The time we had a visit from a GA....again.

This week my mission perspective was changed completely. Elder Aidukaitis of the 70 came to tour the mission. I had meeting after meeting after meeting. Wednesday was spent ALL day in meetings and I got to return to my beloved Baytown. It was the strangest thing to be in a leadership meeting with missionaries who I had always recognized as the "younger" missionaries. As I sat in MLC I thought, "I can remember when 80% of the people present came out!" It was a shocker. 

E. Aidukaitis served as a second witness simply re-emphasizing what E. Golden had said to our mission months before. However, E. Aidukaitis was more bold, more frank, more to the point. There was no mistaking what he was trying to say. I was so grateful to have still been a missionary, because I thought, "how could I have gone home not understanding these things?" A lot of the points E. Aidukaitis made were things that I had felt strongly about when E. Golden came, but I let other missionaries talk me out of my musings. 

E. Aidukaitis told us of what his mission president said to him when he first arrived to the field, "In this mission there are two rules: 1. You never come to church without investigators 2. You never miss church." He also explained to us that zero is not a goal! We should never have zeros as our key indicator. Our goals reflect the desires of our heart and if we don't desire to baptize every week, then we will not be granted the miracles to baptize every week. 

It all made sense of course. It was an epiphany! Divine Discontent--missionary edition. My views of weekly planning were changed as well. (P.S. I understand that all this will interest no one save the RMs and currently serving missionaries) 

In our leadership meeting E. Aidukaitis had us open our planners to the day before. He then had all of us get up and said, "Anyone who had a zero as one of your goals sit down." Literally more than 3/4 of those present sat down. He also had us flip open to our planners for Saturday (we met with him on Wed) and he said, "As a result of your weekly planning, you should have every hour of every day along with backups planned from Thursday to the next Saturday

." We were floored. I'm pretty sure every missionary with a leadership position had thee longest weekly planning session of their lives. I thought of my trainer! She always felt bad that our nightly planning sessions were long, but nothing could compare to what we did this week. 

In an effort to get our companionship in a "bring investigators to church mentality," we knocked doors right before church. The church building is actually in our area, so at 9:00 am, we were out talking to people and inviting them to church. I loved it! It helped me to have even more of a missionary mentality at church. I truly believe that because we had put forth the effort to invite people to church we were blessed with the miracle of Bro. Ortiz Sr coming to church. And I was impressed to sit by two women who I didn't recognize. One of the women was a member visiting from Arkansas, the other was her mother who came to visit and lives in our area! :)

I love that I can constantly improve as a missionary. I love how challenging it is, and weird as it may sound I love that we can never be complacent with our efforts. 

Hope you have a challenging week!

(I mean this in thee nicest way possible)

Love, 

Sis. Flores

p.s. The ancient computer I'm on is being dumb and won't let me upload photos. :(