Letter #77 (23rd Jan, 2013)

Hey all

Both Elder Harris and I have been sick for the last couple of days... it sucked... it messed with our work a little bit as well, as much as we both tried to keep going everyday. But just these last two days have been great as we have had our energy come back we have been staying on track for our goals and we are having some good success in the area. Just this last week we pulled out the master list of the ward and started going through it marking off all the members we are working with and the ones we haven't met yet. We have 648 members on the list. Yes! 648! That's like tons! And I made it my goal to find out about every one of these 648 before I transfer, whether they are active, less-active, in-active, have moved or have passed away (we have one that says the guy is 107 years old... either he's dead, or I really want to meet him!). We have started sorting them into areas so we can work on finding them all. We have already started with some success, and have found quite a few.. and realized that the task ahead of us is quite daunting. But we are excited with the new energy it is giving us especially when we are punted from our lessons and when people are not home, because it gives us something we can done with our time that is really productive, and gives openings for FTEs as we go around asking where these people live. We have been taken round in circles in some areas looking for people and even ended up asking at the baranggay hall if they have a record of the person as well. It has really helped me to see the importance of constant home and visiting teaching. The immensity of this task is exciting for me and I feel like it will really help me to gain a love for these members in really getting to know every individual.

Another thing that Elder Harris and I have been focusing on with the less-actives we are teaching is praying everyday, reading the Book of Mormon everyday and gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith and of the Church. I has had some amazing results with members coming out with their true concerns, and even some who have no testimony, who we are trying to help to gain such. Its like having to start all over again with them. We have even began focusing this towards the active members too, that whenever we have an opportunity to teach them we teach reading the Book of Mormon everyday. We have found we can count the members in the ward that read daily on our fingers... and that's pretty sad to be honest. We would like to see that the members are reading from the Book of Mormon daily and with their families too. We have a determination as a companionship to not move on to any other doctrine until those we are visiting are reading from the scriptures daily. We have come to realize unless they are reading there is no point teaching other doctrine because they have no foundation without their reading. It has had a profound effect on our teaching that has really helped us to help the people we are teaching.

We had a meeting with Pres. Mondig the stake President, this past Sunday about the missionary work in the stake and about how the wards are doing in preparing to receive missionaries. We told him about the progress or lack of in some of the areas and he said he would work on some of the issues we talked about, such as PEC happening every week. There are some wards that are still only doing it once a month... and still have in-active ward mission leaders. So they will not be ready for missionaries yet, but we feel that Basak is ready, and are going to look for a house this week. We also have some big problems with the ward boundaries in the wards... we don't know what they are... when we checked on the church website with out clerk and printed them out, and showed them to the Capitol and Arlington elders in our zone they told us that it is a big problem for Arlington ward, because half of their leaders are actually in the Capitol ward according to the maps on the churchwebsite maps. So we're gonna have to check them some how with the stake and get them fixed.

Miss you lots,

Love you tons,

Elder Taylor Addison Cox