Dear Family,
Merry Christmas! How are you? I am well—for the first time in quite
some time, today we had a regular preparation day; often we find
ourselves stuck in the office, or doing essential tasks, but today we
tidied up the apartment in the morning and then went out to dinner
with President and some of his visiting family. The mission in general
is also doing well, as today the news is that we've broken 'the
record' for monthly baptisms—currently the focus in the areas and
zones of the mission is on having a 'workflow' that results in
baptisms weekly. To do so, one needs to constantly be finding people,
and always have a goodly number of people in various states of
progress in the gospel. Thus, we don't find people in week one, and
have baptisms about a month later, but rather we find people every
week, and thus we can be more constant in the results.
President also mentioned today that when he was a missionary in
northern Argentina about thirty years ago, nobody knew anything about
the church, but now, anyone can recognize the missionaries and just
about anybody knows someone or has a family member who is a member of
the church. Thus, much of the focus of our work needs to be with the
help of the members, who are acquainted with people who are being
prepared to receive the gospel, instead of knocking doors of the same
old crowd that has had their door knocked over the last forty years! I
was reading in Doctrine and Covenants about "seek[ing] to bring forth
and establish the cause of Zion" (ESP: 'procura sacar a luz y
establecer la causa de Sión'). I suppose that missionary work is a
combination of the two; of bringing to light and establishing the
Lord's kingdom and work.
Thank you for the Christmas letter!—I like to use it to introduce the
family to my companions. I'm glad that nobody got hurt in the car
accident!
This week we had a good planning session—we're looking forwards to
working hard with the people that we know, and to meet more!
Love,
Elder Schlachter
(P.S. While I was cleaning today... I found my debit card! I'm not
sure if there's a way to cancel a cancellation of a card, but if so,
it would be convenient!)
