Things here have been changing so much! The work really is hastening in so many ways!!

 

First off: we now do our primary finding on facebook! No knocking doors, no walking the streets... facebook! basically we message all of the members and say " Hey we need your help with some missionary work!" They say something along the lines of "sure, what did you have in mind?" We say, "its pretty easy actually, we just need you to prayerfully choose ten of your facebook friends that we could share a message about christ with!" When they realize  how little effort it takes on their part they are all for it! Then we take it from there, we message those ten people, tell them that we go to so and sos church and that our job at the church is to help people to follow christ and be baptized like he was! and ask if we can send them a video or ask them if they have been baptized. we get various responses such as: Sure! or Of course you can! or Do not ever message me again... :) Then if people let us we start teaching them through facebook! we can be teaching like five lessons at a time: totally hastening! Then if they are really interested we set up a time to meet them in person, preferably in the home of the member who referred them:) its awesome! And its been working pretty well:)

 

Second: When we do come in contact with people on the street, like if we are biking or something, we stop and the first words that come out of our mouth is: "Have you ever been baptized?" or "Do you want to be baptized?". And then the conversation goes from there. If we can't commit them to baptism right there on the street, we never meet with them again. We ONLY teach people that want to be baptized. Most missionaries will even set a baptism date right there on the street! the strangest part is... its been successful! I know you are probably thinking that we are nuts! But it works. there really are people out there that will commit to a date right then and there, and they are really commited! They come to church, they keep committments... they are all progressing! Now, we haven't found any of those people here in our area yet, but i trust my leaders! and i know if we are obedient and do things the way they ask that we will see miracles!

 

Third... because of all these changes. We have had to drop all of our investigators because they aren't progressing... :( its like we are dragging them to the baptism font. and the people who are dragged, dont stay. three of the people that i taught and baptized have already starting going less active. The fourth moved to georgia and who knows what hes doing! I don't want to see any more of the people that i baptize fall away... its really too heartbreaking. But if we find those people who are really prepared, who readily accept and keep commitments, and that we dont have to drag, they will stay. So right now we have one investigator. And she wont be one for long because she will be baptized either this week or next! but last week during weekly planning we set some pretty high goals for how many lessons we want to teach and how many investigators we want to have and we have full faith that we will see miracles!

 

Something else thats fun that we as a mission have started doing is Find a Family in Seven Days. Obviously, missionaries goal is to find families to teach! families can support each other, and they can go to the temple together. So basically our leaders have promised us that if we diligently do these few simple steps, we can find a family to teach and baptize! So first, we decide what our family will be like.. is it a family of five? Four? how many kids? about what ages are these kids? Then we tell heavenly father our desire to find this particular family and pray for him to help us find them. Then we fast. Then we make plans. Where are we going to look for this family? What members do we want to ask for referrals? We set exact days and times that we will look for our family. Then we go out and implement the plan! For your information, the family we are looking for is a family of five:) mom, dad, and three kids!

 

We had interviews with president cusick last week! They went really well:) he told me that i was a great missionary, and not to measure my success as a missionary by baptisms. He also told me i was a cute girl:) That day was the day that the assistants did the training about facebook and dropping everybody! They literally took sister coleman and i aside and had us show them our area book and talk about how well everyone is progressing and if they weren't, we dropped them right then!

 

this week really has been awesome! and i'm even more excited for this coming week!:) I love you all so much!

 

love always, Sister Rowland :D