Hey, hey, hey! How is everybody doing!?! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! I hope everyone had an awesome day celebrating our freedoms and knows how wonderful the country is that we live in! I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with a great missionary that day. His name is Elder Wade. He is super cool! For lunch that day we ate with Horacio! Do any of you remember Horacio from when I was in Oakdale? He moved to Modesto and wanted to have us over! After lunch we did a little proselyting and then had dinner. It was probably one of the best dinners I have ever had! The food was pretty good but there were a bunch of different families there that were so awesome! We played cornhole against everyone. Elder Wade and I were the reigning champs, I guess you could say! We had to be in at nine but we were at Elder Wade and Elder Jarvis’ apartment so we watched the fireworks from their balcony. They live on the third story and it was pretty great! It was funny because there were a lot of gunshots and a lot of fireworks going off. Modesto is a pretty interesting place! We had a great time on exchanges.
We had a zone conference on Wednesday that was really awesome! We just got a new five points of emphasis for our mission. The five are:
- Increase unity through effective daily companion study and companion prayer
- Plan daily to meet the specific needs of all those we teach
- Prepare commitment-based lesson plans for every lesson
- Extend commitments to everyone we teach and follow up
- Have members help those we teach keep their commitments
These points are the basic points of missionary work. Our conference was all about extending commitments and following up. Elder Wray and I had the opportunity to give a training on preparing commitment-based lesson plans for every lesson. It was so awesome! It is so important that we leave people with commitments. If we don’t leave them with a commitment, then we aren’t asking them to repent and come closer to their Savior. It is when people act that they will grow.
I am not sure how many of you saw the picture of us weeding one of our part member family’s garden but it was awesome! We showed up with our team up and she was out in her garden weeding. We took off our shoes and socks and jumped right in. Man do I miss getting dirty. It was a lot of fun pulling weeds. I love giving spontaneous service! When we see people that need help with something, we need to think, “What would Jesus do?” I love that saying that I learned when I was young. What would Jesus do? Throughout Jesus Christ’s life and ministry he was always serving. Nothing was for himself. He was always looking outward and helping others. Too many times in our lives we are too “busy” to help someone with something so simple. It may mean the world to them and you may not even know it. It is when we do the “small and simple things, great things are brought to pass.”
All of our investigators are doing really well! We are still teaching the same ones. We are really trying to find more people to teach. We can’t teach until we find people to teach! I hope you all have a wonderful week! We are going to Oakdale to play some wiffle ball in the gym!
Love,
Elder Pope
Us helping a family in our ward weed their garden! It was pretty fun!
We helped a member move a piano. Service is great!
The homies! Elder Beus and Elder Wray. We’re out here ballin’ it up!
Dirty…
