It has been another week. It is starting
to become harder to stay motivated and energetic every day. I can feel
the pull to mentally check out from the work and just focus all my
efforts on my future endeavors. My thoughts get consumed by future
endeavors and seeing people I love again. It is not easy being a
missionary and staying diligent to the end. It is a tall task. Even the
best missionaries begin to lose motivation in their final weeks. This
leaves me with a steep mountain to climb ahead of me.
We had a Web-Ex meeting for all the missionaries going home (14 Elders) on Saturday.
The Assistants and President Pratt hosted it. They talked about how it's
important to finish strong and if we get severely trunky it will take a
while for our areas to recover. A missionary going home with me
commented how our time left gives him ambition to put forth his best
efforts in helping this mission. Another missionary said that we all
have those missionaries that we look up to and how they finished their
missions. We should be an example to other missionaries that will follow
us. President closed the meeting by saying Heavenly Father knew what he
was doing when he put 14 men together on the same day to help him in
his first year of his mission.
Last week's
session of My Plan was "My Vision and Goals". In this session of My Plan
there was a video of Return Missionaries talking about goals. One of my
favorite quotes from this video was "Coming home from a mission is an
excellent trajectory of what an individual can become". Then it had me
create a one-year vision for myself and make 3 goals for myself. This
week's session of My Plan is "Continuing Discipleship".
I
rode a ferry for the first time in my life last Monday. There is island
that is a part of our area. It is called Deer Island. It's an hour and a
half away from us. We went out there to see a less active. When we got
there, the less active decided he wanted to see an active member with us
instead. So we saw the member with him instead and had a good visit with
him. But it was so cool to be on a ferry. It was almost sunset when we
rode back on it too. So I got to see the ocean at night up close. It was
beautiful.
On Tuesday: We gave service at the
hospital. We played bowling with the hospital patients. Right after
bowling, two of our investigators called us and dropped us. We were
disappointed... especially since we didn't follow up with them as much as we
should have. It was hard especially on Elder Belmonte. We went biking in
Woodland, Maine in the afternoon until dinner with the Corbetts.
Wednesday:
We had District Meeting in Fredericton. The training was on
extending the baptismal invitation out of a sense of urgency and Book of
Mormon prophets. After District Meeting we traveled to McAdam's and
contacted a referral. Then we contacted a couple of formers. After our
time in McAdam we had a lesson in Deer Island with a new investigator. We contacted him in St. George. It turned out that Deer
Island is 2 hours away so by the time we got to McAdam we only had 2
hours there. When we got to Deer Island it took us 30 minutes just to
find his house. We had a member with us that had to help navigate. The investigator
is 28 years old and lives on his own. He wants to serve a mission for his church. He said he just wants to meet with us for friendship so next
lesson we're checking for real intent.
Thursday,
we picked up another new investigator. He lives in Maine.
We met him as we were stopping by a member. He feels very strongly that
God hates him. We shared a part of the Plan of Salvation but not all of
it. We had a lesson with a former investigator in the afternoon. He explained to us why
he dropped us.
That's pretty much it for this week. It was a pretty mild week.
Have a good week!
Love,
Elder O'Brien (the older)
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