THE VISION OF THE SOUTH

"Make no small plans: This is the vision I have for the South. I believe that one day the South will baptize more people into the church than all other English speaking missions in the world together....We will see the time when we will baptize hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...In your day you will see a million members of the church in the South. There will be temples plural in the Southern States. What a great call you have to serve with these marvelous people." President Spencer W. Kimball

Monday, July 21, 2014

FROM PH: Shane Boswell

Shane Boswell
Sent Date: Monday, July 21, 2014
Author: President Hansen
We had a strange experience in the Natchez Ward yesterday. A man came into the building and started giving counsel and admonitions to the leaders and missionaries.. He was in his mid thirties and his name was Shane Boswell, black hair, 5'9". If a man matching this discription wants to meet with you to show you how to do missionary work please refer him to a local leader first . Also, call me and let me know what is happening. He is probably alright but it sounds a little unstable and we want to keep the missionaries safe.
Thanks,
President Hansen


Sent Date: Monday, July 21, 2014
Author: President Hansen
Dear Sisters and Elders,
I have really loved reading all your letters and visiting with many of you over the last few days.  You are truly a special group. I have loved to see your desire to do what is right and your love for your investigators and each other. The letters show that you are really working hard to find new people to teach and that miraculous things are happening all over the mission. I finally figured out how to use microsoft word so I can add some excepts fro a couple of your letters. This is pretty different from the Macs I have used at home but I am getting the hang of it now. I will include more next week.

FROM YOUR LETTERS:
This week was full of miracles. Our district leader and Sister training leaders committed us during call ins last week to spiritually plan out our day. Basically the idea is that you pray, plan your day, who you're going to see and what you're going to teach them, and then when you close, you pray and tell Heavenly Father specifically what you've planned. Well, Sunday night we did it, and Monday, we went out and saw pretty much every single person we had planned to see and experienced miracles with them. Everybody was home! That never happens! Especially not on transfer call day when everyone is usually stressed about whether or not they will be getting transferred. it was legit. so of course we did it for the rest of the week. And, guess what? Pretty much the same thing happened. :) Every day. It was fabulous.
-Sister Evans

During church I gave a talk about how to apply the Atonement into our lives without having to sin first. In a nut shell I came to the conclusion that as we do the best we can, with the Lord's help, we use the strengthening power of the Atonement. Applying this to missionaries, some Elders and Sisters may find it hard to follow a specific rule or change in there missionary work. As they work on being the best they can be and with the Lord's help it can become easy to follow. The rule doesn't change, we do.
-Elder Bennett

"Hey we should go to Walmart!" because we haven't been grocery shopping in weeks and I don't want to starve my poor companion. So fast forward to the end of shopping. We're using the self check out machine to get our stuff and this couple squeezes past us to get behind us in line. They turn to us and say, "Are y'all Mormons?"
So of course we say, "Yeah!"
"Oh cool! We saw y'alls name tags and figured you were."
"Have y'all ever talked to missionaries before?"
"No."
"Can we give y'all a Book of Mormon?"
"Yeah, we'd love one." And we explain a little about it and how it's another testament of Christ.
"Aw sweet! We'll go read it tonight!"
"Can we come by and teach you more about it?"
"Yeah. Can y'all come over tomorrow?"
And then we get their info and what not and that was about it. We called them the next day but  they were at work. So we went back on Sunday and were able to teach them the restoration. It was a real good lesson too and I think they understood everything too! Aw man, they related to Joseph Smith because they've been to so many different churches and have seen how they all teach kinda the same things but they're all different. They're really interested and want to find out the truth for themselves so it's just really cool. We didn't even get the chance to invite them to church, Melissa just turned to BJ during the lesson and asked, "You want to go to their church this Sunday?" Aw man, so cool! I'm so excited for them. It's so sweet because I've never taught a couple that are both interested.

I forgot to write down whose story this was but it was so inspiring that I included it anyway. Let me know who this was from and I will tell you all next week. I get the feeling that we would all benefit from companion study on the PMG lessons. Could you please focus some of your companion study on that this week. Someone told me that if you digest the lesson into a 2 minute lesson stating just the topic summary of each lesson and practice, saying just that until you have it cold, then you can expand on the basic outline with scripture references that seem appropriate from the scripture boxes in each heading, add testimony, personal experience, have the investigator read from the brochure, then you will have the framework for a lesson where the spirit can manifest its self. That is the goal of every lesson, to have the spirit manifest its self to our investigators and to us.

When we feel the spirit manifest its self to our investigators in the lessons we teach then we know that the Lord is working through us for the salvation of His children.

Sister Hansen and I love each one of you and we are so anxious that each of you have the best experience on your mission possible. We pray that you have an amazing and spirit filled week.
Love,
President and Sister Hansen



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