Wednesday, September 17, 2014

This Time My Title Will Be Boring

Sometimes I feel like all the pictures I send home are of the times I get to take a break from missionary work so you probably think I just tour castles all the time...

 
But it's already awkward to stop an atheist on the street and ask them about God, it'd be more awkward if my companion was taking snapshots of us the whole time.

Here's one from Zone Training they put on the mission blog... maybe it's a little better?


It's me and Elder Ockey, he was in my MTC group, and he's serving as one of our assistants right now.

Anywho we're going through a big change in the mission right now trying to switch our pattern to start teaching three short lessons a week to our friends instead of one long lesson. It's hard to get setup and a lot of missionaries including myself were worried about it. This is a part of the weekly letter I wrote to my mission president today, I don't have time to retell it =)

We had a surprisingly (to me at least) successful week implementing the plan with shorter lessons more frequently. The biggest one had to have been Familien Steen. That happened on Thursday I believe. The day started off with a lot of problems and the morning was just incredibly frustrating, then shortly after we started to bike around Sønderborg and my bike had complications that ended up wasting a lot of time and we had to revert back to the car. I was allowing myself to become frustrated and the thought of meeting this family for the first time and trying to set up three short lessons with them each week just seemed to add to my negativity. I didn't like it and I knew my mind and heart wasn't in the right place. I had already knelt down and prayed about the decision to move lessons in this direction, and I hadn't felt some overwhelming peace or anything, like with most of my prayers I felt the answer was that I would see the evidence of my faith in the experiences rather than having the answer handed to me on a golden platter. On the way to the lesson I said a silent prayer to give me the confidence to do this without ruining a great relationship this family has had with missionaries for a long time. I knew I'd have to have the right attitude and so I prayed for something just to lift my spirits and make me happier. Well this was one of the fun times that God answers a needful prayer on the spot in a clear manner - when we were about ten seconds away from the families door a man walking toward us pulled out his headphones and looked at me and asked ''Hey can you guys come visit me so I can learn about your church?'' What the... how often does that happen? Turns out he's seen stuff about the church on the radio and online and is really interested. He's also from Greenland and is incredibly friendly. His name is David. We got his information quickly because he was in a hurry and were able to make it to the appointment on time. You better believe I was smiling ear to ear. We were not only able to have a great lesson with the family in 16 minutes, but we established the pattern that we would come over every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon for the foreseeable future because in their words ''We can always set aside fifteen minutes can't we?''. On top of that we now have Peter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and a less active man and his wife every Tuesday and Saturday. With this approach we now have eleven lessons scheduled for next week even with Splits and Stake Conference. The planners are pretty full, and I am now starting to see the benefits of holding things short. My experiences are now becoming the evidence of my faith like Elder Bednar said.

That was a fun story, and I love you all, but I've gotta run. Sorry!

Ældste Durrant                        
Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  
2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​

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