Dear Elders and Sisters,
This past week we finished interviewing. It was great to
spend a few minutes with each of you. I wish it could be longer, it seems like
10 minutes goes so quickly and is never enough. I am grateful for your willing
hearts and desires to improve. I am grateful to see so many of you striving to
consecrate yourselves and all that you are to serve as representatives of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
To truly represent Him requires much more than simply
putting on a nametag and showing up in your assigned area. It requires us to
give our best effort, every day, all day. One of the ways that you can know
that you are a successful missionary is that you “work effectively every day,
do your very best to bring souls to Christ, and seek earnestly to learn and
improve” (PMG, pg. 11). We are not salespeople and the work of salvation is not
a contest to see how many people we can get to join our church. As Elder Boyd
K. Packer stated in his recent conference address, “The true success of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ will be measured by the spiritual strength of its
individual members. We need the strength of conviction that is found in the
heart of every loyal disciple of Christ.”
Although the month does not end until Friday, it appears likely
that we will have around 19 baptisms for October. This is the lowest number of
baptisms per month since I have arrived in the mission. I am earnestly striving
to know how and what we can do to bring more souls unto Christ. This morning I
reread President Uchtdorf’s talk from the priesthood session of general
conference, “Lord, Is it I?” Perhaps we could all benefit from examining
ourselves and searching for specific things that we could do to increase our
conviction and improve our performance. Perhaps we have gone from focusing too
much on key indicators to not enough. We must always remember our missionary
purpose and strive to measure all that we do accordingly, however our mission
standards can help us establish goals and expectations. If our goals and plans
for the week do not reflect a commitment and desire to hit mission standards,
then we need to increase our faith and diligence.
Remember: this is not “our work,” it is the Lord’s work. We
will not be able to accomplish our purpose without personally repenting and
coming unto Christ and doing it in His way.
President Blickenstaff
Mentor of Champions
PS. Thank you for completing the recent questionnaire. I
look forward to studying the results and learning what we can focus on in order
to improve. Also, please note that if you see a popup on your missionary portal
that requests you to give your Social Security number to the missionary
department, it is not a phishing scam and your email account has not been
hacked. It is an actual request from the missionary department and the
information is necessary to comply with a new healthcare law. This only applies
to missionaries from the United States.
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