Loving the Work!

February 16, 2015

When teaching someone this week I used this quote. It took until today to figure out where it came from. It's from a talk by Thomas S Monson. She had a concern about tea and why we aren't allowed to drink it when there is health benefits and yadda yadda yadda same stuff that everyone always asks. the fact is that it doesn't matter what god asks us to do. Most of the time we won't know why he wants us to do it, but if we follow his will it will always be for our benefit. He is our loving heavenly father and will never lead us astray.

“Ofttimes the wisdom of God appears as foolishness to men, but the greatest single lesson we can learn in mortality is that, when God speaks and a man obeys, man will always be right.” -Thomas Spencer Monson

I'm spiritually pumped for this week. Elder Wiser and I have set some really high (but attainable) goals for this week and I really believe in them. The thing about this area is that it really has an unlimited potential. During my personal study the other day I came across the scripture acts 18:9-10 and I flipping love it. It felt like it was really talking to me. In this city, we walk by literally thousands of people every day from all walks of life and I know that many of them are prepared to receive the restored gospel. I just need to get better at using my time effectively and talking to more of them! On Monday we had a pretty hectic Pday. Loads of stuff to do running around. Tuesday was good – a lot of GQing, taught Z and had a DA at Alex’s with a bunch of our recent converts. That was super fun. You'll probably be getting a lot of pictures and videos from Alex haha you can use those on the blog. Then we had coordination. Coordination here is amazing, I finally feel like our ward mission leader understands his role and cares enough about it to hold his calling every day of the week. I love it. if every ward mission leader were like this, the church membership would double. On Wednesday, we taught 4 back to back lessons and had a DA at our ward mission leaders house (Brother Cartwright(he's American)) and during it he actually asked what we like about coordination, what he could do better and what he could do better as a ward mission leader......AMAZING!! I love him and his family. They are awesome. Thursday was district meeting some gqing and some teaching!! Friday was pretty crazy, elder wiser went to district leader training and I was on exchange with Elder Hanare from New Zealand in our area. We just pretty much taught lessons all day in the ICC and then exchanged back. Saturday and Sunday were both letdowns because all of our lessons except one or two fell through, but it gave us enough time to contact all of the AUF's that we needed to and finish weekly planning, so it worked out.

Even though we're teaching so much, I do find that I'm still stressed a lot of the time, just for different reasons than before. I think that's how it goes in the work of the lord though. It's almost as though there is more pressure now because We have so many people's salvation in our hands. I love it though it's so rewarding. I love you guys and can't wait to see you in 8 weeks!!

Love you,

Elder Sorensen

February 23, 2015

This past week was a bit disappointing. As far as all the areas in this mission goes, we had an insane week, 7 lessons, but as far as this area goes that was terrible. We could easily teach 15-20 lessons a week here, in fact one of the other teams in our ward taught 28 lessons this week. (Extremely abnormal for England , But I think possible in any area with the help of Heavenly Father. We had 8 investigators drop this week and our most solid investigator Z basically dropped us as well. She is still willing to meet, but says that she doesn't think religion is for her anymore. It was quite devastating because she was on date for baptism this weekend.... Looking back through the key indicators for this area we noticed a trend of teaching a baptizing a lot and then the work would slow down, and the next week it would pick back up again it would be 14 lessons one week 10 the next week and then down to 7 or 8, then it would jump back up to 14 or 15 lessons again. The conclusion we came to is that when the missionaries here are teaching around 15 lessons, they/we get comfortable with it and start putting a little less effort into finding new investigators because we feel like we are doing fine and don't really need new ones right now. because of that, when some investigators drop, there aren't enough new investigators to make up for the ones who are dropping us. it's at that point when the work slows way down that we start to freak out and put all of our heart, might mind and strength into finding because we get desperate. We've made a commitment to break the desperation cycle and we are going to magnify the time between lessons with all of our heart, finding like we have no one to teach and teaching like there is no one else in the world that we are working with(completely personalized). I'll tell you how we did in my letter next week. I really think this lesson can extend beyond just missionary life though. I think that this principle can be applied in all parts of life. I think too often we get complacent with how things are. We say things like " I'm a good enough person" or " I'm not hurting anyone, so I think I'm doing fine", but I think that that is dangerous thinking and prevents us from attaining a higher level of happiness. The Savior is our perfect example, and he never became complacent with how much good he did in the world, he never said " well I've healed 200 people now, I think that's good enough." he kept moving forward and eventually he reached the goal that we all seek after, exaltation. I know that If we can stay motivated to improve in in times of success and great comfort, we will one day attain celestial glory just like he did.

I love you guys so much and I'll be forwarding you a couple pictures. There was a big festival against badger culling here a few days ago and we took a picture of us protesting :) haha and I think a couple of other pictures.

Love you guys!!

Elder Sorensen