Mission: Week Four

Week four has come and gone.  In a flash, really.  It is unbelievable how quickly time goes by.

Things I learned this week:  there are so many people and things for which to express gratitude.  I will share some of them.

Each morning when all the office missionaries have arrived we take a short time for a devotional. I have mentioned this before, I think.  Someone gives a thought and someone else prays for us.  (One of my responsibilities is to make up the calendar.)  It is a lovely way to start the day.  We use the same theme for three weeks.  We have one more week on the topic of gratitude.

This week the UPS guy came loaded with boxes.  Multiple days.  He used a hand truck to bring them up and kindly took them to a spot in the office where they were out of the way, more or less, instead of leaving them right front. I am very grateful for that.

One day the Post Office delivery man brought up two boxes that would not fit into our mailboxes downstairs in the lobby.  That was so nice of him.  The next day he, too, came with a hand truck filled with boxes.  Note to self:  if you love missionaries, it is nice to send them mail whether boxes or letters or cards.  Better get doing it.  It makes a difference for the young elders and sisters who are far from home and doing things that do not come naturally.

It seemed like every delivery person who came to the office this week - Fedex, UPS, USPS, Amazon (did you know Amazon has a delivery team?!! I didn't but we received deliveries twice this week from the nice Amazon girl.) each of them came into the office with their loads, and left with a smile. They always seem to perk up when we thank them.

Another thing I am thankful for is the people who make an effort to make our days more pleasant.  Who take time to help us feel important or needed.  One day President came to the office and stopped at my desk for a moment to ask how we were doing, how we were fitting in.  He did not need to do that.  It makes me happy and grateful for moments like that.  So many other times a quick word or a simple smile have the same effect.  I want to do that more often for other people.

This weekend I have been reading in Elder Clayton Christensen's The Power of Every Day Missionaries. I read two chapters.  The first was about teaching people to pray.  Many people learned some rote prayers when they were little children and did not learn to talk with Heavenly Father in their own words. I did, as a child, but that changed when I became a Latter-day Saint where we learned to pray and pray every day all the time.  In this chapter Elder Christensen talks about teaching people to pray for themselves.  It is really a lovely chapter.

The very next chapter is about teaching people how to study the scriptures.  I am so grateful for that chapter.  I have read the scriptures most of my life, but the pattern he suggests will make a huge difference in what I take away from my personal study.  The nuts and bolts of it is:  pray (out loud is best) about what you are going to read, read it,  write a short draft paragraph about what you read, pray again about what you got out of it,  read the passage again, then write a final paragraph about what you read, and finally pray again to talk with Heavenly Father and discuss what you are going to do with what you learned as you studied.  I am going to try this method and see what happens. I can only imagine it will take scripture study to  a vastly different plane.  If anyone else try this, please share it with me.

Probably I have mentioned my "Jesus Project" where I am reading all the verses in the Topical Guide to the Scriptures that are about Jesus Christ in all the scriptures. In March I had gone through the Topical Guide and copied and pasted all the references into a document then fiddled around with it to make it coherent/neat and tidy (to my way of thinking) as a PDF document then printed it out.  It is 63 pages long.  I have been moving along very slowly in this reading, but after a very rocky start, I have been reading at least a few of the references every day.  Today I am on page 12 and the topic:  Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd.  There are 25 separate references.  I hope to get them all read tonight though this will not be the same as the study project from Elder Christensen.  I think I will apply that to my reading of The Book of Mormon.  )If anyone wants a pdf copy of this Jesus Project, just email me and I will send it. ) It is helping me develop a greater relationship with our Savior.

There are other things that I want to share about this week but will put them in other posts as this is getting longer again.