Hola Familia y Amigos!!!
This weeks been pretty darn good, overall! Like always the General Conference addresses were very helpful and uplifting, and I feel very much that I've been taught a lot by the Spirit about what I need to change, do better, and I've also received strength and comfort from Conference as well. This Conference we also were blessed to have an investigator, Walter (technically a potential, but soon to be an investigator) there at one of the sessions of Conference. We were introduced to him through one of our less-actives who invited him on the bus to watch General Conference! He was very interested and I know he felt something special in Conference. We also had the miracle of having two other less-actives attend sessions of General Conference. We also took a lot of time to invite all that we met to General Conference this week. And although none of them came, we did invite them, and I know that at least some of them felt the Spirit as we invited them, and their hearts are more softened to meeting with the missionaries in the future.
I wanted to explain a little bit about how Facebook and Skype and stuff works, at least at this point in time. So since I can now be friends with anybody in the world, that includes previous friends and family. I know before that was not what we could do, but that came with the changes. We have up to two hours a day we can spend on Facebook, doing activities that help spread the gospel, strengthen members, find/receive people to teach, and basically all the same things we try to do in real life missionary work. So it is allowed for me to communicate with anyone, friends, family, people I've never met, if only the purpose of doing so is related to inviting people unto Christ. We often times teach people through Facebook chat/message. We seek referrals from individual members, investigators, and others, as well as groups and pages that we find. We post uplifting, and inspired messages. We try to spread our presence, and the Gospel. All trying to prepare people to meet with missionaries where they live, and be baptized there, so they can come closer to Christ. We also use Skype and Facetime when we can to teach people. We don't really use those tools for finding (haven't seen it done yet), but we try hard oftentimes to use them for teaching online, rather than Facebook chat. Just as in "real world" missionary work, we have to keep track of, and report, key indicators each week for our online work, and we plan out when, where, and what we're going to be doing on Facebook.
Anyways, my times drawing to a close, but I love y'all and hope y'all enjoyed General Conference as much as I did!
-Elder Whitaker
This weeks been pretty darn good, overall! Like always the General Conference addresses were very helpful and uplifting, and I feel very much that I've been taught a lot by the Spirit about what I need to change, do better, and I've also received strength and comfort from Conference as well. This Conference we also were blessed to have an investigator, Walter (technically a potential, but soon to be an investigator) there at one of the sessions of Conference. We were introduced to him through one of our less-actives who invited him on the bus to watch General Conference! He was very interested and I know he felt something special in Conference. We also had the miracle of having two other less-actives attend sessions of General Conference. We also took a lot of time to invite all that we met to General Conference this week. And although none of them came, we did invite them, and I know that at least some of them felt the Spirit as we invited them, and their hearts are more softened to meeting with the missionaries in the future.
I wanted to explain a little bit about how Facebook and Skype and stuff works, at least at this point in time. So since I can now be friends with anybody in the world, that includes previous friends and family. I know before that was not what we could do, but that came with the changes. We have up to two hours a day we can spend on Facebook, doing activities that help spread the gospel, strengthen members, find/receive people to teach, and basically all the same things we try to do in real life missionary work. So it is allowed for me to communicate with anyone, friends, family, people I've never met, if only the purpose of doing so is related to inviting people unto Christ. We often times teach people through Facebook chat/message. We seek referrals from individual members, investigators, and others, as well as groups and pages that we find. We post uplifting, and inspired messages. We try to spread our presence, and the Gospel. All trying to prepare people to meet with missionaries where they live, and be baptized there, so they can come closer to Christ. We also use Skype and Facetime when we can to teach people. We don't really use those tools for finding (haven't seen it done yet), but we try hard oftentimes to use them for teaching online, rather than Facebook chat. Just as in "real world" missionary work, we have to keep track of, and report, key indicators each week for our online work, and we plan out when, where, and what we're going to be doing on Facebook.
Anyways, my times drawing to a close, but I love y'all and hope y'all enjoyed General Conference as much as I did!
-Elder Whitaker