TREASURE UP

February, 5, 2017

Family,

Lydia is doing great. We were a little worried with them being gone in mainland for the past few weeks, but Lydia came back still on fire. She prepared really well for this lesson, reading all the pamphlets and discussing it with Max. She asked how many more lessons because she wanted to quickly finish. She was so prepared that we actually taught Lesson 2 and 3 and a few commandments in one lesson. We might even move the date up a week, we'll see.

Lot of changes this week. I don't know if you heard but the missionary daily schedule changed and the P-day schedule changed. Pretty similar though. Planning is in the morning and other things are a little more flexible. They want the missionaries to better use their agency and skills to plan out the day instead of it being so structured to make the return home from the mission more smooth. I guess some returned missionaries are having trouble with that.

Zone Conference was great this week. I was very blessed to be able to watch the worldwide missionary broadcast twice and am able to easily access and review it. I learned many things. I'll share the 2 main things I learned. 1. Treasure Up. This has been a reoccurring prompting many times throughout my mission. So many things from the broadcast brought this to my mind. The leaders were always using scriptures to answer questions. I want to be more like that. They always took opportunities teach. I want to better fulfill that duty. Elder Oaks said, 'make those habits in the field' when referring to our personal study. I wrote down all the extra non-proselyting time I have (morning before planning, night) and personal study time. I then made a plan of what I do to use that time effectively, specifically to treasure up. It's going to be a good week of study.

I have been thinking about time a lot this week. Brigham Young's words have been coming to mind lately, 'We are all indebted to God for the ability to use time to advantage, and he will require of us a strict account of its disposition.' I am grateful for the gentle reminder from the spirit.

The second thing that stuck out to me from Zone Conference was to simply just work. To just do it.

We have a ton of Former Investigator sheets that we have been organizing. I will call through them this week. I feel pretty good that there are 1-3 baptism in the stack for sure.

It is also a great blessing to see and talk to all the Mainlanders. Friday morning they walked in and asked if President Lam was ready to teach them. We asked what they were talking about and they explained that they had scheduled President Lam or one of his counselors to teach about 10 of them for an hour or so about Temples and Missionary Work. Problem was nobody told President Lam. He had no idea and was busy doing interviews all morning. We talked to the mission presidency, but they didn't know either. So it fell on us. It was a blessing for Elder Woolley and I to teach them. They are so humble and have such a great desire to learn. It is inspiring. We learned a lot with them as we discussed and read scriptures together for an hour that morning.

 I have gained a greater appreciation for the teaching skill of helping people feel comfortable since moving to Kowloon. Elder Woolley and President Lam are very good at this. It helps the investigator open up and share their concerns. It also helps develop trust.

Elder Stratford

Some great Mainland saints support their friend getting baptized.

Some great Indian saints here to get sealed.


Jason and non-member father.


Lydia and Max. (Lydia has a BD for Mar 5)

Qin Jm and son in Aberdeen.

Mainlanders.


Some nice elders made some burritos for Elder and Sister Lam and for us as well.



Mainland sister preparing to serve a mission showing her non-member friend around.