"Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood you said it in has left you." George R. Zalucki


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Make the Green Grow


From Elder Gleaves, a zone leader in Phoenix

"This week has just been amazing! We have seen so many miracles come from working hard and diligently especially with the "making the green grow" project. We have seen an elevated level of excitement in the Elders, and I really feel like it has unified us as a zone. It reminded me a lot of this past Christmas when we were all excited to hear about baptisms, where we were at and how many more we coming. It's the same thing now, but just with the TTI's (TTI is an acronym for Teach, Testify, and Invite. We use it to refer to street contacting). The Elders are excited to get feedback, and they worked harder than ever. Not only did we reach our goal, but we soared past it making a new recod in the zone of 1790 TTI's. And now that everyone did it, we all reached the goal of 140 TTI's per companionship, we know that we can do it every week. 

It was something really cool to see that the number of lessons didn't decrease, it actually continued to go up. We are teaching more, and seeing more people come to sacrament meeting. I believe that it is due to our efforts of talking to EVERYONE that we see. We were definetly able to see how God was able to prepare the way for us in giving us enough time to do everything. Just a quick example, yesterday we actually had the chance to have Elder Isom with us, and in that day we only had 2 lessons planned. So in the begining we were just trying to make contacts and visits, and not too much worked out. We we continued to work diligently even when we weren't teaching and the Lord did bless us. We ended up that night with 6 lessons, and 30 TTI's. Looking back, I dont even know how we did it with only 2 lessons planned. But the Lord prepared his children to be there in their homes at the right time so that we could visit them. And a lot of the people that we visited yesterday are on their way towards baptism in the next couple of weeks. We have been so blessed here to find those prepared to accept the gospel."

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When I was 14 or 15, I had a teacher that prided himself on being a thinker. We had some enlightening discussions in his classroom. He helped me ask some great questions that led to tremendous answers that still guide me today. We agreed on many things, but were at odds on a few. One of them was religion. I had a lot of respect for this man, but it amazed me that someone who claimed to be open minded was blind to just how closed minded he was when it came to God. He was always challenging my faith. He considered my beliefs to be a sign of my weakness. His claim was that unless it could be acknowledged by the 5 senses, there was no proof that God existed. I struggled as a young person to help him understand that he was limiting his understanding to what he had personally experienced, cutting himself off from other possibilities. The best that I could do was to try and help him understand how I knew; that things of the spirit could only be understood and perceived by the spirit. Years later, I still don't have a better answer to this one fundamental question, but I face the same dilemma. This blog is dedicated to preserving stories and experiences of missionaries in the Arizona Mesa Mission both during and after their formal missions. Some stories are fun and light hearted, but others are of a spiritual nature. The blog forum is so convenient, yet the format is limiting. There is more to these words than letters on a page. To truly understand the messages requires not only an open mind, but a soft heart.

After all, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a Heaven for?- Robert Browning"

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