Monday, May 2, 2011

A letter of advice to future missionaries

Hello Young Men & Young Women!

A mission is such a cool experience; there really isn´t anything that compares to it and it´s really hard to say how you can prepare for it, but, i´ll do my best =)

I think one of the best things you can do is know the lessons. I thought that I knew the lessons when I came out, and I did, but, I couldn´t teach them. It´s a completely different thing to teach someone the word of wisdom, or to teach them about the plan of salvation than it is to be familiar with it. If you studied the lessons out of Preach my Gospel and even practiced teaching them...which seems kinda weird, but trust me it helps, I swear you will be so thankful once you get into the MTC. The only thing you do in the MTC is teach those lessons in role play situations, because, that´s what you are going to be doing in the field, imagine that haha.

I would say the biggest advice I could give though, would be to know the purpose of a missionary. As a missionary, your goal is to invite others to come unto Christ, it´s on page 1 of Preach my Gospel. That is the goal the Lord expects us to fulfill on our mission, and as we fulfill this goal, we make him proud and he blesses us for our service and diligence in spreading the gospel. This goal is actually really easy to fulfill, it is just sometimes hard to see that you are fulfilling this goal. Here in Germany, we talk to a ton of people on the street, some days we spend 4 hours straight just trying to get people to listen to the message of the Restored gospel. At the end up the day, if we have 0 lessons and 0 new investigators, a lot of missionaries would see that as a failure of the day, but, it´s not. We spent the entire day inviting people to come unto Christ, which means we met our goal as a missionary, which means our Father in Heaven is proud of us, so why shouldn´t we be proud of the work we did?

Having a greater understanding of the goal of a missionary will help you so much on your mission. I can honestly say I have been happy every day on my mission because I have been doing all I can to fulfill my goal. I know that I am fulfilling this goal with every person I speak to, even when they deny the message, I accomplished my goal that the Lord has set for me. Everyone has their Agency, they choose if they want to listen or not, and I can not force them to listen.

So that´s just some advice I´d give you, I could give more haha, but, I think that is enough. If you want to prepare to be a good missionary, learn the lessons, practice teaching them so you are familiar with them and understand what the Lord requires of His missionaries. If you do all of that, I can promise you, you will have a successful mission, and your Father in Heaven will be proud of what you have done for him.

Elder Collings

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