January 27, 2010

i am alive!! and back in the mission home...for another hour and then off to the next zone conference. These last two weeks have been amazing!!! i never thought i would be having these kind of experiences on my mission. its a lot more than the traveling from one side of the island to the other in less than 24 hours. its more than the car rides and dinners. Its about ministering like the savior did one by one. As an assistant you are being watched, weighed, measured and just about anything else you can imagine. Many people change, they become someone they are not. they lose personality, character and life. they try to become a machine, a robot. Someone that lives and breathes mission work, someone who knows every rule and calls out someone when they do anything wrong. But i decided a long time ago when i became i leader i would not turn into a robot!! And i haven’t. I love it. I’m the same person i always have been, one who knows when to play and when to work. and when i play i play hard! when i work i work even harder!!! I had an interesting conversation with pres. Daniels in the car the other day. he was talking about what the general authorities want mission presidents to do with their AP's. Elder Holland said "An AP should not be your chauffeur. if you were playing in a golf tournament would you pick tiger woods to be on your team and then make him the caddy? NO! you have him go first tee it up and say hey boys watch this, this is how it is supposed to be done!!! and then have him rip a 400 yard drive" President then turned to me and said even though you just got your license(yea thats right! i took my drivers test and got my license to drive in Japan!!! watch out!) your not going to drive me around much... your my tiger woods! Every time i go out on splits he says to me, get our their and show them how its done. well this week that’s exactly what we did.
Takikawa, its an area in the middle of no where and recently they have been sucking it up! their faith that they could find was just about gone.. they hadn’t taught a lesson in over two weeks, made almost no new appointments and were convinced that you couldnt find anyone out there. Elder senba and i felt like we should go out on splits, but looking at our schedule it seemed pretty tight. but we followed the impression. we didnt plan we just packed and got on the first train to takikawa(about 2 hours away) just before leaving we gave them a call and told them to pick us up at the train station and we are going on splits. i would like to say that i was calm and relaxed on the train but to tell you the truth i was a little nervous. Pres. told us just before we left that he expected to hear a good report. and then their zone leader called us thanking us for going out their and told us that he called them told them we were coming, and if we didnt find a ton of people that he would admit they were right and there was no one in takikawa. the pressure was one. both elder senba and i wasted no time and began to draw our hearts and prayer to the lord for strength and success. when we arrived they were very glad to see us. they were pretty down, but looked to us with hope. from the moment we woke till we left on the train i didnt stop working. During personal and language study instead of studying the gospel i studied the area book and looked for potential investigators, old investigators that could be contacted again and how to teach current investigators. when luch came around i took the junior companion and told him im going to train you to work while you eat, from here on you wont have free time anymore, are you okay with that, he hesitantly agreed. we got on the phone and started calling a list of over 100 names i put together. thats how we spent our breakfast, lunch and dinner. when we stepped out the door i knew we would see success. i felt that confirmation that morning during my personal prayer when i literally urged and begged the lord for success. In a normal week the average companionship will make 9 new appointments to teach a lesson to someone who is not an investigator, find 2 new investigators and teach 6 lessons. and make 1 baptismal date(if their lucky) in that day alone we made 17 appointments, taught 6 lessons, found 6 new investigators, and set 1 baptismal date. The power of God, and the presents of the Holy Ghost was felt by everyone that day. When we met up at the apartment we were all jumping with joy! all anyone could say was takikawa is amazing!!!!! The smiles and hope that they now had was unbelievable! we returned and reported to Pres. Daniels who was thrilled. he looked at us and said what you to did with those elders in takikawa just changed their missions. That will never be forgotten by them. You probably just changed their missions and lives forever. we got a call from them two days later telling us they made 4 appointments in one day, and the junior that i trained to make phone calls picked up 2 people during lunch. the best part is the senior companion that was struggling was my old companion elder hattori.
We have done 4 zone conferences so far and they have been going amazing, most people have either come up to me right after or called me the next day telling me it was the best AP workshop they had ever had. Our workshop was on making a covenant with the lord, and writing down your personal sacrifices that you, and also your companionship will give up to the lord in return for spiritual power, that will lead to an increase in baptisms. It was amazing, i told everyone about my experiences how we made a covenant so we could see a baptism but the whole transfer had nothing, and then 3 days before the transfer she said she wanted to get baptized, and ended up getting baptized the day before transfers. its been a very powerful zone conference. we have already seen a tremendous increase. lessons have doubled and inv. to church have doubled as well, and as a mission we have a record high 40 baptismal dates planned for jan. and feb! miracles!!!!!!!
I love you all thanks for the love and support
Love elder Daniel Henry Lawler