Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The 8-Month Mark Is A Perfect Time For Enlightenment and Revelation

Today marks 8 months for me as a missionary - woot woot!  I guess it's awesome, but it's just sad, too, because that's a whole 1/3 of my mission, and I'm seeing how fast time flies, and I just don't want it to be over that soon!  The best part, though, is that when I think about that it makes me realize how valuable the time is that I have, so it just makes me want to work harder and harder and never waste a single minute!!!

Well this last week has been kinda rough.  We've had A LOT of dropped appointments, and even more rescheduled appointments...that end up falling through anyway.  So that doesn't make things any easier, and it sure doesn't help the progress of our investigators or our area, but it has taught us a lot.

Sunset @ Gloucester Bay
These circumstances, along with a great talk with our Bishop this last week, have really helped us to feel enlightened and receive revelation on what to do for our area.  We prayed a lot about it this week, pondered to ourselves about what we could do, and then last night Matt Wood came and helped us sort out everything (seriously he's the best.  He's such a close friend to me, he really helps us a lot, and he will be such an amazing missionary).  After talking about our area and discussing our investigators, Matt said, "Something has to change here, and it needs to change quick," so we got to work :)  Basically, we realized that we've been striving to much for quantity of numbers and not the quality of the people that those numbers represent.  We've been spending 9 days out of 10 in one area, and don't get me wrong, there are many wonderful people there and they are all special sons and daughters of out Heavenly Father, but generally the quality of the people we find as investigators there turns out to be more of a burden to the ward than a strength.  Basically, we've decided that we need a "teaching pool" of more solid investigators who have more stable lives - people who, upon baptism, will become a great strength and addition to the ward.  Now this doesn't mean that we are just going to forget that area and move on, it just means that we are only going to focus our efforts there on the people we already have (and of course any other referrals we get), but spend the rest of our "finding times" in areas such as Rowley, Groveland, and especially Georgetown itself. 

We are very excited about this change that will take place in our efforts here, and we feel strongly that this is what the Lord would have us do at this time.  With that in mind, we also feel that the Lord is preparing specific people to be put in our path in the areas where we are about to search, so now it's just up to us to rely on the guidance of the Spirit and then find those who are really seeking the TRUTH!

Well I'm excited to get to tell you about all the miracles we will see :)  so till next time.....

From New England with love,

Elder Dustin Carr

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