Saturday, March 9, 2013

Another week flown by, Got my sea legs on this week too

Okay, to make sure that I don´t run out of time I will write firstly my weekly letter home. 

Once again, i have struggled to remember what actually happened this week. On Monday we finished up getting ready for Zone Council, our training, receiving the missionaries who would be travelling etc. 
We trained about how to be a better teacher and improving specific teaching techniques (how on earth do you spell that?!) I won´t lie, one thing I have never liked about being a zone leader and even more now as an Assistant is giving training. Going out on splits with the missionaries I like, we get work done, and I don´t feel like an idiot. I honestly don´t have fear of public speaking, I just feel like what I am saying is really dry. I guess I should focus more on trying to edify than to entertain, but really, I don´t like it. I like Elder Barros a lot, but we make a plan to follow for our training and he doesn´t follow that plan AT ALL :p. He is much to spiritual for that, he ends up sharing experiences and talking about the scriptures. We have to follow a pretty strict training prossess called EDPAR, which is: Explain, Demonstrate, Practice, Avaliate, Re-practice. Haha, he doesn´t manage to follow that too well, so I have to keep on my toes and bring him back in, or be ready to follow whatever inspiration he might be receiving. Zone Council was always really edifying, and then I got called here and now I don´t dig on it too much :p
Wednesday we honestly had some things to do, but we couldn´t take being in the office anymore, we got outside and got to the real work we were called to do. We didn´t have too much sucess that day, but it was nice to invite people to come unto Christ again. 
On Thursday we went to Rio Grande. I had never gone there yet, and it was a 5 hour trip. It was just us two and President Castro this time. President Castro deligates a lot and is really interested in what our opinion is. I remember when he got here and I called him about a question that two missionaries had asked me. His first response was "Well what do you think Elder?" I honestly didn´t know because nobody had ever asked me that before. I am trying to work more on not brining problems but solutions to the table. "President, we have this and this and this as a dificulty, but we could do this and that and this, to fix it." It is much more helpful that way and it seems less that you are whining and more about helping. 
Rio Grande was awesome, it was like being in Brookings, the smell of the ocean and fish :) President was doing interviews and we went on splits with two missionaries. Elder Wang and Elder Carvalho. It was great. we taught a few lessons, and I always like being with new missionaries. I relearned the importance of treating people like agents and not objects and also to teach simply so that the message can be understood instead of just covering the material. 
OH! also! there is a missionary from Rio Grande that was (or is) living with Grant in São Paulo, haha it was cool, I saw his picture on the ward announcements! Cool huh? small world. Grant will drink Chimarrão with me when we are both home. 
Well, I had to try out my sea legs too, because there is a branch that you have to travel by boat to get to in Rio Grande and President wanted to go visit on Friday morning to know what it was like there and to meet the ward mission leader that is really great there. It was just a half hour ride there and back, but it was fun to be out on the sea and to have a different experience. 
I really wish you could all get to know President Castro, cause he is amazing. On the trip home there was a part where it was a little quiet, everybody was deep in thought and I had made a list of questions I had for him haha ( you have to take the chance while you still have it) and some of my questions were about life-after-mission, and I didn´t really want to think about that that yet. But when we were in the car he suddenly said that he had the impression that he needed to ask us if we had any questions or would like council about things like college, or work, or marriage for after the mission and that it was alright because we were near the end of our missions and that he knew we were responsible and could keep that locked up until afterwards. It was a really neat experience to see that The Lord inspires people to answer our prayers and I learned a lot. 
We are kind of in a jam to find people to teach again here and I would really like to have some good success before I leave and to leave a good teaching pool for Elder Barros and his next companion. We really need a miracle to find and baptize in these next few weeks. 
I am really glad to be with Elder Barros, it is different, but he is really commited and so it is nice to be able to push together in the work, sometimes I feel like I need to do better in keeping up with him actually, really dedicated. 
We visited a family that Elder Barros taught when he first started his mission today, ate lunch with them, they are way special. Loved it. 
Well I am gonna go now. All of my love

Elder David F Morgan

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