Hey family! I hope everyone’s doing well! Congrats again on the Marathon! That’s pretty amazing to win it let alone finish it!
This week ended up turning out great despite the added complications of covering 2 areas. We ended up teaching 12 lessons in each area for a combined total of 24 which was pretty amazing. Plus we had 3 people attend Brighton’s sacrament meeting and an investigator attended Howell’s again. The Stake President came to our sacrament meeting too and gave a really good talk on missionary work. He met with the Bishop earlier this week and they reorganized the Ward Mission plan and came up with good ideas. I had another good talk with the Bishop about how to build this ward’s faith and confidence. He told me that the problem with Howell is that most members are very content with where they’re at as a ward —–which is exactly what Elder Wenzel and Adair told me too. The Bishop said that when Howell and Brighton split, the Howell ward was basically categorized by 3 main families and those families have always been kind of the ‘popular’ group of the ward.
We had a great Ward Council meeting too and I really tried to uplift the rest of the ward council to set an example. What’s really cool is right in the middle of Ward Council, the Primary President gave me a good referral! I know if we can just get 1 baptism it would be the spark that makes the ward explode!
As for me, I’m doing well. It was a really difficult week for me especially at the beginning. I’ve watched so many missionaries that I’ve served around and become friends with, go home this transfer and my last companion was a breaking point for me. I really felt like he was starting to do better but I guess I was dead wrong. I had a good heartfelt prayer to the Lord a few nights after he left. I think it was the first time I ever really had to pray to the Lord for comfort. This transfer has been a lot of stress for me with the added responsibility of being District Leader, planning all the lessons, running all of companion study, weekly planning and starting all the lessons, and on top of that watching good friends go home.
Plus I’ve had the Zone Leaders and Bishop on my back because of how low our numbers have been. It was tough because I wasn’t allowed to explain to them what was going on so they all just thought I was a bad missionary —haha. (But everyone’s up to date now and the Bishop wrote me a big long apology letter) I had to tell the Lord that I can’t go it anymore; I’ve done all I can on my own and I need him to make up the difference. Being in the Brighton mission, I immediately found out how much the current Elders were going to try and rely on me for my experience.
I finally had a companion study with them and I told them that they have to lead this area. I just couldn’t do it all anymore.
After that prayer and heart to heart with the Elders, I had a much better week. This past weekend was awesome and probably one of the best weekends of my mission.
So I figured this week that If I’m going to make this ward explode, I better not challenge the members to do anything that I wouldn’t ask my own family to do! So you just got roped into to Elder Rushton’s mission; Congratulations!!!
So here’s my commitment, share the Gospel with someone by the end of June. Whether it’s handing out a BOM, or inviting someone to check out mormon.org, just do it! The Ann Arbor Stake President gave a really good story about how he didn’t know anyone he could share the gospel with, but then he invited the cashier at a gas station to hear the lessons and she accepted and now she’s on baptism date for July! So I’m not even going to ask you to do it; I just expect it from the most awesome family in the world. So help my missionary work!
Another talk in sacrament yesterday was on repentance and how missionary work is a step of repentance. Missionary work ‘hides a multitude of sins.’ Go figure. So I’ll check up with you next week 😉
Well I’m running out of time because of the looooong letter I had to write President Holmes. Last Monday when we were at the mission home, Sis. Holmes asked me how I was doing and I told her I never want to see their house again– haha. (I’ve been there too much with Elders going home) I said ‘when I go home, just take me from my apartment to the plane!’ All that house has is bad memories!—HA HA!
Well I hope you all have an awesome week! I’ll try and write you another letter this week.
-Erik