3rd P-day in Toronto (Tillsonburg)

September 12, 2016

It's been another great week!

     It has been ultra hot and humid. Pretty much over 30 degrees Celcius and very humid the whole week.

     Sherry is really starting to improve and is gaining a serious interest in the BOM! She still doesn't want to talk baptism at all and shuts it down super fast whenever it is brought up. but she has said relatively passively(only when I asked her very directly) that she believes the BOM is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet. That was awesome but it is still very passive and not inspiring real change, at least at that point in time. Anyway she also is reading a ton of the BOM and before hand had not read really any at all. I know that if she keeps reading she will begin to develope that real intent that has not been there or is not there super well yet.

     However, we had a sweet experience with her and church. She had said she would come to church, but our follow up didn't work because no answer to phone. The member that was going to bring her showed up without her and we were super bummed. However Elder Johnson saw her coming in outside the window in Priesthood 10 minutes before sacrament meeting so we went out and talked to her for a sec. She was holding her mouth which she has been in a lot of pain because she has had multiple mouth operations recently. she said that when the member had come to get her it had woke her up cause she forgot, and decided not to come. But she said that "God kept telling her that she needed to come" and she DID!! I was so excited and talked to her after and she said that she really liked the speakers that spoke, it was a high councilman and someone else that he had brought. Such a miracle! Can't wait to meet with her on tommorow and talk about her expericences with the BOM. We are also going to leave "The Testaments" with her which I don't think I had ever seen the whole thing pre mission but it is one of if not my favorite films that the church has ever came out with before.

     We also finally got to have a lesson with Jordan and I think we have set up in his mind a real opportunity for him to pray with real intent and recieve his answer, I have my fingers crossed!

     An absolute highlight and probably biggest highlight of the week was Elder Arnold! Holy cow! He spoke in last conference and gave a great talk, but what he did here was nothing short of miraculous for me individually. we stayed at "The mansion" the night before in Brampton(big house where the Assistant's live). It was fun to see so many missionaries but none of the ones I came out with were there. My zone was though and they are all pretty sweet!

     The next day we were in the church right by the temple(general meeting place for big meetings). the district and zone leaders, and the sister training leaders were with Elder Arnold in a seperate meeting for the first 2 hours, and the rest of us had a great led discussion about the stripling warriors and Christlike attributes they demonstrated. It was sweet and it really brought the spirit! There were people at the mansion who had met with Elder Arnold the previous day that said he was super bold and laid down the law.

     Anyway I had some specific questions going into the meeting, hoping that the spirit could answer them and teach me anything else I needed to know from Elder Arnold. I can't begin to tell you how crazy it was. Every single one of my questions were answered in depth, and 90% of them were answered in the first 10 minutes. By the spirit some, but mostly by the actual things he said. I have an absolute testimony and it has been significantly stregnthened that Christ's chosen representatives are His chosen representatives and they are absolutely inspired to recieve revelation for me.

     One question I had had how important it was to kneel with investigators in lessons. in the MTC they taught that it was very important and should always be a priority. However out here Elder Johnson seemed to suggest that it wasn't that important and that it wasn't as important they the investigators were the ones actually praying and that it was more important for them to be the patriarch of the home and choosing. I honestly was very worried about this because I had some spiritual experiences with investigators praying while kneeling. Elder Arnold shook everyone's hands as the music was playing and then when the prayer was going to be said everyone kneeled down. Elder Arnold got up and said this was not okay, we don't kneel in big meetings. He said that we would from that point foward be kneeling with all of our investigators in every lesson. Prayers answered. He said that the foundation of the mission was here, but we were going to be making some small changes to help the mission stop being so "flat". He talked ab out obedience being so important because if we don't do obedience we will never get onto anything else. He said that we should have such good studies in the morning that when we get tgo someone's doorstep there is NO WAY that they won't feel the spirit super strongly. Another question I had was why goals were not focused and why we didn't make it a consistant priority to follow up on goals all the time. He talked a lot about goals and how we should be fired up about goals and how we were approaching goals all the wrong way and not setting nearly enough, which I completely agreed with.

     One thing I really loved that he said was that when people reject me they are only rejecting Christ, and that he was willing to be rejected for Christ all day every day. 

    Another thing I was super worried about was that we just seemed not to be using the ward in the way we should be, and was going in with the question of how we could get the ward excited about missionary work and really work as a team. He answered this with fire. Totally said that we are spending way too much time contacting(just waking around talking to people) and tracting and not spending nearly enough time teaching and using members as the PRIMARY way to find people. It sounded like angels singing in my ears. He then shared some specifics of how we can make that happen.

     I was so excited and hyped to go back to our area and basically change our entire gameplan of how we were doing things. However I quickly found that Elder Johnson was not nearly as excited as I was about all this, he was immedietly saying why he thinks we should apply it, but not expect immediate results because of the "uniqueness" of our are and whatnot. Oh well. He did tell me the next day some things that I thought probably were going on in his head which makes a whole lot of sense.

     Elder Arnold seemingly just came in and tore down a huge foundation of things that President Clayton had been doing. To Elder Johnson it felt like everything that he had been taught in the last 2 years had been torn down by Elder Arnold(This of course isn't actually the case, but I could see how he could feel that way). And it's difficult because Elder Clayton is now a General Authourity as well and obviously he was doing a lot of things right here. Also he has 2 weeks so I'm sure it is tough to think that we should change the very fundamental way that we use our time. We'll see what we can do.

     On the brightside about half of our mission is missionaries that came in within the last two transfers, so everyone is fresh and if we apply these things, I know that it will work out incredibly well. I do feel that I have for sure been very prideful about this and that I was looking at it much to much in a way of justification for me being frustrated with how we have been approaching it. the truth is though that I have a lot that I can personally do a lot better at in relation to this advice. And even though I am new I haven't really proactively done anything to help us be more successful in these areas that were addressed.

     I am just so excited to get going. It is so much better out here where I don't have personal distractions that get in the way of carrying out revelation of how to improve. I love it.

     My faviorite quote that Elder Arnold shared was from Richard g. Scott, "In order to reach a higher goal we must do things differently." I am so excited to do things differently, and then continue to do them differently to reach higher and higher goals!