Serving in the Mexico Mérida Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Monday, November 10, 2014

Eternal Perspective in Chuburna



Hola Familia,
 Members + Missionaries: Sisters Wilson, Delfina, and Ludlam

Hermana Wilson sigue siendo potente ( is still powerful, strong, effective).

Mum was telling me in her letter how in the Mission Prep class they were learning to start their lesson plans with commitments. YES! The commitment serves as the WHY and the POINT of teaching. If your teaching doesn't result in a specific ACTION, you're probably wasting time (that is a good rule of thumb for every teaching situation ever, I think).

In your objective to invite people to come unto Christ, the investigator you are teaching must do two things:
  1. Build faith in Christ and repent.
  2. The commitments do both. The act of doing the commitment is the physical act of repenting, and as we obey commandments we gain faith that what Christ commands us to do really works and really is the best. 
Orienting the lesson around commitments also gives you a MEASUREMENT, something to measure the efficacy of your teaching-- At the end of the day, did they keep the commitment or did they not?

Also super important-- the commitment is your OBJECTIVE. If your lesson doesn't have an objective, it will be long and confusing and... long. We first choose a specific goal and then ask, “What do they not understand that is keeping them from that commitment?”--and that is what we teach. 90% of the time the answer to that question is the material in the five lessons (and usually in order), but highlighting a specific topic.
Something that has been helping me a lot the past weeks is learning how to SIMPLIFY my perspective, which I think is really the same thing as having an eternal perspective. I’ve realized I need to ask myself in situations when I feel depressed or tense: “What is really going on here?” And usually I can respond something like, “I am just looking for an address that is hard to find” or “I am just trying to put in action the counsel of our president, and of course, it’s not going to go perfectly at first” or “I am just laboring as a worker en la work of salvation” or “I am just trying to convince someone to repent, and of course, Satan is going to be trying to work against that” or “I am trying to teach a foreign concept to a child of God with very little spiritual education.” Seeing things in the eternal perspective makes it possible to feel hopeful and happy and not get frustrated. 

Someone asked what they do for Dia de Los Muertos. It’s three days long-- the first day (Oct 31) is the day for niños that have died, the next day is for everybody else, and I never found out what the third day was for. People don’t do a whole lot except make special types of food-- there are pibis which are these GIANT tamales that are round instead of rectangular. People do make pan de muertos, but I didn’t see a whole lot of that. And there are lots of candies that people sell in the streets at night outside of their houses that I never tried. I didn’t see very many altars, but I know they make one in the schools. And most people go to a special, enormous mass that they hold in the cemetery. And that’s about it. From what I saw, it wasn’t a very big deal. But the pibis are rico!

OH! As a mission we are going to memorize ALL the scripture mastery scriptures and if we memorize the first 25 from El Libro de Mormon before Dec, 1st, we.... GET TO DO A SESSION IN THE TEMPLE!! AHH! Granted, it’s the session at 4:30 in the morning, but I don’t think that fazes anyone. Ahh...the temple!

Feel free to join me by learning 25 scriptures before the first of December and rewarding yourself by going to the temple.  (Lia’s sister, Jenna, might beat her!)

Much love,
Hermana Ludlam 

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