9-30-13

Dear Family,

This was a crazy week!!!! I think that I forgot to tell you all, but we were visited by Elder Aidukaitus of the 1st quorum of the 70! I'll tell you what, he really knew how to throw down the thunder and cry repentance to us all! We met with him as zone leaders on Friday morning for about three hours, and he just called us all to repentance with our planning! He pointed out that it was not ok to ever have a zero as an indicator even if we didn't think that we would be able to accomplish it. He told us that we weren't allowing God to give us a miracle for that indicator. It was really interesting the way that he picked us out. He would single out a single companionship and then ask them to open up their planners and then he would ask us why our goals were so low!. At the beginning, every zone leader was really upset and we were questioning why a representative of the Lord was treating us the way that he was. Then right at the end, he began to inspire us by the numbers that he and his missionaries were able to accomplish when he was out in Brazil as a mission President. When he first got there, the numbers were not very good. They were even a bit lower then ours are at this point. By the end of his three years the mission was finding close to a thousand investigators a week and hundreds were coming to sacrament each week. It was really neat to be able to hear him tell us all about the success that they were able to have. Most of us were pretty inspired about what he had told us, but were still a little upset about the way that he used to inspire us. He kinda used the humiliation technique and that was really hard to sit through. As me and Elder Fajardo went home, we went and got some food, and were able to talk it out. We realized that he IS a representative of the Savior, and he is bound by covenant to not do or say anything that the Lord wouldn't want him to say. That night we prayed together to try to get in a better mood about it all since he was going to be speaking again the next day in a zone conference and we wanted to be able to listen and be supportive of what he was doing. We both just had a great feeling that what was said was exactly what the mission needed to hear and were reminded of the scripture that says that the wicked taketh the truth to be hard! We realized that we are fully at fault and that we all had need for repentance. We went into Fridays training with a really good mindset and were able to walk away from it with a great desire to raise our goals and to show Heavenly Father that we have the desire to help these people and to help us to be able to achieve our goals and desires. It was a great talk. He was a lot more loving in the big meeting, and I feel like it was because he had 5 hours to give the training to the zones, where he only had 2 hours with us as leaders and so he had to be very point blank with us. It was hard to sit through, but we have very high goals for this week and we know that we are going to be able to accomplish them at the best of our abilities! It will be very good to have to stretch and to grow in the way that he and the other general authorities want our mission to grow! It's a great time in the world to be on a mission, and an even cooler time to be a leader in the mission. I am very blessed. 

Tough part about this week though, was that we had to drop Deniella for a while. She has just lost the desire to learn from us. She still came to church yesterday, but just has no desire to learn about the church in a whole. She is just coming now, because she has a lot of friends there which could very potentially be the thing that helps her to get interested again in the future. But unfortunately, She just isn't ready at this point. She will be baptized, but it will just be a little while for now. Keep her in  your prayers please! She could really use them! 

We were super blessed this week to be able to add a date with Alison! She is super solid! The date is the 26th of October, but honestly she could be ready in a week or two. We are hoping that once we get through all the lessons that she will be willing to move the date up! 

Well I apologize that this has to be super short, but we don't have much time to email left, and I still have a few to do. Something was wrong with our emails this morning until about 20 minutes ago, and so we were not able to receive any of the emails... Hope you all have a great day! 

I love this church. Remember that Conference is coming up! Conference on the mission is the best things ever!!! I challenge you all to go into conference with a question in mind that you need answered, and I know that they will be answered. I have had question after question answered from the brotheren and it has just been great! Don't let this opportunity pass you by! If you have the chance to go and watch one of the sessions at the church, I would advice that also! I know that the home is so comfortable and your able to relax and eat and what not, but as everyone knows from me back at home we are tempted to sleep through most of it. The chapel brings a really special spirit to the mood and it just makes it so awesome! I love you all. Let me know what you think of Conference next week! I would love to hear your insites. Tell everyone in the ward hi for me, and remind them how much I love them!

Much love,

Elder Mackay Shelley