January 22, 2014

Hello All,

This week was really good for us and we saw many miracles. After District Meeting yesterday morning, we decided to tract for most of the day, we found no potentials after about 4 hours of tracting, so we decided to visit some less actives, we taught a couple less active lessons and we were able to teach one of our investigators and have a really spiritual lesson. At the end of the night at 8 we were heading back to the flat for dinner, but we decided to stop at the 7 Eleven to top up our go cards (a card we put money on to pay for our fares on the buses and trains in Australia) since we were taking the train to the temple the next day and as we did so, one of the workers wanted to talk to us for a few minutes, so we shared a 5 minute message introducing the Book of Mormon. He was really interested and we have a lesson with him on Friday. He is a Muslim, but he is very interested in learning about becoming a Christian, which is great. It goes to show that as you work diligently as a missionary, people are still placed in your path in places where you don't expect it, so it is always essential to talk with everyone. It was a great experience!!

Suzanne is still doing really good and I am really looking forward to her baptism on the 1st of Feb. We are having a lesson today with one of the part member families we are working with, and we will hopefully be setting a goal for baptism with the kids. It will be great!

Since I was recently called as a zone leader, I had the privilege of attending a 2 day training that was given to us the the Assistants and President Henderson. We even got to stay in a hotel overnight since our zone is a bit away from the city. I will share one of the many things I learned. In Preach My Gospel page 10 it tells us that our success as missionaries is not measured by the number of baptisms we have, how many lessons we teach a week, not by many things, but our success is measured by the commitment we have to Find, Teach, and Baptize. There are many missionaries who baptize very little people, but the commitment they had was great, so that made them very successful. Some missionaries don't have very much commitment and baptize a lot of people. Some people have any commitment and still don't baptize anyone. So, it is important to know no matter what we are doing as missionaries, or what is happening in our areas, We are being successful missionaries if we show great commitment to Finding, Teaching, and Baptizing the Lord's children on this earth today. Commitment is not measured by any numbers. That is one of the main things I learned that many missionaries can apply to them, but I know that it is definitely true doctrine given to us through Preach My Gospel.

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson