So
the highlight of this week has to do with Elder Bednar and Elder Halstrom of
the Presidency of the Seventy coming to our mission to speak. It was a combined
mission conference, and it was probably one of the most revelatory experiences
of my life. Elder Bednar didn't come prepared with anything. He had only his scriptures.
He's a lot shorter than me, but it was cool that we all got to shake his hand.
Anyway,
he had the coolest way of teaching. First of all, he said he wanted to teach us
to understand the concept of "agents to act, rather than “objects to be
acted upon." It’s the gift that God gave us, and he wanted to emulate that.
He gave us some talks about faith and acting upon it to study while we prepared
for the conference, and the first half was us telling him certain things we
learned. Often when someone shared what they learned, he asked, "may I ask
you a question?" and then he asked them to expound upon what they learned.
The idea of this whole thing was to teach us how to teach with the Holy Ghost
being the true teacher. He told us we need to take ourselves out of the mindset
that we teach people. Our job is to invite them to learn by the power of the
Holy Ghost. It was AMAZING.
One
of my favorite things he said was when the brother of Jared saw the finger of
the Lord, he pointed out that the Lord touched the stones "one by one with
his finger." He asked us why the Lord simply didn't snap his fingers to
light all sixteen stones. He told us that there were many reasons, one that the
Lord usually works in one's (the ninety and nine sheep and the one, the woman
at the well, Jesus and Nicodemus), and that is how missionary work is patterned.
Second, he told us he didn't believe that the brother of Jared saw the finger
after the first stone was lit, but after seeing the evidence of his faith
"one by one" he saw the finger. He told us to imagine our
investigators as the stones - that everything does not come at once, but as we
exercise our faith. One by one we will
see the Lord’s hand in everything. It was such an amazing conference.
Well
the time is ticking down but I am super excited for missionary work!
Elder
Bringhurst
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