November 18, 2013 Email

Hello once again! This week was GREAT. Oh my goodness it was good. We set our goals during weekly planning last Thursday/Friday and we nailed almost all of them. We DOUBLED our goals for "lessons taught to Recent Converts and Less-Active Members" (these will be referred to as LARC's from this point forward). Our goal was 4, we got 8. Our numbers here in Yuba City are sort of low, the area isn't too active in missionary work right now. But we've pulled out some good numbers the last two weeks, so someone back home must be praying for us! Either that, or it's because my Mom just turned in my tithing. ;) So thank you very much for your prayers. They are very much appreciated. :) We met just about every other goal, minus one or two. But that is okay because we did really well overall. Speaking of numbers, at Zone Meeting this week, our Zone Leaders (referred to as ZL's from this point forward) had information from Mission Leadership Conference with President. President had a meeting with 29 other West Coast, North American Mission Presidents and Elder Ballard gave them all quite the charge: The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve have felt it is appropriate to charge those 30 missions to DOUBLE their convert baptisms per month. Let that sink in. Double our convert baptisms per month. Right now, California Roseville Mission is getting 7 per month, on average. So the double is obviously 14. And then, the next bit of information was that if our baptisms will double, so will EVERYTHING ELSE. Boom. That means that our entire mission will go from: 115 new investigators each month, to 230. 236 Investigators w/ Member Present Lessons to 553. And so on with the rest of our numbers. Man. This is crazy stuff. But my look on it is if the Lord charges us to do it, He will provide a way for it to be done. So it's going to be insane, but somehow we're going to do it. It's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of faith. One more quick mention about numbers: The California Roseville Mission is apparently the highest teaching mission in the nation. Oh snap. :D Haha I love it here. Anyway, also mentioned in Zone Meeting was that we are to try to avoid using analogies when we teach. I don't know if that comes from the Brethren or not (What I understood of it was that it did), but I am not too sure about it. I know I am going to try to just teach the simple doctrine and testify because that it was brings the Spirit most powerfully, but it is going to be hard to avoid using analogies - especially when that is such a huge way to help people to understand. Hazleton and I talked with the Zone Leaders about it and kind of talked about how I felt that they came across as not using analogies ever at all anymore. What we all (the entire zone) ended up agreeing on (after this debate between Hazleton, myself, and the ZL's) was that based on the promptings of the Spirit, you should share analogies. But ONLY when you feel prompted to. Which I feel is good, but I have this feeling that I'm going to be prompted to use analogies a lot. Yeah. Haha. So. In other big news, in soccer on Thursday I was running up the court, turned around the look at the ball in the air, and something in my neck just started to hurt like crazy. There wasn't any snap or click, my neck just started to hurt. It was weird. I kept playing for just a little bit, but I couldn't turn my head very far in any direction or else it started to hurt really bad from just at the base of my skull on the back right of my neck, down to right above where it levels out to the shoulder. It was not good. I sat out the rest of the time and asked for a priesthood blessing after studies. Needless to say, I was still very stiff and it still hurt very badly. But yesterday it was basically completely healed. I can look in any direction I want to with no pain! Wahoo! Haha. It was a big deal because it impeded a lot on our work for those 2-3 days. But everything is totally fine now, I am in no pain. The Church is true and there is major power in Priesthood blessings. Title story! So we left the church after practicing the piano for a little bit, and we decided to "get lost" in our area in order to become more comfortable with the area. We've done this a few times and will continue to. So anyway, we took this road and at the end of the road there was this convenience/liquor store across the road. When we went to turn left at this store, there was a lady yelling at us from the front of the store. We couldn't understand her and we thought she was just yelling at us to go home because we're Mormon. As we crossed the street, we heard her asking for one of our pamphlets. So, of course we gave her a pamphlet! This lady, Darla, was smoking a cigar sitting in a wheelchair with BOTH of her legs in casts. And boy was she something. She had apparently broken both of her heels jumping off of a 7 foot tall, barbed-wire topped fence trying to run away from a demon. All of these details kept coming in from the multiple times she retold the story. She was apparently sent from God to let His children know that He loves them. She had some songs for little kids (all of which she wrote), she sang a couple for us and one was actually kind of good. Anyway, she was super high and she was talking about how she saw demons and was being chased by them and stuff. My time is about to run out, so I'm cutting it short here. Sorry! We had an investigator meeting. Her name is Dianna and she has accepted Christ as her Savior, but isn't of the LDS church so when we met with her to teach her the gospel she kind of related it to a Bible study type of thing. We said yeah and we hope that we can get our message to her in these Bible/Book of Mormon study classes. We're going to try to meet with another investigator named Ricardo. I'll talk more about him next week, but he's an interesting story as well. I love you all, I love this gospel SO much. I have seen miracles and they are amazing. Small and simple things are incredible when added up together. Again, I love you all. I thank you with all of my heart for your love and support. I pray for you every day and I hope the best for each and every one of you! God loves you, and most important of all, He always will. Never forget that. Love you! Love, Elder Cevering II