Mission Standard

August 1, 2011

Wow, you all had a busy week. The only one I didn't hear from was Kat... (HINT HINT)
I feel like I got all possible views of the week, except Kat's...
I get regular-ish emails from everybody, except Kat...

Yeah, that ought to do it.

So, our week was pretty good. I'll explain what I consider to be the highlight of our week. First, some background. The mission has what is called the mission standard. It is the numbers of lesson/ baptisms/ new investigator, etc. that we are supposed to get. The idea is that this is the base level. Something to get to and then pass, rise higher. Back in Ayungon we were doing pretty good. Got here in Handumanan and expected things to be good, because (1) there is like ten time more people here and (2) the ward is fully functioning. But I was mightily disappointed. Things weren't looking so hot. So we set goals to work our way up to mission standard. Which is a general practice. But last week, on Wednesday, Elder Hinckley sent a text that we need to stop goaling below mission standard. We should goal and have faith to "go and do." So I showed the text to Elder Davidson, he was just as non-confident (forgot the proper word to use) as I was in doing such a thing. We had been pretty far from the standard the last two weeks. Never the less, we set the goals... and set out to work.

As the week neared the close, I decided to check on our progress to our goals. I found that we almost doubled our lessons taught and found more than double our new investigators! Ultimately we still fell short but we made leaps and bounds. Elder Hinckley came to do some baptismal interviews for the John-Johns. When he finished and was signing the forms, I told him about the numbers. He was way impressed. He sees our numbers every week so he was very pleased with the great progress we made.

That's really all that stood out this last week.

Oh! We had zone conference on Thursday. (Which makes getting good numbers all the harder. It takes up most of your day) But conference was awesome. Got to see some familiar faces from La Carlota, cause they had been transferred too. President Tobias interviewed everyone. Which he is suppose to do every three months, but this was my first in just over a year... Either way, it was a good interview. We talked about the district, and just things in general. He gave clues about his plans for the future too. He explained that the zone leaders have both been in this zone for a while now and that I should "be ready." We also talked about scouting. He was talking about good leadership and used the "Follow Me Boys" movie as an example. I was happy to tell him that I had seem that movie.

I have plans for the district, that I'm going to put into use tomorrow. It's simple and works very well with primary kids. Candy! They will be rewarded for doing things they are supposed to and contributing to the meeting. I wish I didn't have to do that, but I can't figure how to get half the district to take the meeting seriously and learn things from it. They aren't just there to sit, it is suppose to help their work. So they need to take notes and record the revelation they receive.

So, that's it for this week. I'm gonna go get a haircut...

Elder Phelps

PS. I'm buying some stuff off the LDS Online Store. It will come from Manila. It's cheaper in pesos...

Also, in next package, pleases send ties, but not too nice of ties. I'm going to give these ties out to like recent converts and stuff. I already gave out the ones that I have that I don't really like...