I´m a secretary.
Pretty legit. I get to work in the offices every morning from 9-2 every day. Not only that, but I was told that I will receive the new Mission President. So, at the very least, I will be in the offices as a secretary until August. VERY least. But, I will probably be here a little longer than that because as the new President, I can´t honestly say that he knows everyone really well. I think he´ll keep me here until he can learn about everyone else. Not entirely sure, but hey, we´ll see what happens when we get there.
I´m going to be in charge of all the finances of the mission. Every single piece of money that we manage in the mission is under my jurisdiction. All of the missionaries are going to be my best friends now because they want to get their money really quickly. XD
Okay, so that´s out of the way. I´ll talk about random stuff now.
1.) First, we had a not-baptism. Let me give you the background of what happened.
There´s this little girl named A. and she is 9 years old. She´s gone to church since the dawn of time and knows pretty much everything. She still hasn´t been baptized though because her mom didn´t give her permission until A said she wanted to be baptized. So, we began talking to her and had the baptism scheduled for the 31 of January.
We arrived at that date and had warm water running. She´s got asthma, so it´s really hard for her to breathe in cold water. Well, our ward mission leader is not patient at all, so he just turned on full cold to get more water in there. So the water was cold for the baptism.
A shows up and we show her what´s going to happen and everything. She knows what she´s in for, and then we get in the water.
I say the prayer and begin to submerge her in the water.
She immediately stands up.
"I won´t go underwater! No way! I´m too scared!"
I began to talk to her and comfort her, and I tried again, but she refused to go backwards, so instead, she wanted to go forwards. Dunno if really you can do that, but at this point, I was just trying to get her out of the water pronto.
We try again, but she REFUSES to go all the way. Just until her face gets wet. She begins to freak out a lot at this point. I comfort her again and for the 3rd time she tries to go underwater, but again, no.
6 times I tried to help her, and 6 times I failed.
The first time that I was baptizing her, the ONLY thing that was out of the water was her face. If I had pushed just a little harder, she would have been done.
I fear that I am at fault now, and that her salvation now rests on my shoulders. Because I had the chance. It was right there. It was completely possible, and now she hasn´t completed that saving ordinance.
I felt awful.
The WORST part about it is that she actually has a phobia of water because she almost drowned at age 6. So, she has to take swimming classes to get rid of the phobia to be baptized.
I really hope she does soon.
Okay, enough with that.
2.) I left Postal. It´s the only sector I know. I´ve left L, C, Hno. R, Hna R, D, Elder R, and everyone else that´s there.
I was so sad, but at the same time, excited to start working in another area.
3.) I really hate seeing missionaries go home after serving for 2 years.
For 3 reasons. 1, they act as though their mission has done absolutely nothing for them. These 2 years have completely changed their lives, and they act like it was a prison. It drives me insane. One of the missionaries just started talking about how much he hated it the last month because it took forever. One the whole day just didn´t even care at all. So yeah. They just don´t care anymore. I hate it. 2, it makes me start thinking of home and how much time I have to go. I REALLY hate thinking that way, but I kinda have to deal with it. I´ll be seeing it a ton on my mission now. 3, some are really good friends, and I probably won´t ever see them again. It was really sad to see some of them leave, but it´s okay. I´ll make more later. ;)
Just really don´t like seeing them go.
4.) I really don´t have a lot of worth right now in my calling. Of course it´s my first day, so I´m not worried really, but I don´t like feeling so useless. Especially when I´m stuck trying to figure out what to do and we need it done quickly. Oh well. Just work super hard then.
5.) I figured out the secret of missionary work:
Teaching.
If you can teach like a boss, you don´t need ANYTHING. No rides to the church, no testimonies written in the Book of Mormon, nothing. You will teach and they will do everything by themselves.
I listened to an Elder named Elder C who was also trained by Elder P. He is really REALLY good. He told me that one day, he just decided he was going to find that whole day. No lessons.
Not only did he have 9 lessons that day, but each lesson was a new investigator.
He baptized 4 of the 9.
That´s just absolutely nuts! He told me that the secret was in teaching and finding.
Usually during the training that the Assistants give with the President, they teach us a whole bunch of stuff that we need outside of teaching. Basically, they do it just to circumvent it. They try to overcome the teaching and place other stuff to help the investigator, but Elder C and Elder C (also really great) said that really, we don´t need any of that. Just teach well, a ride to church, and find.
I´m going to put it in practice. Find 15 new people each week, and drop all of the bad ones, and then you have around 2-3 baptisms every single week. Pretty legit to be honest. It´s a super easy way to get stuff done.
6.) I absolutely love Personal Study in the morning. I receive so much revelation. It´s so cool. I´ve learned so much stuff in the past few days it´s ridiculous. Like, did you know that Lehi, in his dream, didn´t have to grab onto the iron rod, because he was brought to the love of God on his own? It´s the same with Nefi and Sam and Sariah. They didn´t need the iron rod because they just straight up received the Gospel out of revelation. It´s really cool to see that as a correlation with our lives. The apostles and Prophets already are there. They call out to us in General Conference and other ways, and we have to grab onto the rod and follow the sound of their voice through the darkness to reach the tree of life. It´s a super cool analogy. Love Nefi 8 and 11.
7.) As a secretary, I´m going to be working on a computer most of the mornings, and I was told by Elder M (AP) that I could be on my email during that time. So, if one morning you´re super bored or something, you can try emailing me to see if I have time to talk a little bit. Not saying that´s a guarantee or anything, but I´ll see what I can do.
Okay, that´s all for this week. Hope all went well with you guys. See you later
Elder Carter
