Teaching and More Teaching

Hey my Family!

So this has been a really good week here in Seffner. In my last couple of emails I've been writing about how we have been doing a lot of tracting to try and build the shallow teaching pool that we have here. Well, all of the sudden things just seemed to come together this week, and oddly enough, none of the new people that we're working with came from tracting. I think that that was definitely part of the process to help us realize that we have to do our part before the Lord is going to step in and help.

First of all, we got a text message on Tuesday from the Referral Headquarters in Salt Lake. It turns out that the mom of one of the inactive members of the ward here got onto mormon.org and requested a missionary visit for her son. The address on the phone was different then the one that was on the roster, so chances are really good that we wouldn't have been able to find him without his mom directing us there. On Tuesday evening we drove up to his house and weren't quite sure what to expect. Jared (the member) answered the door, and he was so happy to see us. He's probably in his early 20's, and you could see that he had been away from the church from a while. He was raised in SLC in what sounds like a pretty active family. We med his girlfriend, Teri, and it turns out that she's pretty interested in learning more about the church as well. We set up and appointment to get back over there tomorrow night to have dinner with them and to start teaching Teri. When we left we said a prayer with them, and Jared was tearing up as we left. The Spirit can do pretty amazing things.

We also had another really neat experience with a referral from the bishop. There's a part member family in the ward, and the bishop told us that he had visited the family, and thinks that there could be some potential there. We went and stopped by a little later in the week, and they were awesome. The wife is a member of the church, and all of their kids that are old enough have been baptized. Bill is the husband, and he had no reservations towards us at all when we showed up. We were trying to feel things out for a little bit in the beginning, when Bill just hits us with "So are you guys going to be coming over more often? I know that there's some lessons that you teach, and I'd like to begin learning more"....uh, ok? Ha it was great. We went back over there last night, and taught the first lesson. The Spirit was definitely there, and he was really receptive to what we were teaching. He likes to analyze things a lot, so he wasn't too keen on the idea of setting a date, but we're going to keep working with him. We have another lesson scheduled for Wednesday.

We've met with Andrea Denison a couple of times this week as well. Wow, she lives in a really rough situation, and I'm really humbled every time we go over there. We have covered the first two lessons with her and she loves the gospel. Her only holdup right now is with smoking. We're trying to help her find a different outlet for her stress, and we're praying that she will find one that will work.

Well that is a pretty quick rundown of what has been going on this week! Sorry if it doesn't make much sense, ha I'm lacking on time.

I love you all!

Elder Kade Bartschi

President's Letter

Dear Sisters and Elders,

In our last General Conference, Elder David A. Bednar reminded us that the world is being prepared for the Second Coming of the Savior in large measure because of the Lord’s work through His missionaries. We are His missionaries! Our efforts of becoming Preach My Gospel missionaries by focusing on the key indicators are helping us to fulfill the call to gather His elect. I thought you would like to read about some ways your fellow Florida Tampa Missionaries are fulfilling this great responsibility:

I also have been trying to teach with the eight fundamental lessons and “How to Begin Teaching” bullet points and it is working out great. It is so nice to go into a lesson when the investigator and I are on the same page and the spirit has a greater chance to come into their hearts and change their lives.

We were told that we need to be using at least 7 ways of finding every week. So we have been trying to do that. Getting referrals from members, less actives, investigators, going tracting, providing service, doing a missionary presentation to the youth, doing a missionary presentation to the Relief Society and Priesthood quorums, doing a car wash at the church and giving all of the patrons a tour of the church building. We are just trying to be creative and using as many resources as possible.

Saturday night during our planning session, we were setting our daily key indicator goals before planning our activities. We saw that we needed at least 6 lessons to meet our weekly goal of 23 and we needed two new investigators. We set the deficit as our goals for the day and decided to do whatever was necessary to achieve those goals. We planned activities that would help us achieve them and determined not to end the day’s work until we had. Fast forward to the end of the day - we met our goals and added two new investigators to our pool because we had used proper planning methods and listened to the spirit during the day. It has strengthened my testimony of inspired planning and inspired finding.

Knocking on doors has taken on a new perspective as we are looking to find a new investigator rather than gathering a contact number.

I look at our past week and I smile. My companion let me know last night that we were working with 29 families. The work is exploding. My response to my companion was, “Let’s keep this going!”

This missionary is correct. Let us keep this going! Let us work on becoming master planners (Ch. 8), master finders (Ch. 9), and master teachers (Ch.10) and focus on the key indicators in Preach My Gospel p. 138 . Then we will prosper in finding new investigators and helping them follow their Lord and Savior down into the waters of baptism. This is how missionaries help prepare the world for His coming.

I love you all! I know you are trying to serve Him the very best you can! My prayer is that we will strive to become the answer to someone’s prayer.

President Summerhays J