19 March 2012

Kjære familie og venner,

I feel like a missionary again.

It was a hard two months. I didn't have a motivated companion so not a whole lot of work was getting done. But fortunately, I'm with a great companion now, one who I happen to already know how to work with pretty well. We learned how to be missionaries together haha. So we'll work hard and have fun doing it. It's like last transfer never happened.

Elder Bekker and I have talked a lot about goals this week. Mainly it's because we're giving a presentation in zone conference on Friday about planning. But, it's also the start of a new transfer, so of course we want to make some goals for ourselves as well.

So this is our basic outline we were thinking of for our presentation. It'd be cool to hear what you all think, even if I won't get the feedback until after we've already given it =P But the biggest thing the mission seems to be struggling with right now is filling up our "funnels" with new people to teach. Basically, finding. I know it's different in other areas of the world, but at least here in Norway, most of our finding is done through contacting on the street. We do our member work of course, but any spare time we have during the day usually goes to some form of street contacting. The problem with that is we are a very young mission right now, and missionaries are getting washed out, cause the streets are tough. Really tough. We had a sister missionary just get moved here from a state-side mission due to health issues, and she cracked after getting "Nei-takked" (no thanks) three times in a row on the street. Her companion had to explain to her that we get "nei-takked" all day to find that one person who is interested. I dunno what happens in the other missions, but I guess Norwegian missionaries are pretty battle-hardened street contacters in comparison.

So that's the problem. Part of the solution we're going to talk about is better nightly planning. Instead of saying, "Ok Elder, we've got lunch at 12, dinner at 6, and contacting before and after meal times. Cool, done planning, say a prayer, let's play guitar", we want them to actually plan those hours of contacting. Plan where we are going to go, and then make goals for each individual hour slot of the day. It's cool because one of the goals Elder Bekker and I have for the transfer is to give out 200 copies of the Book of Mormon this transfer. That's 3 books a day, give or take the days where we won't have time to go contacting. So one of the things we can plan at night is how many books we are going to give out in the first hour, the second hour, and so forth.

The better we plan something and the more specific goals we set, the more likely we are to have success. And that goes with anything in our lives, not just missionary work. If I set a goal to make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, but I don't set any specific goals along the way, ie get two slices of bread, spread the peanut butter, etc, then I'm just setting myself up for failure. Ok maybe that's a bad example, everyone can make a PB&J, but just think how many New Years Resolutions are thrown out the window on January 2nd, because someone didn't set a goal to keep that resolution for that day, rather than just that year.

The cool thing with setting goals in missionary work is that the Lord has promised to help us meet them. How can the Lord help us if we don't set goals and then ask him for help in meeting those goals? The more specific help we ask for, the more specific help we receive. That goes for anyone you ask help of, including God. As missionaries in Norway get better at setting goals and then following through on their part of the deal by giving all of their efforts to achieve it, they'll start to see the miracles as they receive help from the Lord. No one is going to get washed out contacting on the street if they are seeing miracles and being successful.

So that's our presentation. At least that was our theory, but Elder Bekker and I decided we needed to put it to the test. Saturday night, we planned our contacting hours after church. In the three hours between lunch and dinner, we planned where we were going to go and we planned to teach three people and give them a copy of the Book of Mormon, each. The reason why that is normally looked upon as a sign of mental insanity, is because we were going to be contacting in Trondheim, Norway on a Sunday afternoon. You could drop a nuclear bomb in the center of Trondheim and not kill anyone except the Mormon missionaries. But hey, Elder Bekker and I were together in the MTC and we're slightly overconfident in our abilities. Or we have faith or something, I haven't really decided yet.

We walk out of the church after lunch and into a winter apocalypse. No joke, straight blizzard outside. I'm still slightly sick, as I have been all week, and I must admit I'm not really in the mood for this shindig right now. But we set the goal and we didn't want to look stupid trying to explain this concept in zone conference on Friday so we set off. Lo and behold, it really worked. We only gave away one book but we did talk to three way cool people, and had fantastic (long) teaches with them right there on the streets of Cold and Snowy, Norway. Call it coincidence, but I'm totally telling that story on Friday =)

I feel like I haven't had an email like this in a while. Feels good. I'm back in the game haha.

Oh yeah cool news flash. President Johansen confirmed that we'll be having a mission conference next month on the 20th. Which means all the missionaries will get to be in Oslo for the giant Norway conference that weekend, where they are going to form a new stake. Our mission conference will also most likely be presided over by the Area Presidency, which is fun. The coolest part though, is it'll be a nice little reunion with all the people from the first year of my mission in Tønsberg and Bergen, since most of them will be at the conference as well. So that's pretty exciting.

Anyways, I think that's all for this week. Happy St. Patricks day...I wore a green tie =)
Elder Sessions