Sister Delgado serves in the Great Legazpi! : Listening to the Spirit‏

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was a busy one.

BUT. First thing is first. President gave us Fred and Iza’s house! We still gave away our area, but President was so nice to still give us Fred’s house. The best part was we didn’t even ask.

Sister Wilks and I were thinking that we probably needed to learn to give everything up to Lord before experiencing blessings. Good stuff.

So I went to my first MLC (missionary leadership cousel) last Tuesday and apparently Legazpi was the highest baptizing zone and we’ve increased in number of investigators coming to church. GOOD STUFF. We have some awesome goals to help us improve and become better missionaries. President gave us a workshop about the power of the Book of Mormon in helping others become converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was actually thinking about the reason behind why I feel so strongly this is truly the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The strongest evidence I can find is the book of Mormon. It truly is another testament of Christ, and is powerful enough to help me endure life’s challenges. It is always such a powerful experience everytime I read it. And everytime I compare it was the history of Bible, I am never led astray. I’ve never found any reason for me to believe otherwise. What a blessing the Lord has given us. So MLC usually runs from 9am-3pm. Ours ran from 9am-6pm because of all the many counsil topics and discussions we had to help improve the Philippines Legazpi mission. During the meeting, I was really planning on saying much, but I felt prompted to otherwise. President had us stand up and the subject of love was brought up. Sister Turner briefly said that leaders should always show their love. Then all of a sudden I said, “President, hold on a second. Lets talk about this. “

I said, “I asked an elder one day why he thinks there are disobedient missionaries in our mission or in any mission out of a response in his question of how he can help other missionaries become more obedient. That elder said probably because he’s lazy. Then I asked why is he lazy. Then the elder said because he doesn’t have much motivation. Then I asked why doesn’t he have any motivation. Then the elder responded because…… he feels no love. Then I asked that elder if he knew what he should do. Then the elder said he does.”

I said that there needs to be a stronger spirit of love in our missionary service rather than the urgency to do well out of fear. President was kind of silent for a while. (keep in mind this was in front of all the STLs and ZLs in our mission) But as said in Moroni 8:16 “perfect love casteth out all fear” I was not afraid of what anyone would say. Then President finally spoke and said, “you are right sister. We need to discuss more ways on how we can love our missionaries and help them exemplify this in their work.”

It was interesting. I felt awkward completely changing the route of the meeting. It was almost an out of body experience. But, this pattern of following the spirit, I've learned is something that needs to be done in every meeting from now on.

Then, for our zone training on Friday, we were able to discuss the problems we were facing as a zone and how we can better improve. Not just the work, but ourselves as well. Before we presented the counsel topics to our zone, the whole zone was kind of dead. The spirit wasn’t really there, missionaries weren’t paying attention, it was noisy, and I didn’t like it all.

So a thought came to mind that as I present the workshop about how we should better use the Book of Mormon in our lessons. The thought was to tell all the missionaries to drop what they are doing, stand up, get in a circle, then I would ask them why they decided to go on missions. Why are they even still here. OK WHAT.

But I did it. The entire zone was confused. They stood up, we got in a circle and had a mini testimony meeting during our zone training to do our best to invite the spirit back into our meeting. It was so powerful. The change in each missionary’s attitude was drastic. They were able to remind themselves as to why they even served missions and the importance to stay strong during the hardest times of their missions. One of the best parts was that in my heart, I was also able to remind myself why I decided to serve. They were able to listen better, retain more information, and feel the spirit during the training.

So, listening and heeding to the promptings of the spirit is the key to it all.

We especially noticed that when missionaries thanked us for giving them the chance to remind themselves why they sacrificed everything to be here as well as in their work. I learned that missionary service should never be causality. The spirit must be relied upon and felt at every second of the day to help Heavenly father accomplish His work.

Hope you all have a wonderful week of learning and following the spirit!

Love,

Sister Delgado