Transfer 8, week3

March 9, 2011
Dear Family!!!

Yeah!!! Cyle´s getting married!!!! Dear Karin, thanks for the update on your girls. "I can see two moms!" Haha. I can´t wait to meet Charlotte!! Thanks for the email.

I am super excited...we had interviews with the president yesterday and I learned that we have a new plan to work much more closely with members. I guess they must have had problems with missionaries spending way too much time with members just before I got into the mission because early on Hna Smith and I understood that we we supposed to visit almost entirely investigators and we felt guilty to accept even a dinner invitation from members. That means that often, instead of thinking of visiting a member who we can help inspire to help with the work, we stuck to contacting in the metro, meeting people that may or may not be home when we pass by their homes. We´ve seen miracles from contacting for sure...but I am so excited to start making short visits to every member of the ward. References we receive from them have an automatic support system and the member can be a lot more involved from the beginning. There have been a lot of times lately that I have been walking around in the metro thinking, "There´s got to be a better way...how can we get to be friends with the members without visiting them?" Truth be told, Preach my Gospel would definitely support the new plan and we should have gone with it all along. I am also happy that Shalese will be in Barcelona...where we got the family mission plan calendars that we have started to use...so she will learn this system from the start.
Moral of the story: Every missionary has different ideas and different success stories and things that work for them...sometimes these suggestions compete. I, being a person that takes things literally thought I had to be obedient to every suggestion...which is difficult because plans always change and suggestions adapt every other month. My advice to myself and to Shalese would be....just try to implement what Preach My Gospel teaches. You can think outside the box and learn from the experiences of others...but never feel guilty for not doing exactly the same things. Pray about it, follow the Spirit, use your head. It would be bad to spend hours in the house of a member and lose focus, but we feel comfortable asking for help from the members that we know well...and we should do what it takes to get to know them and gain their trust. The new plan is to make short spirit filled visits to get the members on our team and to inspire them with faith to think of people they can share the Gospel with. I feel like I am saying obvious things that every missionary should know but it finally got into my heart and head. Hna Bell and I are super excited to plan for this week!

-hope that all made sense.
Okay out of time, Hope you all know you are great and I love you.
Love Shayla

P.S. One of the best things that happened this week was the letter I got from Sharah saying "and I made Davis Frenched toast cause he was at our house... And I am going on a mission." Loved the thought process and loved the goal. I have the best siblings ever!