One
of the things that we do a lot more of here is tracting. In our area,
we have Mtandire, Area 18, Area 47 and Area 6. Apart from Mtandire, all
the areas we have are gated or are generally middle to upper class - at
least, what defines those groups here.
Elder
Kampelya's vision for this area before I came here was to start
teaching the more wealthier and educated people in the area. That came
with the introduction of the standard of excellence which included an
emphasis on teaching such people, as they are more likely to be active
in the church and honor the responsibilities given to them - in short,
help build the church. For Elder Kampelya, this meant making a great
change in the work he did. I've come in just as he's started focusing
more on the areas other than Mtandire. While there are great people to
teach in Mtandire, there surely are people in these more wealthier areas
to teach. The only catch is that we need to find these people, and that
means tracting.
I could make
many analogies to how much I don't like tracting, but in short I really
REALLY don't like it sometimes. I hadn't really tracted for a while
until now, so I wasn't looking forward to all the tracting. It is one of
the things I struggle with most as a missionary, which is one of the
reasons why I don't like tracting. Anyways, I prayed early this week
that the Lord would give me strength and help me to do my best in
tracting, and that same morning I feel like we had some pretty good
finding opportunities. Doesn't mean I still like it, but at least I'm on
the right track now.
We have
two people we will be baptizing this Sunday. One is named Akim. Akim
was taught by the missionaries that came before me and my companion, so
we came in to finish the job. We taught him more than several times
these last couple of weeks, and now he's ready to be baptized this
coming Sunday. The other one is named Evelyn, and she was taught
everything already by the time I came here. She had even come to church
some 26 or 27 times, it was just a matter of her working some things
out.
We also had an
investigator named John come to church yesterday. He works at a Salon in
Area 18. I've only taught him once, and we basically taught him the
importance of receiving an answer to the things we teach through prayer.
He accepted the things we taught at face value, but we really want him
to understand that it's important to have a spiritual confirmation from
God.
President Erikson came
to do interviews this weekend, and yesterday he was going to come with
us to a teaching appointment. He had to cancel on us though because he
had to attend to District business. It was good actually, because the
same appointment we were going to go with President Erikson fell through
on us, and it would have been emberassing to have President with us and
have nobody to teach.
Lots more to talk about, but my companion just got an urgent phone call from somebody, so we need to wrap it up. See you later!
Elder Massey
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