The Work is Hastening!

9-29-14

These past seven days have been busy, and different.  Last Tuesday we had interviews with our Mission President up in Sarasota where we received a lot of new instruction from him, as well as the Assistants.  They have been talking a lot about having a vision for the areas that we serve in, and what it is that we are really trying to shoot for as missionaries.  They had us come up with a number that we prayed about for baptisms that we would have before the end of 2014.  As a companionship, we determined that we could reach 4 baptisms by the end of the year.  So, in order to reach our vision, they gave us areas of improvement that the mission will be focusing on as a whole.  The first thing that we are no longer doing is shaking hands at the door on Sundays.  Instead, we are going around and inviting every member to do missionary work that comes in our path.  We are not suppose to talk to a member without leaving them some sort of commitment.  The second thing is that we are no longer teaching anyone who is not progressing.  We had to drop all of our investigators and less active members who were not keeping commitments so that we can focus the Lord's time on finding the "elect".
   These changes have made it pretty difficult to stay busy teaching, but now we have a lot more time to be finding those who are truly prepared to hear the message of the Gospel.  The first question that we are asking people on the street is if they have been baptized.  This way we are getting straight to the point and we are stating our purpose from the beginning.  We have already seen a lot of great blessings come from these changes.  The Lord's work is truly Hastening!
   The other great thing that happened this last weekend was a baptism that we had for one of our investigators, K. Smith.  His wife has been a member for over two years, and now her husband has joined as a member of the church.  K. already seemed like a solid member from when we first met him.  He always comes out with us on splits and is always looking to serve others.  He is a great example of what a member should be.
   For the service itself, our Ward Mission Leader baptized him and Elder Swallow and I got to do the talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost.  I usually don't enjoy giving talks, but I actually loved giving this one!  The Spirit was strong during the service, and everything worked out great.  Hopefully, we will be having more people brought into the fold of God here soon!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

Here's a little big of information from Elder Whaley's companion:

On Tuesday we had the coolest experience ever!  We went to our church building for wifi to send an email to our mission president and all of a sudden we hear someone knocking on a door.  We open the door and this lady asks us for a Book of Mormon.   Both of us are caught off guard....because no one likes to give us the time of day for the most part and now we have a random lady show up and ask for a BOM.  So, we give her the BOM and she tries to give us $50 for it.  We declined the money.  She was completely shocked at turning down the money and started to ask more questions about our elision.  We come to find out that she heard about the BOM through someone and has been looking for it for a super long time visiting several book stores.  She told us that she just felt that she needs to read it.  So, we were more than happy to explain to her about the BOM and what we believe in.  She just kept asking questions.  After an hour of talking to her about religion, we asked her for her phone number to contact her and she refused to give it to us.  We gave her ours and she said she would cll us...so we'll see what happens.  But, at least we planted a seed!