So wanna hear about my week?! It was another crazy one.
This week we had an area seventy visit our mission, Elder Lawrence. Him and his wife are both amazing. It was such a blessing that he was here.
We stared off on Wednesday with Mission Leadership Council. Apart from the fact that we had a seventy with us, it was a pretty standard MLC. Elder Lawrence had us create a list of things we wanted to discuss in the meeting. He would then ask a missionary to choose a topic and we would discuss it. After lunch the topic of goals was selected. A few months ago, we had set a mission goal to have 70 baptisms for the month. The most baptisms the MBM has ever had in a month is 59, so it was a significant goal. It was also significant because we don't usually set number goals in the MBM. All our goals have a name attached to them. We don't have "standards of excellence" either. But President Packard had his mind set on setting this goal because he knew we could do it. This was back in July. We all had a zone meetings talking about the goal and what we needed to do to reach it. We were all pumped......and then we didn't reach the goal. A lot of missionaries were kind of devastated.
Wednesday, we brought up the 70 goal. President Packard knows we can do this. He has his mind set. We discussed the goal again, but this time things felt different. The more we discussed, the more we realized that the stars were aligning. We had an area seventy there with us, we had 2 zone conferences where President could get up and announce the goal and pump up the mission; before November even started we had 104 baptismal dates (We now have 110); there are 5 weekends in November...the list continues. So as an MLC we set the goal to have 70 baptisms in the month of November. But this time it's going to be different. After setting the goal we discussed what needed to be done to achieve the goal. We came up with a list of 10 things we are going to do as a mission. For example in every single personal and public prayer offered by a mission we will plead with the Lord that the goal will be reached; missionaries will be completely consecrated; we will each sacrifice one thing to the Lord; and every Tuesday night we will receive a list, via text messages, of all the people who have baptismal dates for November so that Wednesday morning at 9am every missionary will be praying specifically for these people by name. Yesterday we all fasted for the goal. We are so absorbed in this goal and we are doing everything we can do so that the Lord will bless us. This month, it just feels a little different.
Thursday we had our zone conference with Elder and Sister Lawrence. First off, Sister Lawrence is an amazing person. She has dedicated her whole life to gospel study. She knows so much about the gospel. She spent the morning teaching us about the Gathering of Israel. Let me just tell you, my mind was blown. I can't even begin to explain everything I learned. It was just amazing. I have felt like a different person since that zone conference. After lunch, President and Sister Packard got up to announce the goal to this half of the mission. They asked all the leadership to go up to show the missionaries that we are in full support of the goal and we are going to do everything we can as leadership to assure that the goal is reached. It was a very spiritual moment. Then Elder Lawrence talked to us about increasing our faith by exercising it. Another amazing talk. It was a really good conference. I had a 1 Nephi 1:7 moment when I went home. "And it came to pass that [she] returned to [her] own house at [Worcester]; and [she] cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which [she] had seen.
Friday was our zone meeting. As leadership, one of our responsibilities is to prepare zone meeting. So our zone meeting was about the goal that we had set as a mission and what we were going to do as the Boston West zone to achieve the goal. We talked about all the baptismal dates we have for this month and any potential baptismal dates. We came up with a list of almost 20 people who could potentially get baptized this month! Only 6 of them have baptismal dates, but a goal we set as the Boston West zone to extend baptismal dates to every single person on the list. We also are going to be praying for them all month.
This spirit has been so strong this last week. We are so excited about our goal. To be honest, I don't think we going to hit 70 baptisms. We are going to go WAY over. I really do. We are doing everything in our power to achieve this goal. Why wouldn't the Lord bless us?
On Friday we also had an appointment with an investigator named M. She doesn't live within our stake boundaries, but we're the closest spanish missionaries to where she lives so we have permission to go visit her. She is such an amazing person. We invited to her to baptized a couple weeks ago and she accepted! The only problem is that she works at a bread factory and they don't give her sundays off so she hasn't come to church yet. But on Friday we set a goal with a lot of faith that she would get baptized on Dec 12. She is going to write a letter to her boss explaining the situation and that she would like to have sundays off to go to church. We are praying that her boss will give her sundays off. In fact, I daresay that she will be able to get baptized in November, because I truly believe the Lord will soften the heart of her boss to give her sundays off.
So this has been a good week! I'm so happy about everything that is going on here and at home.
Can you believe it!? Only 4 more emails left!
I love you all!
Hermana Hutchinson
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