Que tal todos?!
Well, this has been a pretty good week, although it wasn't as good as
we hoped. We worked hard and put in a lot of effort and a lot of
people just happened to have a lot to do, or go out of town, or
whatever at the same times we went by them. We know that we worked
hard though and that as we continue to work hard The Lord will bless
us, and more importantly will bless those we're teaching.
Something interesting that I learned this week was that the story of
Nephi can apply really well to planning as a missionary. As
missionaries we do a lot of planning; we plan for every week, every
investigator and less-active we have, and many other potential
investigators as well; we plan every night for the next day; we plan
for Facebook; and we plan for most of what we do as missionaries. And
sometimes we can get carried away as missionaries, especially in an
area like this where we have a lot of people to see, planning out
every little detail, making "perfect" or "great" plans. Which is good
to make detailed, specific plans. But like in the story of Nephi,
sometimes we have to walk by faith "being led by the Spirit, not
knowing before-hand what [we] should do". President Alba just sent
that to us in his weekly e-mail to us this Monday. I really was struck
by it because sometimes I personally get stressed out when I think
"our plans aren't good enough", or I can't tell what we need to do for
a specific 1/2 hour block. And I learned that sometimes that's
necessary to allow room for us to have Faith in The Lord. We often
have times where we have to say, well you know what, our plans got
shot, what should we do; and oftentimes those are the best times
because we allow the Spirit to guide us and look for his promptings.
That's not to say planning things isn't necessary, because if it
wasn't necessary or important we wouldn't do it so much as
missionaries, but we need to "make room for faith" as President Alba
put it.
I love y'all a lot and I'm sorry I'm running out of time so I've got
to go, but I hope y'all have a wonderful week!
-Elder Whitaker
Well, this has been a pretty good week, although it wasn't as good as
we hoped. We worked hard and put in a lot of effort and a lot of
people just happened to have a lot to do, or go out of town, or
whatever at the same times we went by them. We know that we worked
hard though and that as we continue to work hard The Lord will bless
us, and more importantly will bless those we're teaching.
Something interesting that I learned this week was that the story of
Nephi can apply really well to planning as a missionary. As
missionaries we do a lot of planning; we plan for every week, every
investigator and less-active we have, and many other potential
investigators as well; we plan every night for the next day; we plan
for Facebook; and we plan for most of what we do as missionaries. And
sometimes we can get carried away as missionaries, especially in an
area like this where we have a lot of people to see, planning out
every little detail, making "perfect" or "great" plans. Which is good
to make detailed, specific plans. But like in the story of Nephi,
sometimes we have to walk by faith "being led by the Spirit, not
knowing before-hand what [we] should do". President Alba just sent
that to us in his weekly e-mail to us this Monday. I really was struck
by it because sometimes I personally get stressed out when I think
"our plans aren't good enough", or I can't tell what we need to do for
a specific 1/2 hour block. And I learned that sometimes that's
necessary to allow room for us to have Faith in The Lord. We often
have times where we have to say, well you know what, our plans got
shot, what should we do; and oftentimes those are the best times
because we allow the Spirit to guide us and look for his promptings.
That's not to say planning things isn't necessary, because if it
wasn't necessary or important we wouldn't do it so much as
missionaries, but we need to "make room for faith" as President Alba
put it.
I love y'all a lot and I'm sorry I'm running out of time so I've got
to go, but I hope y'all have a wonderful week!
-Elder Whitaker