Elder Mitchell's Mission to Tennessee: Goal Setting--It Works!

Out tracting this week, they

found this hobbit hole, in Tennessee!

Hola!

First some good news and bad news. Good news is that I'll be saying in Smyrna next transfer, and I'll still be with Elder A. Woohoo! The work is really progressing in this area now, and Elder A and I are pretty tight, so I'm pumped. Bad news is that we have lost R, our referral from Massachusetts. We were really excited for him to come to church this week, but he informed us that he was moving to Florida for work reasons, and I guess he's staying there indefinitely. We are still trying to figure out what we can do with him, maybe find elders in Florida for him. But, other than that we had a really good week!

On Tuesday we had a Trainer/Trainee meeting in Franklin. I got to see Elder B and Elder W from my CCM district, which was pretty great. We had trainings by the AP's and by President and Sister Andersen. It was great. We had lots of fun, and learned a lot from the trainings. We played a PMG jeopardy/Scripture mastery game, which I kind of dominated...Yeah, scripture masteries, good stuff. But, I guess they do that game every trainer/trainee meeting, and the trainees usually get blown, but I kept us within 200 points. Pretty fun. We really liked the training from Elder D, one of the APs. He talked about setting effective goals, and having the mentality that you are going to reach them. Dad used to say a goal unwritten is only a wish. Well, a goal that is written but doesn't get looked at for the rest if the day is only a wish too! Elder A and I haven't been too good at doing goals, and we definitely haven't been hitting them. So we took Elder D's words to heart, and our mentality has changed. And we saw so many blessings because of it this week!

Later that night, we were tracting around, trying to find some Spanish houses, but we kept knocking into uninterested white folks. We were getting pretty tired, but I said, "We have a goal today to find a new investigator, so that's what we're going to do!" So, we said a prayer, and tried going down another street. We weren't really feeling it, so we turned around and went down another road. Finally, at the end of the street, we found a house with some Spanish indicators. We knocked, and talked to this guy G. We talked to him a little about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. He also told us that we could come back on Saturday to teach him more! When we came back we kind of found this crazy situation. G actually lives with friends. His friend is a less active and his wife is Catholic. His name is O. O's Dad is very concerned for his son (he was the one telling us all this). The dad thinks that if we can get his son back to church, then the wife will join. We kind of found the family at an opportune time, because the dad is only here on vacation, and has to go back to Mexico City, so now it's kind of on us. Cool experience to find these guys.

This week we also found the V family. They were in our area book, and I had a feeling we needed to try them, even though they hadn't been contacted in about half a year. We had a super solid lesson with them, and taught the whole restoration lesson. The husband F has a lot of questions about prophets and stuff, but the wife J was super accepting of everything. We'll try to see them again this week. Super cool family.

Then, H. He is awesome. We started teaching him the commandments this week, and told him about how we could do a proxy baptism for him. He got so excited! He said that is so ready to follow Christ, and really wants to be baptized. We still need to get some stuff ready with him, but we set a new date with him for November 14th. He truly was prepared to receive the gospel. The only problem for him has been his health. But, he is awesome.

It's been a really good week for us. Normally, we are nowhere close to reaching our weekly goals, but we actually exceeded some of them this week. For instance, usually we find one to two new investigators a week, but this week, we found 6! Elder D's training helped us a lot. I testify of the power of goal setting! It works! When you ask the Lord to help you, and you set inspired goals, the Lord will help you reach them, and you will see success and miracles! The work rolls on here in Smyrna! The Church is true; I love being here on my mission. Hope all is well back home!

Love,

Elder Mitchell

Here are some pretty random pictures he sent: