Parker - March 12

Hey Everyone!

This week has been pretty good. We've been working pretty hard actually, and we were about to be ready for three people to be baptized this week. BUT then it rained hard sunday morning and only one of them got to church, so we had to push back the other two baptisms. 

But anyway, I'll talk about the kid we're gonna baptize this saturday. His name is E. He's the cousin of a recent convert, who's brothers with that crazy guy who thinks he's Christ. So that's been interesting. But anyway, E's been living in Buenos Aires, and was very worldly and had problems with drugs and robbery and stuff, and he moved here in order to turn around and leave all that stuff behind. His cousin introduced him to us and he got really interested. We've been teaching him for a couple weeks, and he's pretty excited about getting baptized, he really wants to change his life. 

So that's gonna be pretty awesome this week. 

And yeah, apart from that, we had zone conference. Of which, I am including a picture. (sorry I haven't been as good as Jack in taking pics, we're in Tucuman and I'm worried about people stealing my camera.)

But yeah, it was a really good conference. There's only a couple problems I'm starting to see. Back a while, when Elder Bragg visited the mission, he talked about a graph. Where there are four kinds of missions, based on two variables. The first is Expectations and the second is Love. High Love and High expectations, you get a Mission of Miracles. High Love and Low Expectations, you get a Mission of Fraternity (missionaries who are there to just be friends with everyone, but doesn't actually get anything done), Low love and Low expectations is a Mission of Rebellion, and Low love and High expectations is a Mission of Numbers (no one really cares about the people, they just care about results). And something he said was that this mission has no shortage of love, and he really complimented us on that. 

SO, from what I can gather, Mission President has decided that from now on, so that we can become a Mission of Miracles, is to ONLY focus on the expectations. So, things have been croping up which have started to make me a little discouraged. For example, things that have helped me not to get discouraged when a baptism doesn't go through or we're not having too much success is the idea that as long as I am working dilligently, then I am a successful missionary and God is happy with my work. But, now, for example, they've passed out a neat little manual specific for this mission. It's really useful and has a lot of great stuff which answers a lot of the questions a newbie has. And they're handing out this manual to the newbies when they get to the mission. BUT, there's a section where it talks about key things in this mission. Specifically baptisms, and it says "It's not the effort nor the time you put into the work, rather the results." 

And...I don't know, that doesn't encourage me really at all to do well. All it really does is give way for a bunch of lazy baptisms. I understand the difference, and I am working hard. I'm just worried about all the new missionaries coming in with this mindset. 

And yeah, so last Conference they talked about Obediece, and this Conference we talked about Dilligence. So, last district meeting, I taught about Dilligence, and it was very focused on staying encouraged and just working hard, even if there are setbacks and trials. Whereas in the conference, they just  talked about how the results are the only thing that matter, so you just need to get results. 

Eh, those are just my thoughts. Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining a bit, but don't worry about me, I'ts all good! Only five more months to go. 

Love you guys!