Not too much happened this week, but a few interesting things of note occured.
-I taught my first district meeting
-the church in St. Georges got burglared
-I got to go on a trade off with one of the APs and work in Grenville for 2 days
Thats the sum of it!
So last Tuesday I got to teach my first district meeting! It wasn't bad, the first half hour was a little slower, just me talking, not a lot of participation. Its hard to stand up for 1.5 hours and just teach/talk. Thankfully a lot of my fellow missionaries here on Grenada or newer than me, so its not too bad. After we got some roleplaying about teaching the book of Mormon then participation got going and things got better and more natural. District Leader is fun, more responsibility but it is SO worth it because my relationship with the other missionaries improves and I learn more about them and how to help them.
After DM (district meeting) the week went back to the normal drive around and do errands and work in an office. well, sit around while the ZL does office work as he is the acting Senior Couple. Super boring. I have studied, read, made card houses, and slept. And we just sit all day. I sure missed missionary work. The greatest thing happened though is we got up to Grenville for a day and did a tiny bit of missionary work and then got some new fans and mattresses for our apartment down in GV. I guess that's one advantage to having the senior couple as your companion, because we finally got that done.
The Assistants came in on Saturday morning and split off with us. One of them went up to Gouyave, the other came over with me to Grenville. Me and Elder Boyer had a great time. We taught some great lessons and had a great meeting in church, oh and a dinner appointment. I love my area, and the members here. We have such a miraculous group over here. The whole carribbean area struggles with retention and having lots of less actives but here in Grenville we have 100% attendance. All 14 members showed up, which is pretty common. I know it has a smaller member group, but so do many others that have bad percentages of church attendance. We didn't have any investigators at church, but Im not letting that bother me because we have such strong members. Elder Boyer gave a great talk on fasting and I gave a nice one on prayer. I am used to things here but Elder Boyer said that it was the most spiritual sacrament meeting he has ever had on his mission, and he has been out 23 months. High praise!
We had a lot of great teaching appointments, but the best one was with a old investigators boyfriend. The lady has been not keeping commitments and we were going to drop her but I wanted to catch her BF home and teach him, see if that will excite her. Anyways, we did find him home and had a great lesson with him. He is a very very intelligent man who went to school in cuba and is a chemical engineer. I had to dust off some unused corners of my vocabulary. He had some wonderful questions. He had a lot of problems with Christianity as he saw it, and had 2 great concerns, one was where did Satan come from, where he got his bad bone from and the other was how is just 2 rewards, heaven and hell, fair when there are so many different levels of worthiness in the billions of mankind. We answered both questions and tied them both into the restoration and how we had come to a knowledge of the answers we gave him. He was so impressed by our explanations and the spirit was there testifying to him. It was great seeing him renew his faith in God, and we will follow up with him on Thursday, hopefully.
Oh yeah, and the church got broken into. someone at night went through with a crowbar and man handled most of the doors open. they stole the microphone, 2 speakers in the sacrament room, and a 30 inch HDTV in the branch president's office. Its a small miracle that that is all they took. the clerks office is connected to the branch presidents office, and it is behind the bathroom, so the burglar probably saw the sign "Clerk's Office" and figured that it was a janitors closet, cause that is what a clerk is here sometimes. Seriously, he missed the room full of computer, printer, scanner, and networking equipment with confidential church info on it. Small miracles. I figure he should have paid for attention in school, then he may have known what "Clerk" really means.
So I am looking forward to this week, I am going to have a good one, I can feel it. I won't let any bad circumstances change it. I have learnt that you really can just choose to be happy, regardless of what happens.
I do have a thought for this week, and it comes from a saying I heard this week, and I don't know who said this. "If you don't stand for something, you fall for everything" I really like that because that's exactly what I see happen here. If we just go with the flow, we will get washed and blown around to the lows of life. So just stand for what you believe and what you FEEL is right. Feelings are a lot more dependable that I used to think. The world makes us think that our feelings are not useful compared to a worldly knowledge and logic, but the opposite is true.
I hope you all have as good a week as I am determined to have!
Be safe and stand strong!
