Area: Newark
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| Elder Paul, Smoot, Ashcraft, Elder Bennett, Sister Bennett |
To finish off last preparation day, we had a pretty good night. We got to stop by the Williams and have a dinner and a good chat with them!! We ended up getting to talk to Colton, the 11 year old who just got baptized! That was awesome! After that we went to a brand new member who just moved in who is also a recent convert! His name is Pet! But sadly he works 6 days a week from 10 to 10! But he's a cool guy and wants to go to the temple so we'll see what we can do!
Tuesday we had exchanges with the Johnstown Elders! It was an awesome day! We got to go out and cut a couple huge trees down and pile them up! It was awesome!! I loved it! We got to teach a couple of JWs again but that literally goes no where so we're going to stop meeting with them soon! We had ward coordination that night which is always awesome! It was pretty funny, some how Elder Paul got my keys and left me and Elder Higgins at the church! It was pretty hilarious because he totally didn't do it on purpose but it was fun to give him a hard time! haha! Man, I love Elder Paul.
Tuesday night we got a pretty sad call from President saying that a missionary in our zone was going home tomorrow and we needed to get him to the airport. So we woke up Wednesday morning bright and early and went to Westerville to pick them up and drop him off at the airport! So now we found ourselves in a trio!! We have a third companion until about tomorrow. Its been a blast having Elder Ashcraft!
Thursday morning we had a half mission conference with Elder Bennett and the southern zones. Half hour before the meeting we met as a mission leadership council and talked about some of the things our zones may need. That was a pretty spiritual moment. It was pretty exciting. We went from there into the mission conference. Elder Bennett told us before hand, but he showed us his notes and he literally had nothing written down. He said he didn't plan for this at all. He's like- I'm strictly just trying to follow the spirit. It was pretty powerful. It was exciting. I guess the 4 main things he really talked about were 1- that we need to love. Love everyone. Not just certain people but we need to love everyone. We show love for the people we teach the people we work with and we show our love to the members because that is exactly how the Savior would do it. 2- how we can be better Teachers and how we can use the spirit to teach by asking inspired questions as well as helping find the elect in order to gather the twelve tribes. He talked alot about the 12 tribes and the gathering of Israel and how we have been reserved for this time on the earth. That was pretty powerful and a spiritual moment. 3-Alot of missionaries feel like our role is to invite and hope. Basically we invite someone to read the Book of Mormon then we leave hoping that they will just read. We hope! It's kinda hard- I've struggled with that forever, because I felt like there was something else. we just hope- it's like I can't have faith in someone else. I can have faith in Jesus Christ. He changed it to instead of inviting hope- to invite Help! Asking inspired questions- how can we help? can we send reminders, etc. 4-Be spiritually in tune- do everything we can do to qualify for the gift of the Holy Ghost so we can use it in all of our contacts and everywhere we go, especially when we work with members. If we do it right, we shouldn't have to be out finding. All of our finding should be done through members, but he also understands that some of our finding has to be done by just getting out there and grinding. One of the coolest things he said is that knocking is 100% effective because it's what the Lord sees. The Lord sees the effort we put in, even though you may not get very many baptisms out of it but you may get referrals from a member or whatever it may be. I thought that was pretty powerful. Thursday was a pretty awesome day! I got alot out of that!
MLC was the next day. Friday was the Mission Leadership Council. We basically recapped on everything and applied on how we can use it as leaders in our mission. It was pretty spectacular! It's been good. Also one last thing is that instead of spending an hour or 45 minutes in a home- whether it's a members or investigators- we should only spend 15-20 or at most 30 minutes in a home. We've been applying that and it's been very spiritually uplifting. After that we biked a ton of miles! We biked the whole night and didn't use our car because we were out of miles. It was pretty rough. We got to meet with Colton again. We talked to him about honesty and how we can be more honest. It was pretty special. Then we biked home in the pitch dark down a sketchy bike trail. We were like 2 minutes late, but we made it.
We biked all of Saturday and found four people that day. It was pretty sweet! We had some miracles and I swear it was because we applied every thing we learned and every single contact we had, each of them teared up. You just knew that they felt the spirit. It was really cool! It was awesome! We taught a few lessons. We biked downtown and my eyes got opened again just like they were in Marble Cliff. There were alot of homeless people, it was pretty sad. But there is some great people we talked to.
Saturday night was the adult Stake conference session. Elder Bennett was there. They had a recent convert speak as well as a returning less active. He gave a phenomenal talk. His wife was there and she isn't a member. She was crying the whole time. Elder Bennett talked straight to her, it was so cool. In this stake we also have 2 Amish families who are converts. They have been shunned from their community. They completely quit their life because they got ahold of a book of mormon and knew it was true right away. They made a decision together to leave the Amish and get baptized. It was spectacular. Elder Bennett invited them up and they shared their testimonies. It was really powerful. Even those meetings, Elder Bennett didn't prepare, he just followed the spirit. They didn't have anything but musical numbers to write down for the program. Elder Bennett invited anyone that if they had a prompting to message or call someone, they should just get up and walk out and do it. Don't postpone a prompting. It was sweet! Alot of people walked out. Even the Stake President as he was bearing his testimony and said he has a prompting to call his Brother in law- so he was going to get off the podium and go do it. He bore his testimony and left! It was awesome! Very Powerful moment.
Sunday at stake conference they reorganized the whole Stake presidency. Super powerful meeting. The thing that really stood out to me was how those men who were on the stand who have had alot of callings- when they share their testimonies its a knowledge- like I Know this is true! Something President Birch said that reminded me of Joseph Smith- he said 'I know that Jesus Christ lives and I know that Jesus Christ knows that I know that He lives'. The whole week was just phenomenal!
The rest of Sunday we worked spanish for a little bit- Elder Ashcraft is a spanish missionary. We taught a Spanish to English class- that was pretty sweet! Then we headed back to Newark and worked Newark for a little while and then had a member lesson. We were there for about 30 minutes. It was very strong. Then we gave one of the sisters in our ward a blessing. And had a good talk with our ward mission leader.
Today for P-Day we went to the Mounds with our ward mission leader's wife and a member from Zanesville. It blew my mind! I absolutely loved it! I'm sold that Jesus Christ very possibly visited Newark, Ohio. (I'll forward the documents they are going to send)
Then we played basketball! I'll let you go with that.
Love,
Elder Smoot
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| The Mounds |
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