Apostolic View of Missionary Work - Duh!

Hello Family!!

It has been another busy and very inspiring week!! We started the week off getting a baptism date for another investigator for this Sunday. We are pretty pumped!!!

But the real game changer came Wednesday as I was able to go to Zone Leader conference and listen to President and Sister Snow discuss some things. President Snow has completely cleaned house getting rid of all the extra pamphlets missionaries have been holding on to trying to get the mission up and running again. The mission is at all time lows in baptisms and people to teach. President Snow informed us why that is. We haven’t as a mission caught the apostolic view of how to do missionary work.

The Role of Councils in The Church - Family to the Twelve

In fact we were taught the HEART of missionary work lies within the WARD COUNCIL and we as missionaries helping bishops "TURN THEIR KEYS." He explained we are doing too much; and if we want to spend all day tracting (which makes for a long day I can testify of that) haha then we can continue to do it the way we are doing it. We have to make sure everyone is aligning in the Ward Council and that they are helping the Bishop rather then advocating their calling. President and Sister Snow are extraordinary witnesses of Jesus Christ! I can see why President and Sister Harding had nothing but good things to say about them. They have a special presence about them that radiates! We have truly seen the blessings of ACTing rather than being ACTED UPON.

President and Sister Snow

We also met our Stake president who is relatively young at 31. Notwithstanding his age you can see that our Heavenly Father has called him for a specific purpose, and he will be able to bring many of sheep back into the fold. He spoke in priesthood meeting on the difference between the authority and power of the priesthood. He said we already have enough authority but not enough ordained priesthood holders using its power to bless the lives of others. Currently we are cleaning house on our investigator list, basically seeing who is looking to increase and ACT on their faith by repenting and being baptized or those who are here for the lessons. It is very humbling...We are also trying to build up and strengthen the priesthood in the ward. There are a lot of young people in the gospel in the Atlanta ward. As I mentioned before, 900 members on the roster but only about 200 who regularly attend. Each priesthood holder has at least 15 assigned families to home teach (haha and I thought 2 was alot). But I truly believe as we see through the Prophet’s lens on how and why we do missionary work we will begin to bring forth the fruits of our labor. I encourage you mom and dad to read Jacob 5 and really see where the branches have been over-growing in the ward and focus on building the roots.  What good is a fruit tree if it doesn’t produce fruit? haha

I went on an exchange Friday with Elder Nyguen in Union City and we stayed in College Park home to T.I. We went tracting and we placed a couple of Book of Mormon and were blessed with new investigators.

Anyways I’m glad to hear Ry and Kelee are doing good. Elder Heimuli and I are excited too for Bountiful football and to hear of the team’s success. I hope you all are doing well including 'Agi and Grandpa. Things are going really good down here. It's hot and humid yet I don’t really notice half the time. I’m down to 228 lbs nevertheless I feel very good. I will eventually get the memory card out. I just haven’t had the time to get over to the Post office. Thanks for the thought I really enjoyed it.  

Till next week

Love Elder Gautavai