MLC Notes

I forgot to include some notes from MLC in the last email, so here they are. Once a year the Quorum of the Twelve visit an area and they give the Priesthood leadership instruction, it’s usually a four to five hour meeting. Elder Bednar instructed at the meeting to the North America West Area to read and reread Jacob 5 one-hundred times. He said that this prophecy has everything to do with what’s going on with this area right now.

In this meeting they also referred to specific guidelines that are signs of personal apostasy. They shared that this term refers to a person’s abandonment of most basic personal beliefs, belief in God the Father, the mission of His Son Jesus Christ, and of the restoration.

Patterns of Personal Apostasy:

• A focus on past prophets more than living.
• Focusing too much on the misalignment of science and religion and various scholarship.
• Proposing one’s own special learning as a substitute for prophetic leadership.
• Persisting to speak on subjects that the Lord has chosen not to reveal more about at this time.

Elder Bednar taught to learn of Jesus Christ, not just about Him. He also shared to look to the prophets for advice on personal pruning.

I found the details shared about this meeting very insightful, and I will definitely be focusing a lot more time and attention on thoughtful and prayerful study of Jacob 5. I invite those who may be reading this to do the same as well.

Changes & Exchanges

We were sad to see Elder Ransome-Habley go, Elder Fielding’s companion in Maple Ridge, Elder Bérubé had some physical challenges that led to him going home as well. They both left the same day, so Elder Fielding naturally went to Vancouver to fill in Elder Ransome-Habley’s place. A few days later, we went on exchanges and I went with Elder Fielding. He seems like he’s been adjusting pretty well to the new area so far. He’s such an awesome missionary, very sweet, pretty much anyone can get along with him. He was perfect for Elder Bérubé for his time serving here. We didn’t really do anything too significant over the course of our exchange. Mostly finishing up on office work, doing some contacts, and filming a video in Vancouver.

Impressions while teaching Commandments

We were teaching a friend who’s on baptismal date next month. He’s a really great guy. I’ll refrain from disclosing his name due to the details I’ll share today. We’ve been focusing on teaching the commandments. In our lesson we taught the two great commandments, ten commandments, and the law of chastity. But as we reached the end of our lesson plans, my companion and I had the distinct impression to teach the Word of Wisdom again. Which at first, we naturally thought, this principle has already been taught, so why would we need to teach it again. However we went through with the impression and asked him what he remembers about the Word of Wisdom. He didn’t remember it by its title, but as we briefly explained what it was, he remembered. He shared that he stays away from those things, but sometimes he turns to drinking when he needs to take his mind off of things. We explained the principle behind the Word of Wisdom and how it applies to many things in-life and he agreed to keep it.

Reflecting back on the lesson, I’m grateful that we were able to listen to the whisperings of the Spirit. It’s always natural and seems easier to lean upon your own understanding, especially when you receive a thought that seems contradictory to what you feel would be best. But as we put our trust in God, rather than leaning upon our own understanding, we will look back with gratitude for the wisdom of God.

The work in Vancouver

I’ve noticed that the work happening in Vancouver is quite different from the other areas of the mission. First and foremost, there’s just so much happening in the work. There are four congregations that meet in Vancouver, so naturally there’s going to be a large number of missionaries covering that all too.

• Vancouver 1st Ward
• Vancouver 4th Ward (Spanish)
• Vancouver Wah Yan Ward (Chinese)
• Vancouver YSA Branch

Our weekly coordination meetings in particular are quite large, those who attend are:

• Van YSA-SML/Tech (us)
• Van-1st Sisters
• Van-1st/YSA Elders
• Van 4th/YSA Sis
• Elder & Sister Binning (Van YSA Sr Couple)

So that totals 10 missionaries attending (if you count the senior couple). Luckily the Ward Mission Leader uses the My Covenant Path progress report so it makes everything flow very smoothly. In this area you receive so many referrals. Basically we just invite people to come to activities by sending them an activities flyer and then attending activities and teaching them then. Those are our biggest teaching opportunities and a great way for our friends to get connected with the members. Even with us staying in Richmond, realistically we don’t even need to be in Vancouver to do the missionary work in Vancouver. We can do all of our missionary work over the phone since we have so many who have signed up to find a young adult Christian group near them.

There’s been a recent influx of these young adult activity ads, and they’ve been performing very well. I believe that this has been arising to be a huge avenue for missionary work. More than ever people are interested in coming out to activities, events, and church to meet a community of like-minded and good people. I believe that the brethren are very aware of this, with the recent release of activity share which promotes the sharing and public use of these activities. I hope that this system gets more streamlined and adopted more in the future. There’s a great amount of potential here, and I think we’re just getting started.

Assignment Update

I believe this is pretty much everything that’s noteworthy to bring up. The assignment has been going well so far. We’ve been doing pretty much the same stuff that we were doing last-week: filming videos, editing, helping out the other office missionaries, mentoring sessions, and working on our Mission Leadership Council training. There’s been a great deal of acceleration that we’ve seen go on in the work in this avenue, and we are going to do our best to inform the missionaries, provide training, and keep up with it.

We were supposed to have interviews with the mission president yesterday. Typically they always run way later than expected, and yesterday was no exception. We are flexible so we haven’t had our interviews yet. President plans to reschedule them with us, so as to when they will be, we will find out soon.