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

Sunday, September 21, 2014

FROM PH: Short Letter

I'm taking it easy on you this week. Way shorter letter.
Sent Date: Sunday, September 21, 2014
Author: President Hansen
Dear Sisters and Elders,
I am so grateful to be part of this great work in Louisiana. I appreciate the way you have all embraced the new goals and direction in the mission. I asked you to limit the time you spend with your dinner appointments to one hour, to stop doing hours of service for members of the church, to stop going to the church on week nights rather than be in the homes of investigators or or less actives. The point of all these directions was to get us in front of more investigators and less actives, and to do more finding. I am seeing the results of your commitment reflected in the weekly numbers, but more importantly in the number of baptismal commitments you are reporting. Thank you. You are great missionaries. When we think of the balloon exersize, we know that we can always do better. Let me know in your letters what we can do to have better lessons and more lessons.

Here are some excerpts from your letters, they always make me proud of you:
-----If we are telling ourselves as missionaries, "alright sometime in the coming months or weeks I will start contacting more people or SOMETIME soon I will start working harder and give the Lord my all, or SOMETIME soon I will start trying harder." This is the point I am getting at, we cannot sit and complain as missionaries and expect all these amazing things to happen, if the work is tough or our teaching pool is low etc… instead of complaining we need to CREATE and MAKE good opportunities by WORKING and excising our faith and then our situation will change and we will see and find success. This work is all about faith and diligence and commitment and humbling ourselves and aligning our will with Gods and never being lazy always giving our all to the Lord, hence then we will create incredible opportunities and experience miracles daily!!!

-----We have been out trying to track down less actives... this ward has a lot of those. I’m finding that most of them are part member. They’ll have like two or three kids who haven't been baptized. Ill usually just be right up front with people, and I’ll say, "hey is it alright if we teach your children about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ?" I’m finding that most inactives have a testimony of the Gospel they just don’t feel comfortable at church... Like on Sunday we had an inactive family come to church for the first time in years, and she remembered faces, and people... but she totally felt alone, so that’s when ill snag a member to go over, and say hi to them. Less actives, and inactives are GOLDEN when it comes to finding new people to teach. I love it!!!

-----I set meaningful goals every week and every day that I will accomplish. By doing this I feel like I am successful every day, if I accomplish my goal. I may not be able to do everything, but I can focus on accomplish my goals every day, baby step at a time. Along with this, some of my goals are to pass out a specific pamphlet, card, BofM, whatever, and when I pray I pray specifically for someone to come into my path and then I look for that opportunity. I think the biggest part of it is to actually LOOK for the person. How many times do we leave our apartment with a prayer saying, "Help me to find those thou art preparing" and then not look for them? I am guilty of that. We need to be conscious all the time of people around us and then get gutsy!!


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