07 January 7--Balance

OK,

This week was good. I'm hoping to finally get my guitar today (there's a long and tedious story about that, so I'll spare you the details). It's great to hear from you. I'm really struggling today for what I want to write. Nothing terribly exciting happened this week. Most of our investigators are out of town for the holidays, even though all of them neglected to tell us that before we had already set up appointments. So our work suffered statistically this week. I'm not too worried about numbers though, because I know we kept ourselves busy this week. It's a difficult balance that we have to keep as missionaries, in terms of the how we keep track of the work we're doing. Some missionaries only look at the statistics ( IE, how many appointments, how many investigators attended sacrament meeting, how many contacts how many...... etc.... ( we call in our statistics every week)) and I don't think that's the right way to do it. However, some missionaries, don't look at the statistics at all, and I don't think that's good either. I think that it's important to keep the right balance. The missionaries that are only concerned with the numbers ( # of appointments, # of baptisms etc...) neglect some other important aspects of missionary work that cannot be measured in numbers. They are also more often victims of what could be termed " a bad week", in that all of their scheduled appointments, no matter how much they had prepared that week, for some reason or another, fall through. (They also become way more uptight and bureaucratic than I have patience for). However, the opposite is also something to avoid. Those missionaries that don't worry at all about the numbers run the risk of selling themselves short, in terms of the work they could be doing. It is harder to set meaningful and reasonable goals when you disregard the actual number of appointments or what-have-you that your putting out right now. It's like throwing a dart in the dark - you might hit the target. But more likely you'll break something( or end up hitting your companion). Happily, my present companion sits somewhere in the middle, as do I. But I've been both places, and I'm still trying to BE in the right balance. It's definitely a work in progress because I'd say my temperament leans toward the latter.

Anyway, this week was full of tracting and visiting members and doing what we've come to call "the contact lesson". This lesson was developed by my companion and I because it is the mission goal to get more baptisms this year than last ( obviously). And it has already been determined that the most effective finding tool is not tracting, but using the members for contacts. Also, having a friend at church is the first of three things that all new members need for retention, according to President Hinckley. So basically my companion and I decided that if we simply remember to bother every single one of our appointments about bringing a friend to church and asking for a contact, eventually they will submit, if only to get us to stop bothering them. This logic was taken from the "Parable of the unjust judge" in the New Testament, so hopefully it will work. I think it will, it just needs time is all. So that's what we did this week. We are also going to start a fireside for all the new members and investigators one Sunday of every month. We're hoping that the missionaries will only have to be in charge for the first couple of times and then the member missionaries will catch on. There will be a lesson at the beginning, but the focus will be on the games and snacks at the end , with the idea that the food and games will be what they'll remember and therefore come back for.

Well it looks like I'm out of time so, I'll just say I love you and I'll write you next week. Veloma!

Elder Draper