1/11 17 months!!

So another week is down! This week I will officially complete 17 months in the mission field. There is still a lot of time left.. but there isn’t. I am concious of the time, but I don’t feel trunky. I just feel motivated to keep working and keep helping others come to Christ. But still, where the heck did the time go?

So we had our leadership council with President and the other zone leaders and sister training leaders of the mission in Arequipa this week. It was really good, and holy cow, it was awesome! President Zobrist is inspired, and he taught a lot about the importance of teaching our investigators so that they truly understand the doctrine. We have to ask questions to really be sure they know. Because if they don’t understand, we are just teaching people, and not lessons. Often times as missionaries, we try the "firehose approach." A simple question about the nature of God leads to an unleashing of the doctrinal firehouse and we end up drowning the investigators in a sea of information. What we are ultimately called to do is to teach repentance and baptize converts.  

21 And I command you that you preach naught but repentance, and show not these things unto the world until it is wisdom in me.
 22 For they cannot bear meat now, but milk they must receive; wherefore, they must not know these things, lest they perish. (D&C 19:21-22)

We also learned about how to better ask for referals from the members. A lot of times we just go in guns a blazin and are like Liam Neeson asking for names, but that really doesn’t work. We have to sit down with the members and have them pray to have missionary experiences and have them really ponder in the people that they know, and then come back a week or so later to see how it went for them. I invite you to do the same. (D&C 15:6). 

We taught one of the coolest first discussions ever this week. We were teaching one of our new investigators, Jonathon, about Joseph Smith and the First Vision. As we shared the Prophet´s own words in describing the First Vision, he began to cry and said how incredible it was that the Lord has called a prophet in our day. That had never happened to me in my mission, so that was really cool. 

We continue to work hard. We are really excited to have a week where we don’t have to do anything crazy, like travel to Arequipa or Ilo, and just work in our area. We do have our zone conference this week, but we are going to do it here in Moquegua, so it will be a lot less hectic that the last one. Thanks for everything, have a great week!

Elder Matheson

"downtown" Moquegua