Mission Office- Week Nine

I DID GET THE PACKAGE. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I went ahead and opened it because, well, I want to start using them. It got here super fast! That was cool because usually it takes a long time for everything to get here. We have been getting a lot of mail here in the office. Makes sense because everyone is sending things for Christmas. The mailman came here five times on Friday. We set up a little Christmas tree in the office and we started putting all the packages under the tree for the missionaries to come get. President liked it a ton!

         Q/A Time:

1. How are the people in your teaching pool?  Our mission has made a transition from calling them “investigators” to “friends” or “people being taught”.  Our new mission president has made a bunch of changes and this is one of them.

Yeah, we have made that change too. That is one of the new things that came with the new Preach My Gospel. There are a lot of good changes in the new version. I liked this change personally because it makes us think of the people we are teaching more has sons and daughter of God. What the missionaries really need today is that we need to focus on the people. 

2. Another policy change we had recently is that we can’t send around a missionary meal calendar for the members to sign up to feed the missionaries.  Members have to come to the missionaries, ward mission leader, or ward missionaries and ask to feed the missionaries.  They have to be fed from 5-6 pm, unless a non-member will be present for dinner.  Then, the dinner can be anytime.  How are your meals coordinated?

It is suppose to be more like how you said here, but it never really ends up going like that. Brazil is funny like that. All the wards I have passed have a meal calendar that the members pass. However, it is for lunch, which I would think is a lot better. It leaves the whole afternoon to work. Because we get up at 7:30, things are different here. We usually use the whole morning studying and then we go to lunch around noon. We stay there for an hour and then from 1:00 - 10:00 we work in the field. We rarely stop to eat dinner because there is usually no time. There are lots of people to teach.

3.Tell me some of the things you have been doing to Light the World?  I imagine you are doing service all the time.  Is there something special you have done to serve differently this Christmas Season? 

We are planning to go to the shopping mail near the office here with a group of missionaries and we will sing some Christmas hymns. We have been talking with lots of people about Light the World in the streets and with all the members. It has been really cool. It really is an inspired program to help all the participates feel the true Christmas Spirit. I personally have made a goal to be a light to others during this Christmas season. I am trying to be more thoughtful of others and extend a hand to others that are needing help. 

I am not going to be able to write a group email this week. Here are some photos. Something cool this week that happened, we played Basketball and soccer with President and his son today. It was super hot and we almost died. Other than that it was a pretty calm week. 

Love and miss you all lots,

Com amor,

Elder Pinkney