TTE or Talk to Everyone - 11/4/13

Melbourne Mission Moments 11/04/13

November already? Holy cow! Can you believe that this week it will have been a year since I got my call? This has been by far the fastest year of my entire life.

We had a really good week this week and saw a lot of miracles!! 

Tuesday morning we had transfer meeting. It was a super good meeting! President Maxwell talked about the mission and the work that has been done this year. Then he asked each companionship to baptize one person before Christmas as our gift to Christ. I am really excited about this! I know that as my companion and I work hard we will be blessed to see miracles and that we will be able to have a baptism before Christmas. Then the APs talked to us about Elder Ballard's talk from General Conference and how as missionaries if we want to teach more, we have to talk to more people." We really want to make this a mission goal so they have added a new key indicator for us to record each week which is TTE (talk to everyone.) They committed us all to truly talk to everyone we see! The Standard of Excellence is 140 per week. As my companion and I started applying this I realized that usually we do talk to everyone but there is still the occasional person that we don't go out of our way to talk to. So this week we changed that. In 5 days we talked to 286 people! It is amazing to see how many people we can influence every single day. I truly know that as we talk to more people, we will be blessed with more people to teach and we will see miracles happen. At the end of transfer meeting they always have the departing missionaries bear their testimonies. Man, some awesome missionaries went home this week. I love hearing their testimonies and seeing how much they truly love the work and how sad they are to leave. I don't want that day to ever come for me. I'm just going to be a missionary forever and ever. :)

Tuesday afternoon we got to stop by and have a short lesson with our 12-year old investigator. It went well and she had read from the Book of Mormon which was good but she still won't pray with us. So this week we are going to really focus on helping her understand why we pray and how to pray and then get her to pray with us.

We were also able to teach our mother and son on Tuesday. He is so cute and he is so excited for his baptism! This week we taught him the 10 commandments and taught him hand signs for all of them. He is so smart and remembered all of them so quickly. But oh my goodness, funny experience. So we got to number 7, "thou shalt not commit adultery" and we weren't exactly sure how to explain that to an 8 year old so we kind of turned to his mother for help. She told him, "It means no sexy time before you're married." His eyes got all big and he said, "God told MOSES that?! Yuck!" Hahaha it was SO funny! We were dying laughing! 

Wednesday we had Zone Meeting. Half of our zone just got transferred into the area so it was a lot of new faces but it was really good! There are some awesome missionaries and a lot of faith in our zone. Our kind of zone motto for the transfer is "Lift Where You Stand" from President Uchtdorf's talk. We are going to rise together this transfer and see miracles happen!

Thursday night was the Trunk or Treat and it went so well! We had several investigators there and most of the two wards involved turned out as well! 

Trunk or Treat!

All the missionaries from the two wards at the trunk or treat.

Friday morning we had an amazing first lesson with a guy who is in his 20s and is a martial arts teacher/ personal trainer. We met him a little over a week ago while we were walking down his street. He was getting out of his car and we had heard that he was listening to Imagine Dragons so we started a conversation about that. Then we were able to teach about the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy and set up our return appointment for Friday. We were able to teach him the Restoration and it went so well! He has a really open heart. He had already read the introduction and the testimonies in the Book of Mormon which was super awesome. When we shared the Pillar of Light with him you could just see his eyes light up. Then after we taught more about the Book of Mormon he told us he was excited to read it. We invited him to be baptized and he expressed concerns of having already been baptized in the Anglican church but we were able to teach more about the Priesthood and set up a return appointment for this week. Before we left he said the most beautiful prayer. It was so awesome. Hopefully this week we'll be able to set a solid date with him! 

Saturday we had another fantastic lesson with a new investigator! We met him tracting. He is from India and was raised Hindu but is now Christian. It is very apparent that he has a really good relationship with God. We were able to teach him the Restoration and he really loved it. His insights and answers to questions were really great and you could tell that he was really taking it in, not just hearing it. We invited him to be baptized on November 23 and he agreed to that date if he is able to read the Book of Mormon and then get an answer from God that it is true. So that was really exciting to set a date with him! 

We hadn't heard from another investigator all week but we ran into him on Saturday. He expressed concerns about meeting with us and making the gospel part of his life because he doesn't feel like he can fully commit because of the problem of coming to church on Sundays. We were able to help him realize that he feels the spirit and that Heavenly Father will provide a way for him. 

So yeah, we've definitely seen miracles this week! Heavenly Father has blessed us so much with people to teach! I can't wait to continue working with these people.

I can't believe you're getting snow! It just barely started warming up here. I still wear cardigans a lot though. It's definitely staying cooler here than it is in Sydney and Perth. 

Phillip- RED SOX!! Are you excited? :) Haha I bet you're freaking out that you missed it. I bet your Spanish is better than you think it is now. I was thinking of you Tuesday and Wednesday night this week. Tuesday night at our lesson they gave us a huge glass of apple juice. Then Wednesday night at our dinner appointment we had pork chops with apple sauce on top. It was home-made apple sauce. You would have loved it. Keep talking to everyone. That's what we are doing and it's been awesome. It will also probably really help your Spanish!

I love you all so much. I am grateful to be a part of such an amazing work. I love being a missionary. I know that this Church is true and I want all of Melbourne to know it. 

Love y'all heaps!

Sister Baker