Romania 17 Jan 2010
Monday, January 17, 2011 by Sora Jay
Hey Everybody,
It's nice to hear that Tom has an easy mission. But actually, being a missionary is a lot easier for me than is was being a normal person, because in normal life you have to balance and juggle a lot of things and here you only have missionary work to do.
Our mission has set goals to visit all of the active members in the branches every once in a while to give them support and to convert their friends and family. So far we have already gotten a few new investigators from visiting less-active members. One of the elders told us that when you start visiting someone regularly it is really easy for them to invite someone to come to a lesson with you because when somebody asks about their religion they will probably tell them that the missionaries come and visit every once in a while and they can stay for the lesson, and then the next day a recent convert that we meet with every week randomly brought a friend to her lesson.
We went to the house of an active member because we found a teaching record for his mom in our area book and when we got there she was there and we talked to her and she knew almost nothing about the church and had tons of questions about it. It was cool to talk to her because she seemed super golden, but it was also really disappointing in a way, because obviously her son had never talked to her about anything to do with the church (we talked to his sister as well, who also knew very little about our church). But, I guess that's why our mission goal is to teach the members to be better member-missionaries.
I don't have a ton of things to write about that wouldn't be really boring for you guys, because we don't have much fun. My companion and I mutually dislike each other. The only thing I think that has kept us from open warfare is that we both want to do missionary work. She's super manipulative and condescending, and she's the oldest sister in a family of eight little kids so she thinks she has to take care of everything all the time, so that she just gets super stressed out about everything. Her solution to any problem is banana bread. We just don't match in any way.
I've tried telling her things and she gets offended and cries. The district leader has told her things too, and she gets offended and cries.
One time in one of our lessons my companion and the member present were attacking the investigator and I was fighting to bring the focus back to the lesson by asking the investigator questions, the other two would just jump in and fight some more though. I don't remember what I asked, but eventually the investigator said the he would rather find out on his own if he would go to hell (when he got there) than try getting baptized or living the other principles in our church.
After the lesson he apologized and said that he felt really stupid for what had happened. It wasn't really his fault that it went horribly though.
The member who was there at that lesson walked out of church with his wife on Sunday because the lesson came up in branch counsel that morning and he is the ward mission leader. He told us we shouldn't work with that investigator anymore and it started a fight with other members, because he has kind of an abrasive personality. Hopefully they won't be permanently inactive.
I guess that this transfer has been teaching me to have a bigger perspective of everything though. I would be a lot more angry with my companion all the time if I didn't try to think of her with a bigger perspective, she's probably just insecure and that's why we have problems. When we were able to go up to Bucharest for the Zone Leader Conference I was able to be with some of the sisters and remember that normal people aren't like her, and I just have to give her special exceptions to some social standards.
The transfer is only seven weeks as well, so it's not too bad. I think our capabilities as missionaries are severely limited this transfer though. We have lots of good people to work with, but we're kind of handicapped.
This is kind of a depressing email. But, I'm still happy, don't worry about it. I have lots of cool members and investigators that are normal people and that I get along with really well.
Love,
Sora Jay
It's nice to hear that Tom has an easy mission. But actually, being a missionary is a lot easier for me than is was being a normal person, because in normal life you have to balance and juggle a lot of things and here you only have missionary work to do.
Our mission has set goals to visit all of the active members in the branches every once in a while to give them support and to convert their friends and family. So far we have already gotten a few new investigators from visiting less-active members. One of the elders told us that when you start visiting someone regularly it is really easy for them to invite someone to come to a lesson with you because when somebody asks about their religion they will probably tell them that the missionaries come and visit every once in a while and they can stay for the lesson, and then the next day a recent convert that we meet with every week randomly brought a friend to her lesson.
We went to the house of an active member because we found a teaching record for his mom in our area book and when we got there she was there and we talked to her and she knew almost nothing about the church and had tons of questions about it. It was cool to talk to her because she seemed super golden, but it was also really disappointing in a way, because obviously her son had never talked to her about anything to do with the church (we talked to his sister as well, who also knew very little about our church). But, I guess that's why our mission goal is to teach the members to be better member-missionaries.
I don't have a ton of things to write about that wouldn't be really boring for you guys, because we don't have much fun. My companion and I mutually dislike each other. The only thing I think that has kept us from open warfare is that we both want to do missionary work. She's super manipulative and condescending, and she's the oldest sister in a family of eight little kids so she thinks she has to take care of everything all the time, so that she just gets super stressed out about everything. Her solution to any problem is banana bread. We just don't match in any way.
I've tried telling her things and she gets offended and cries. The district leader has told her things too, and she gets offended and cries.
One time in one of our lessons my companion and the member present were attacking the investigator and I was fighting to bring the focus back to the lesson by asking the investigator questions, the other two would just jump in and fight some more though. I don't remember what I asked, but eventually the investigator said the he would rather find out on his own if he would go to hell (when he got there) than try getting baptized or living the other principles in our church.
After the lesson he apologized and said that he felt really stupid for what had happened. It wasn't really his fault that it went horribly though.
The member who was there at that lesson walked out of church with his wife on Sunday because the lesson came up in branch counsel that morning and he is the ward mission leader. He told us we shouldn't work with that investigator anymore and it started a fight with other members, because he has kind of an abrasive personality. Hopefully they won't be permanently inactive.
I guess that this transfer has been teaching me to have a bigger perspective of everything though. I would be a lot more angry with my companion all the time if I didn't try to think of her with a bigger perspective, she's probably just insecure and that's why we have problems. When we were able to go up to Bucharest for the Zone Leader Conference I was able to be with some of the sisters and remember that normal people aren't like her, and I just have to give her special exceptions to some social standards.
The transfer is only seven weeks as well, so it's not too bad. I think our capabilities as missionaries are severely limited this transfer though. We have lots of good people to work with, but we're kind of handicapped.
This is kind of a depressing email. But, I'm still happy, don't worry about it. I have lots of cool members and investigators that are normal people and that I get along with really well.
Love,
Sora Jay
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