Never Underestimate A Good Ward Mission Leader

Hi Everyone!

One of the most exciting things going on in my life right now is that our ward mission leader is amazing!!! I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes in the missionary effort when that one person does his calling right!

What's impressed me the most about him is that he's not a super talented person, he just does exactly what the brethren have been asking and so our work is exploding. This week when we turned in our progress record to the ward, we had all 15 slots filled of people we're actively teaching and working with, and our ward mission leader was able to get assignments made for members to come with us to each of our lessons!

This is the first time I've ever seen it work this well, usually the ward mission leader decides that he's going to do things his own way and work in a way different that what we've been taught needs to happen, and it just never turns out, no matter how many excellent activities there are or what inspirational firesides are planned.

The way to quickly improve missionary work is to get members to your lessons and to get the ward council involved in selecting and inviting less-actives to be taught by the missionaries. Period.

Now that I understand that, I think if I were a regular member right now I'd just find out who the Ward Mission Leader was in my ward and contact him, telling him that I'd love to go out with the missionaries to whatever lessons they had and then give him my schedule. The cool thing about that is that when members get involved in lessons and then the person they taught shows up to church, there's immediately a support system and a friend for the person.

You can keep being that person's friend and keep in contact with them even if they don't keep investigating, and then later on when the missionaries don't even know who the person is you'll be able to know when they're ready again and give the referral to the missionaries and have the lesson at your house! I think a lot of us are nervous because our non-member friends just aren't ready for missionary contact yet and we have so few that we feel like we can't participate in missionary work, but just getting involved through the ward mission leader can completely change that and make you an invaluable asset to the Lord and the mission program!

I'll get off my soap-box now, and talk a little about the people we're working with. Something cool we did was with our investigator Oscar, who is from Honduras and is middle-aged with no close family (he was divorced a while ago), we've been teaching him for a month or two now and he's slowly coming along and likes what we teach him.

This past week we'd invited him to church and then he didn't show up, so we just figured that he'd had something come up or had flaked on us, but then our next appointment we found out that he'd actually come to the building, but he was a few minutes late and he was too embarrassed to call us or to just go in, and so he'd turned around and gone home! Well, the member we brought with us jumped on that and volunteered us to give him a tour of the church building so he'd be more comfortable there and would know exactly what was going on.

We planned in intentionally for Saturday so it would be fresh in his mind on Sunday, and it worked like a charm! He loved the building and the pictures of Christ, we taught him about baptism at the font and about the priesthood authority at the painting of Peter James and John giving Joseph the priesthood, and testified about the power of the sacrament in the chapel.

It was a really spiritual experience and he enjoyed it, and then he came to church the next day to see for himself and we had a great fast and testimony meeting! It was neat for me to do a tour like that, I haven't done many on my mission but it was a perfect set-up and the Lord blessed us to have it go smoothly.

Steven and Mindy, our investigators with a baptismal date, decided out of the blue to start obeying the law of chastity by getting married! It was stunning for all of us, but I was really excited and we're getting them together with the Bishop so he can validate the marriage. Other than that we're working with several less-active families and helping them get back to church, we're seeing a lot of success and teaching and testifying a lot.

I'm so grateful for my mission and the chance to be in the Lord's service, I love the Gospel and I love helping people to experience the joy and the peace that can only come by living a life that's in harmony with the standards the Lord has set. I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Damon Janis