Journal Entries:
Today I attended a District Development meeting. Elder Williams my MTC roommate was teaching the lesson. The lesson was on enthusiasm. As a missionary that is really important. In his lesson he made a statement, Paraphrasing D&C 4, he said “ Can we serve with all our heart, might, mid, and strength if we do not have enthusiasm?
No! You can not.
Sister White talked a little in Zone Conference about the word enthusiasm. The meaning of the word in Greek mean “ God in you” A great definition!
The past 2 days President White and Elder Folsom and I have been interviewing all missionaries. The interview is broken up into two parts. Performance and proselyting skills is talked about with the Assistants, personal and attributes are talked about with President White. Each session is 15 minutes. And scheduling interviews 15 minutes apart we are able to do the whole mission in about a day and ¾.
When we interview a missionary we first sing one verse of an enthusiastic Missionary Song. Last month the song was “Called to Serve”, this month our song was “Go Forth with Faith”. We then kneel in prayer and one of us Assistants says the prayer and makes a point to pray for that missionary. We follow up first on past goals and they score themselves and then we help them set new goals for the coming month. Goals include: Discussion, proselyting skills, language acquisition. This past interview session we tried to ask every Elder two questions:
1) What proselyting skill do you want to focus on this month as a result of zone conference?
2) Do you make your bed each morning?
We found that 75% of the mission did not make their bed. Some missionaries need a little
persuasion but most committed themselves to make their bed each morning on their own.
Two very historic events took place yesterday. The first one was a special assignment from President White. President White ask us to choose 6 or 7 members and have them come to the office. We are in the final stages of buying land for a stake center. However foreigners can not be the owners of Cambodian land. A corporation must be formed of shareholders on paper the church will own 49% and 3 Khmae citizens of the church will be shareholders of 17%. They volunteer to be shareholders so the church can build a stake center. They don’t make or loose ant money only serve the church. Those in attendance were: Chan, Soriya, Chany Hang Bo, Phanith, Pen Vibol, Peeh Sophouk, and Um Son. I think that some were a little puzzled about it but they were all so excited to hear that we are working towards building a stake center.
The other major historical event was Elder Folsom and I took the car down to Ta Khman to scout out possible proselyting Elders moving there in October. It was hard to see the layout of the city, just by car we needed a map, but they didn’t have one for us. We went into a government building. I think it was the bureau of Land Titles or something and we sat down and talked with two nice older men. The one guy was all rushed and gave us some statistical information but we explained that we did not come for stats. Elder Folsom led the way in a good conversation about why we were there and why we hopefully plan to be in Ta Khman. Elder Folsom astounds people with how clear and well he speaks Khmae. He sounds just like them and has an amazing vocabulary. I realize I need to work harder on my language.
We are not sure that we are ready to head off to Ta Khman with 4 Elders. We felt just like we were in Phnom Penh while we were there, just father away and the attitude of the people is more relaxed. We have to ponder and pray about weather or not it is time to go. Before the trip yesterday in my mind I was saying yes go, but I didn’t feel strongly either way as we were down in the city yesterday.
We met with President White yesterday to discuss what to say at Zone Leaders Leadership training meeting. He told us to be careful and avoid the shotgun effect. The shotgun effect is hitting lots of little points but not developing any of them, the result is those in the meeting don’t benefit from what is said.