So far it hasn't been all that beautiful of weather here. It's mostly overcast with periodic rain fall. Though, it is spring here so what did I expect eh?
The way we go about stuff here is so much different from anywhere else I've served. Some of it is because it works better, and a bit is because there hasn't ever been missionaries stationed here before, so there's a bit of growing pains in helping the members understand how to go about things.
Had and interesting experience this past week with one of the members. We got a text saying that he was waiting for us at the school, so we cruised over, thinking that he must have some sort of teaching appointment set up. I followed my comp into the room that he was in and instantly regretted it. Turns out that it was some sort of financial literacy seminar that BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) was hosting. It was too late to turn back though, so we took a seat. I'm not really sure why, but man was I angry. We had to sit for an hour while this lady talked about a bunch of super simple stuff that I still remember from high school. Not cool. Then after she finished and started cleaning up, our member speaks up about how good of a class it was, but while we're learning about the temporal, we need to learn about the spiritual as well. Then he turns to us and goes, "well, you got three minutes." What? That is not the way to try to share the gospel. Not to mention we're in a totally inappropriate setting, but I was still seeing a bit of red, and was in no condition to start teaching people that we have a loving heavenly father. Turns out the lady teaching is from a place called Te Kuiti, and is already talking to the missionaries there. Thank goodness. I don't know. Maybe I should always be prepared to preach in every single situation. But it seems to me like there's the right time, and not the right time, and that was one of those not the right time moments.
Aside from that, I'm working on getting people out of the pamphlet mentality. They seem to have this mindset where all they do is give out pamphlets, then never discuss them. We went to a guy's house yesterday, and instead of discussing the last pamphlet that we shared, they wanted to go straight to handing him another one and then leaving. Eh? It's been really eye opening to see the different levels of ability in missionary work. One thing about being a zone leader was that you're paired up with another zone leader, and for the most part, zone leaders are fairly well versed in how to teach. It's been interesting going from a situation in which my companion and I teach effectively together, to being back with an islander that's still struggling a bit with English, let alone explaining the doctrines of the kingdom effectively.
Anyway, I hope that all made sense. Just goes to show that's there's a whole lot more in this than it appears on the surface.
Other than that, we've done a heap of service. Even went out to a farm the other day and helped do some fencing. I think we're going back out this week too. Should be good.
Ka Kite! Elder O'Neal
Had an interesting discovery yesterday at church. A few months back I got a new set of pocket sized military scriptures. I've been using them for my church scriptures ever since, but somehow never had to use anything from 3 Nephi 6 - Mormon. Otherwise I would have previously discovered that my copy doesn't have anything between 3 Nephi 6 and Mormon. Not to mention the duplicate books...
No comments:
Post a Comment