Dear Family,
How are you? I am well—this week we've still been eight in the
apartment, though it's not especially full, mostly it was just an
issue of having enough food! Today we went shopping, so we're well
stocked. We expect the Elders of Los Boulevares to leave within a
couple weeks, and so far I haven't met my replacement as
secretary—we'll see when he is announced, or perhaps I'll be staying
here for another month and a half!
I've considered how I'll train him, and so I have a sheet that shows
his four main problems (e.g. everybody needs to have a current visa),
followed by resources that he can use to solve them (e.g. the
envelopes of documentation, the visa spreadsheet and passport
photocopies, Hna. Verón in Buenos Aires, Hno. Vilche, the Migrations
website, etc). I think that this will help me to effectively orient
him, and also familiarize him as soon as possible with the resources
that he'll use and the context in which they are used. However, as his
most important concern is that of missionary work in the ward here,
problem #1 will be that people are generally not getting baptized, or
rather, that more people need to be doing it and that he can improve
the way that he and we work in order to bring these blessings to more
people.
Speaking of efficiency, President Salas often speaks of four important
attributes that we need to have as missionaries:
OBEDIENCE: Provides the Spirit and thus Heaven's blessing on the
work, sanctifies the missionary.
DILIGENCE: "I have often said that one of the greatest secrets of
missionary work is work! ... Work, work, work—there is no satisfactory
substitute, especially in missionary work."
EFFICIENCY: Makes work effective—allows more people to receive the
gospel and thus be blessed. As President Uchtdorf said: "There are so
many people in need whom we could be thinking about instead of
ourselves."
HUMILITY: Permits the Lord to work through us and makes us willing
to follow His counsel and pursue His work.
This week we also planned how to help the members of the ward here to
develop their missionary skills. We're planning various Family Home
Evenings this week with members and investigators, and we intent to
help our members to use Preach My Gospel to prepare, and try to focus
on how they can use it to more effectively teach the gospel, and
personally understand it. They're all very willing, but at the same
time very dependent on us missionaries. The vision is not so much that
they help us in missionary efforts, but rather that we help them.
We also had some excellent investigators at church this week. One of
them, Mercedes, recently lost her husband, thus finding herself in
particularly acute spiritual need. We talked about 'healing' in the
Book of Mormon in our last visit (1 Nephi 11:31, 3 Nephi 17:7), and so
this week she was ready on Sunday morning to come to church. She
enjoyed it quite a bit; we had told her that even though it's
sometimes difficult to feel that we are connect to God, that we know
where He is on Sundays at 09:30.
In the coming week we'll be preparing somewhat for the upcoming
transfers (at the end of January), and tomorrow I'm proctoring an
English test.
Love,
Elder Schlachter
P.S. I like Matthew's new MTC shirt (from the photos)!
