Lots of Changes

January 21, 2013

Dear Familia,

Alright so a little late and I don't have a ton of time so this might be short but I will try to get as much in as I can.

Well done on the 4.0 Connor.

Alright so this week we went through a lot of changes around here. We decided a few weeks ago that the elliptical was just too small to be working in right now so we had mostly all moved back to our original areas, with just Elders Wolfe and Erickson (in whose area the elliptical lies) and the AP's (who didn't have a defined area) still working it. But after transfer meeting we had a district meeting where we decided that everything was just going to be open pool, free-for-all. I didn't really like the idea when it was first brought up and it does have its flaws but I think it is a good change. So what we did was throw all of the investigators and less-actives with whom we were working up on the board and then decided amongst ourselves who would be working with who. So we ended up giving the Honduran woman to another companionship, because one of the missionaries is Honduran as well and I really hadn't formed that great of a bond with her yet.

I kept Luis (who we still haven't managed to contact by the way) and picked up two of Elder Erickson's investigators. One of them is named Scott. His brother is a member in the branch here, that's how the Elders found him. Things are going really well with him. We have a baptismal date with him for February 3rd and the only thing that looked like it might hold him up was his pipe. He has been smoking since he was 18 (he is now 53) so that was quite a habit to break. He quit once for a few months but then lost his job and the stress pushed him back onto it. We taught him the word of wisdom last Tuesday and then went back over on Thursday to follow up. He told us he slowed down but hadn't stopped yet. Then on Sunday we were talking to him at church and he told us after we left he took one last smoke and hadn't touched it since. We stopped by that afternoon to talk with him and we walked out with all his tobacco. So things are looking really good for him right now.

The other investigators we picked up were Lisa and Terrance, the chiropractors. They are just an awesome family. Lisa is ready to be baptized. She told the Elders a few weeks ago that her goal right now is Temple Marriage. Terrance is moving along a little slower but he is coming along. Staunch Irish-Catholic. The problem with them is that they are right in the heart of the neighborhood that took a lot of damage in the hurricane, and because of that they are out of town a lot while their house gets worked on or are home but have people coming over doing repairs and whatnot, which makes it really tough to meet with them. But things are slowly getting more and more settled down so they will be great to work with this transfer.

Other big changes that are happened this week is that President Calderwood was looking through the records for all the branches and found that even though nearly 800 people have been baptized in the last two years in the mission, sacrament meeting attendance in most of the units has steadily decreased. So he is really pushing hard for us the find the "Anchor Families" is what he calls them. The families that you can just build these branches around. Most of the units here just have too many indians and not enough chiefs, and because of that things are very disorganized and a lot of things, such as home and visiting teaching, just slip through the cracks, which really hurts retention. 

Another big change that he is making to try and help retention is that now we will no longer be reporting numbers for lessons to less actives or lessons taught without a member present. Only lessons with a member present count now. And that is a huge change here. If I went back through my numbers for my mission so far, that would cut 80-90% of the lessons I have taught. That is really tough out here because so many of our lessons are not set, and because a lot of the people we teach really just don't fit in on the surface with anyone else. Take Lisa and Terrance for instance, a white middle to upper class Irish-Catholic family. Really the only people who you would immediately think to take over would be the B family, a young white family from Florida here for Med school. Unfortunately med school doesn't leave a lot a free time to go out teaching, and Brother B is in Florida for the next four weeks. So from there we had to look at who is active enough (2/3s gone), who speaks English (another 2/3s gone), who is not crazy to the point of scaring them (everyone in Rockaway is a little crazy, but this cuts out another 2/3s of the remainders). For those of you following at home, the branch has about 275 members on the roster, which leaves us with a pool of less than 10 people to work with. So now we have to fit people's schedules. That leaves us with one person. Yay! It took us a while to figure out who to bring, but we did it and we will have a member present on Thursday, if all goes according to plan.

For the promptings question, Connor, it is interesting because often you don't really know the results of the actions. Like once when I was in Midwood we were looking someone up and as soon as we walked into the building we just felt funny. We went and looked up the person we planned and nobody answered. We had a few more people we were going to check in the building and then we were going to knock but we just decided to get out of there. Pretty much as soon as we left we felt normal again. I don't know what would have happened if we had stayed but at the same time I'm glad I didn't. Then on the other side I have had a few of those experiences. Like finding Julie, the Honduranian woman, we were knocking a floor out and it was getting late and we started thinking we should probably start heading back but I felt like we just needed to finish knocking that floor we were on. So we went on, getting nothing, nothing, nothing, then the second to last door we knocked the woman kind of got mad at us for knocking that late, but I said no, we have to finish knocking then in that very last door we knocked we found her. The trick really is just act, don't worry about whether it is you or the Holy Ghost, just do it. Elder Bednar gave a really good talk about that but I think it might just be an MTC only talk.

That film crew thing, it should be coming out on lds.org in like a month or so.

I got a few more caterpillars this week. Still just the dried ones like before. She told us she is going to fry them up for us one of these days though. For how much we get fed, it varies week to week, but usually we get a few regulars who feed us every week. After being here for as long as I have the members start to like you enough that I can just walk up and say, "Hey, when can we come visit you this week?" "Oh come over Thursday, we will make you some dinner!". So ya, usually we get four or five per week.

Things are going really well with Elder Erickson. He has been a little sick so it has slowed us down a bit but he's working hard. Elder Bush went to my old Jamaica pool. He is pretty excited about that.

This transfer is only five weeks, so that is where the week gets cut off. Some other missions got cut worse than ours, like James in the North, they got cut three weeks.

Thats about it.

Love you all,

Elder Pearce