March 10, 2014

This week has been great. We had a member of the Quorum of the

Twelve Apostles come and talk to the missionaries in the Kansas Wichita Mission.

Monday we had p-day. Then we went and talked to Brother Rea. We talked about the church and his life.

Tuesday we had district meeting in Hays. Brother Voss in the ward drove us to and back from Hays. In district meeting we talked about how we need to help our investigators and be bold but not push them to baptism.  The zone leaders were also there at the meeting. We then go back to Great Bend at 4. We then went over to see Brandon Trevino and follow up on how he was reading the Book of Mormon.

Hays District

Wednesday we had weekly planning. Then after Weekly planning we went to see Edwin Roberts. He was not home.  We were able to have dinner at the Siefkes. We had smoothies and sandwiches. Elder Acosta and Elder Nelson and Kjersti Carlton all made smoothies for us to try. After dinner we went to Jenifer Trevino and follow up on how they are reading the Book of Mormon.

Thursday we had a day of finding and following up with the members and investigators we are teaching. Elder Nelson back was hurting him so we took part of the day to rest his back.  We were also able to prep for a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles coming to the mission.

Friday we traveled to Wichita to meet with Elder David A. Bednar.  We left Great Bend at 10 am and got home at 9 pm. It was one long day.  Elder Bednar came to the Derby Stake to preside at Stake Conference on Saturday and Sunday. On Friday he had time open and felt like he need to meet and talk with the missionaries in the mission. The mission office arranged for all of the missionaries to travel from across Kansas to Wichita. Some missionaries got to ride in a bus and some drove their cars. The mission feed us lunch then at 1pm we had a mission picture.

Elder David A. Bednar

  

Elder Bednar decided to start the meeting early, and walked in with President Bell and Elder Deshler of the Seventy. The first hour and a half consisted of him asking missionaries to stand up and share what they learned from three of his talks he had asked us to read in the weeks prior to his visit. Then he demonstrated to us how to teach using mostly inspired questions. Then with the remaining two hours of the meeting we had a question-and-answer type sessions where they just open up the floor and answer our questions.  It was really amazing because he asked everyone a simple question at the beginning that prevented people from asking any weird and unimportant things: "Think about it: if this is your one chance to ask a question to a prophet, seer, and revelator, is that REALLY the question you want to ask?"  We all learned lots from Elder Bednar and had a great time.

I even learned a few new doctrines that I had never heard of before. I also received several commitments from him. He committed us to never give a prepared talk again. He taught us that when you are assigned to talk, you spend the time you have before hand just studying out the subject. And when you get up you share what you learned and listen to the spirit.  Sometimes you may feel inspired to talk about several different things that seem totally unrelated. But, if you were listening to the Spirit, that means you talked about the things that people needed to hear the most. He shared a story about President Eyring. When Elder Bednar was the president of BYU Idaho Elder Eyring was the church commissioner of education and spoke frequently at the University. He would set up shop at Elder Bednar's home or in an office and just type out tons of different talks. At the time for the devotional he would say, "I have prepared 20 different talks, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to give." Then he would get up to speak, set all the talks aside, and not touch them or read from them for the entire devotional. Another time President Packer of the Twelve was sitting on the stand at a stake conference. He asked the Stake President if he had prepared notes for his talk. The Stake President said yes. Elder Packer asked to see them, put them in his own pocket and said, "Today you will speak from the heart."

Another thing he committed us to do was to never take notes in a church meeting again. He said to pull out a pen and paper, but never to write down what the speaker said. Only write down the things that aren't said out loud.

Finally he said that if each family would go after church and visit a less active family we would see 25 percent more people at church.

Then on Saturday we had a day of contacting people and visiting members. We had dinner with the Spanish Elders.

Sunday we had church. We had a fast and testimony meeting because church was canceled last Sunday. We had about 85 people at church. We had a few members show up a hour late because of the day light savings time. We had 2 investigators at church and few less actives.

This has been a great week. Thanks for all the prayers and all of the mail.

Love,

Elder Andrew Allen.

 

Elder Bartholomew, who trained Elder Pack, who trained Elder Allen.