Elder Zachary Andrews: FROM PH: Bad Week for Numbers

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

Saturday, April 18, 2015

FROM PH: Bad Week for Numbers

Ouch! Bad week for numbers
Sent Date: Saturday, April 18, 2015
Author: President Hansen

Dear Mission Leaders,
It was so great to see all of you in zone conferences over the last two weeks. I know the mission is really going to have great success with all the great things we have learned lately. We have had a couple of slow weeks after the great surge forward we have been enjoying. I think that the rainy weather and the flu that has been going around have slowed our progress. We need to make sure that all of our missionaries are not allowing little things to keep them from the work. I have heard from many who said they were not able to get out because of the rain. Help them to accomplish more, get rides, etc. and not be stopped by small things. Also, I know that a lot of times missionaries choose service over teaching and finding. The best service we can do is to teach the doctrine of Christ.

How can we as leaders motivate our missionaries to more faithfully serve Heavenly Father? We need to set a vision of what can be done. Goals for our districts and zones that each missionary can get behind so that we are constantly finding, teaching, baptizing, activating and reactivating. Let's get our missionaries behind a program of finding daily, teaching daily and working with our ward members.
The goal the matters most to me right now is the three daily contacts with people we pass by. If we can get every missionary to do this every day the area will blossom.

All my love,
President Hansen

------(Companion) and I decided to take a faith walk. It took us 7.5 hours just to walk one block. We talked to everyone and anyone. We even helped someone move out! We had more contacts that day than we have had in a whole week! So many in fact that we lost track. Because of the Faith walk and the help of the Lord, our schedule for this week is full with return appointments.

------We have also committed 4 different people to baptism this past week on the first lessons. They all said yes!

------we were going to make proselyting Monday as productive as we possibly could ... and it was one of the best days of my whole mission! We taught so much!! We set high goals and we promised ourselves as a companionship that we would hit all of them. We hit our 5 other lessons but we weren't quite sure how we were going to get a lesson with a member present so we prayed and Elder _____ has the idea that we should go and visit one of the less actives that we are working with that lives in a big apartment complex and ask who we could go and teach with him, and he had a lady so we went and talked to her he testified and (he)said the closing prayer and said after that he will come back to church Sunday! It really was amazing!!

------This past week we have contacted so many new people and have so many new investigators! Experiences that used to be far and few between and considered huge miracles now happen daily! We are meeting so many people who are interested in the gospel and I'll be leaving at least half a dozen new investigators and several potential investigators when I leave.

------My branch president in the MTC told us something to the effect of "if you're an average missionary, your mission will be difficult. If you strive to be an excellent missionary, it will become much easier."

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Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission

The first branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in New Orleans with 334 members in 1841. The prophet Joseph Smith sent the first missionary to New Orleans in March of that year. After reaching 169 members in 1849, the New Orleans branch disbanded because of the threat of serious disease in the area. The Southern States Mission, which included Louisiana opened in 1878, but the first missionaries were not sent to the state until nearly 20 years later. Missionary work spread throughout the state during the early twentieth century and by 1930, there were 1500 members. The first ward was established in Shreveport in 1953 and the first stake in New Orleans in 1955.In 1975, the Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission was created and by 1980, there were over 12,500 members in the state of Louisiana. By 1989, Louisiana had 22,000 members in seven stakes. In 1998, the First Presidency announced the building of a temple in Baton Rouge. That temple was dedicated on 16 July, 2000.The Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission extends from Natchitoches South to the East and West borders through the state including the Gulf of New Orleans. The mission also includes the South West corner of Mississippi including Natchez, Liberty, and Macomb.