, that's the only full survey I've got, but I'm working on one about Family History and Eternal Families. But then, the key I've found with this: go in calm places, like a park.

We found one place to do that, and man, the FIRST day we did it, we found these two people that said they actually WOULD read that book, and sounded like they actually wanted to know the answer to their questions, and they promised to read the Book of Mormon that we gave to them! YES! That was such a good conversation, and I really felt the Spirit guiding the conversation and helping them understand what we said. It was the perfect street contact. Except, they don't live around here. But oh well, they are definitely ready for the gospel, I was psyched after that little conversation!

Other than that, I've really been working hard to help Anziano Loertscher feel comfortable teaching and everything. I sometimes feel, though, like I'm expecting so dang much from him, and maybe get a little irritated when he can't contribute as much as I thought he could. I'm definitely trying to apply patience. It's just so weird, because I have no idea what they took out of his MTC experience of 6 weeks as opposed to my 9 weeks, we're both learning a lot. But we're enjoying working with each other! He's fun!

Love you all!

Ciao!

Anziano Walker