To me it's amazing how hard it can be to try to convey the love,
peace, joy, etc. the gospel has given to me and put it into a lesson
where the student can feel the same conviction for themselves. I'm
trying my best to learn Chapter 3 in Preach My Gospel better than I do
because I do want to teach others better than I am. I want to help them
understand for themselves the importance this message has. The only way
to get better at that is by studying. I love personal study. It's my time to learn and hopefully as I study each day for the next 2 years I can understand the gospel much better. :)
Missionary
life is getting easier now and comes much more naturally doing what I
do. Several of my worries is that I'm not doing enough, learning quick
enough, or helping enough people, but that's the perfectionist in me.
Everyday I'll work hard and do my best to serve the best I can that day.
It's frustrating not being able to express my thoughts on this better. I
feel I'm explaining well enough my joys and worries well enough. Yet
going back and reading it lacks the emotions, experiences, and extended
thoughts that are connected to the service I'm doing. I am slowly
growing to enjoy this and hope that I love this work immensely.
Spiritual:
It’s amazing how
quickly one week can go by. Haha When focusing on the needs of others, time
flys by.
There have been many things that have gone
through my head when talking about missionary work. It seems like there is much
to do here. I talked to Elder Bunga about this and he helped me a lot to know my jobs.
The specialized training helped to answer this also. I realize that a lot of
this is and is not my calling. I am here to work on missionary work. If I truly
want to help the church here then I focus on my calling as a missionary. The
thoughts of everything are these: There’s
home teaching needed to be put together and to get done, getting callings for
recent converts, make some callings up so everyone has a calling or find a list
of callings to give to branch president, getting lesson 5 lessons done with
recent converts, attendance roll sheets to go around on Sunday to help track
who comes to church, do young men and young women happen each week, does each
organization have a president AND counselors, announcements need to be made in
elder’s quorum, and having BMCM run better with all leaders in attendance and
our needs to be heard. Yea… a lot of these are not my responsibilities, but
it’s things I’ve noticed. What do I do? I focus on being a missionary. I have
teaching to do, inviting all to come unto Christ, strengthening sacrament attendance,
focusing on less actives and recent converts, helping eligible young men go on
missions (which will in turn strengthen the church), getting to KNOW and TEACH
chapter 3 better. There’s much to do on my end. My focus is on missionary work.
I’m sorry if these thoughts are wrong to put in here, but it’s something that
has been bugging me and this last week has helped to answer what I should focus
on. Your specialized training and Elder Bunga helped me understand where my
focus needs to be.
Being on his mission has already taught me
a lot and it’s also fun and enjoyable. The Manner of Happiness lesson helps to
point that out. No matter what I go through, if I live righteously there’s much
to be grateful for and happy about! Scriptures, Temples, Church, Knowing about
the Plan of Salvation, having the priesthood, having a loving and caring
family, having a modern day prophet, praying, etc. These things have given me
great joy and peace in life. I wanted to share this spectacular message to
others and that’s why I’m here J
I want to be able to teach Chapter 3 in
Preach My Gospel better than I’m doing, but a common theme that I constantly
have in my life is understanding the virtue of patience. Understanding won’t
come all at once, but as I study the scriptures, pray, keep having experience
while serving my Heavenly Father, and keep the commandments and mission rules,
I will learn. That’s the way life works!
I had the privilege of baptizing two of
our investigators this last Sunday. (First time EVER baptizing) It’s exciting
to see how much they have learned and grown. It’s amazing to see how much I’ve
learned and grown with them because their first lesson with missionaries was on
my first day in Delhi. One month later, they are baptized and I’ve been serving
here for one month.
Love your brother and son
Elder Devin Bastian
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