-Elder Jeppson
-I taught my first district meeting
-the church in St. Georges got burglared
-I got to go on a trade off with one of the APs and work in Grenville for 2 days
Thats the sum of it!
So last Tuesday I got to teach my first district meeting! It wasn't bad, the first half hour was a little slower, just me talking, not a lot of participation. Its hard to stand up for 1.5 hours and just teach/talk. Thankfully a lot of my fellow missionaries here on Grenada or newer than me, so its not too bad. After we got some roleplaying about teaching the book of Mormon then participation got going and things got better and more natural. District Leader is fun, more responsibility but it is SO worth it because my relationship with the other missionaries improves and I learn more about them and how to help them.
After DM (district meeting) the week went back to the normal drive around and do errands and work in an office. well, sit around while the ZL does office work as he is the acting Senior Couple. Super boring. I have studied, read, made card houses, and slept. And we just sit all day. I sure missed missionary work. The greatest thing happened though is we got up to Grenville for a day and did a tiny bit of missionary work and then got some new fans and mattresses for our apartment down in GV. I guess that's one advantage to having the senior couple as your companion, because we finally got that done.
The Assistants came in on Saturday morning and split off with us. One of them went up to Gouyave, the other came over with me to Grenville. Me and Elder Boyer had a great time. We taught some great lessons and had a great meeting in church, oh and a dinner appointment. I love my area, and the members here. We have such a miraculous group over here. The whole carribbean area struggles with retention and having lots of less actives but here in Grenville we have 100% attendance. All 14 members showed up, which is pretty common. I know it has a smaller member group, but so do many others that have bad percentages of church attendance. We didn't have any investigators at church, but Im not letting that bother me because we have such strong members. Elder Boyer gave a great talk on fasting and I gave a nice one on prayer. I am used to things here but Elder Boyer said that it was the most spiritual sacrament meeting he has ever had on his mission, and he has been out 23 months. High praise!
We had a lot of great teaching appointments, but the best one was with a old investigators boyfriend. The lady has been not keeping commitments and we were going to drop her but I wanted to catch her BF home and teach him, see if that will excite her. Anyways, we did find him home and had a great lesson with him. He is a very very intelligent man who went to school in cuba and is a chemical engineer. I had to dust off some unused corners of my vocabulary. He had some wonderful questions. He had a lot of problems with Christianity as he saw it, and had 2 great concerns, one was where did Satan come from, where he got his bad bone from and the other was how is just 2 rewards, heaven and hell, fair when there are so many different levels of worthiness in the billions of mankind. We answered both questions and tied them both into the restoration and how we had come to a knowledge of the answers we gave him. He was so impressed by our explanations and the spirit was there testifying to him. It was great seeing him renew his faith in God, and we will follow up with him on Thursday, hopefully.
Oh yeah, and the church got broken into. someone at night went through with a crowbar and man handled most of the doors open. they stole the microphone, 2 speakers in the sacrament room, and a 30 inch HDTV in the branch president's office. Its a small miracle that that is all they took. the clerks office is connected to the branch presidents office, and it is behind the bathroom, so the burglar probably saw the sign "Clerk's Office" and figured that it was a janitors closet, cause that is what a clerk is here sometimes. Seriously, he missed the room full of computer, printer, scanner, and networking equipment with confidential church info on it. Small miracles. I figure he should have paid for attention in school, then he may have known what "Clerk" really means.
So I am looking forward to this week, I am going to have a good one, I can feel it. I won't let any bad circumstances change it. I have learnt that you really can just choose to be happy, regardless of what happens.
I do have a thought for this week, and it comes from a saying I heard this week, and I don't know who said this. "If you don't stand for something, you fall for everything" I really like that because that's exactly what I see happen here. If we just go with the flow, we will get washed and blown around to the lows of life. So just stand for what you believe and what you FEEL is right. Feelings are a lot more dependable that I used to think. The world makes us think that our feelings are not useful compared to a worldly knowledge and logic, but the opposite is true.
I hope you all have as good a week as I am determined to have!
Be safe and stand strong!
-Elder Jeppson