Buenos Dias!
Wow, I'm pretty excited right now! I was scared I might get transferred right before Christmas, but thankfully I'm staying here in Yuma through all the holidays so it will be fun doing it all with missionaries and people that I know. There actually weren't that many changes here- only 2 missionaries in the zone are leaving today. But what's kind of crazy is those 2 are the ones I came to Yuma with, so I've been here long enough now to see every single missionary in the zone get transferred that was here when I came in. So that's been pretty sweet. And what's also pretty awesome is I'm no longer a greenie!! I hit 6 months last week and I can't believe how fast these months have passed by.
Well, Elder Johnson and I are super excited we're staying together because we've about got everything figured out now. We've been 100% refocused as we realized some things we can do that will make us better missionaries. We've decided to do just the missionary work-outs every morning since we were getting too caught up in waking up way early and working out a ton. We're running a lot more and just going to do simple work-outs in the morning. We feel like we'll be more effective and focused this way. It's definitely going to be nice getting more sleep! :) I need that. We're definitely trying to be 100% obedient and have the Spirit with us as much as possible.
But we've already noticed some important changes and improvements in our lessons and everything. We're teaching more simply, getting the investigators more involved, and teaching shorter more focused lessons. It can be so easy to drag things out and teach long lessons, but usually that doesn't really help the investigator that much. Shorter, more powerful, lessons I feel are more effective. In fact, last night we had one of our best lessons so far, and I don't think it was more than 10 or 15 minutes. We had talked to his mom out on the street, and were going to see if we could visit. He came to the door and said they were Catholic and couldn't do it. We showed interest and talked about how much Jesus Christ has affected our lives, and testified of the blessings and happiness that can be found in His restored gospel. He really opened up and we taught a quick lesson about some basic doctrines, and just introduced baptism right off the bat. He really got to thinking and it was just amazing to just see the change that came over Him when He felt the Spirit.
We also had a pretty amazing opportunity this past week - last Thursday we had a General Authority, Elder Evans of the Seventy, come visit us and give us some very specific and helpful training on the Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel. We got some pretty amazing promised blessings and a big focus was on issuing baptismal commitments. We should be committing people to be baptized our very first lesson with them, and what will motivate us to do that is the very doctrine of Christ. When you understand the pure and simple doctrine, that alone will be enough to drive us to help them and want this for them. There's definitely a fine line between being bold and being over-bearing, but I think the vast majority of missionaries are not bold enough when it comes to baptism and commandments. Our investigators need to know our purpose immediately, and need to know where our visits are headed. So Elder Johnson and I have been making a very concious effort to do that, and it's become so much more comfortable even in our OYM's on the street! We bring it up very naturally and we've noticed a lot better responses (well, in general).
Oh, and we've been doing a lot of music around here too. I sang at a baptism last week (I Will Not Be Still - didn't sound half bad!) and then we sang a bunch on Sunday too, at a stake fireside. With 2 other missionaries I sang a cool medley of Christmas songs, and then "Mary did you know", which is now my favorite Christmas song of all time. We sang a barbershop arrangement of it and it sounded pretty awesome. It was nice doing this fireside that was just pure Christmas music - purely songs about the Savior and His birth. The Spirit was definitely strong there and I just loved being there and being a part of it.
Another highlight of the week is that we helped out with the baptism of a less-active's 8-year old daughter. She really wanted us to do it, so we fixed up everything, and worked it all out. We ended up talking, doing a special musical number, and then I baptized her. It was definitely a small baptism but had a nice feel to it all. The entire family was so happy when she got baptized and I know they could all feel how special it was. The dad hasn't had anything to do with the Church in over 3 years, but he came to the baptism and expressed a very sincere thanks to us for helping them out. Hopefully we can get the whole family back in Church again! Elder Johnson did his first confirmation in Spanish, and he was surprised because he wasn't planning on doing it! But everything turned out very nice, and we were glad we could help out. It seems like a lot of our call here in Yuma has been to re-activate families and work with recent converts.
So we are still on bike for now - hopefully we get a car soon! At least it keeps us in good shape... But we're loving it here, excited to stay in Yuma, and excited for CHRISTMAS!!!
Feliz Navidad a todos!
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