November 3, 2012

Email: October 29,2012

Hello everyone! Yet another week has come and gone. I think they go by faster and faster each time.

On Saturday we had our branch activity about family history. Some members from the stake came and taught us how to do family history. To be honest, the activity was a failure. Being in a small branch with very few members its much harder to organize and have good activities. Well, in total we had 3 or 4 come. It was at the house of one of the members of the branch who has a little day care at her house, and has some computers where she gives classes in the summer. Two people who came were that sister and her husband, one other member, and one other came later. Then we came plus the members who came to teach us. It was rather sad to be honest, but it didnt really matter, because they trained my companion and I too. Now we know how to use familysearch.org and new.familysearch.org to do family history. So our new plans are go to the houses of the members and teach them how to do it, that way they cant get out learning it. When we started the activity it was interesting to see that my companion got really excited when he started searching for his family members not in the system. At the same time I felt really interested, and so did the others that were present. It was really interesting to me to see how that desire to do family history work took hold really fast. I think it will have the same effect with the members when we go to teach them. I hope so anyway. So I am really excited to start teaching that to the members of the branch.

The other big news, much bigger actually, is that the way in which we as missionaries work has been changed dramatically, starting this week. The area presidency of Mexico proposed a new system of missionary work to the Quorum of the 12 and they approved it. The changes have already happened in several missions in Mexico and have had amazing results in a very short time. As far as I knew the system is only in place in Mexico because of the unique situation Mexico has. Starting tomorrow we will rarely knock doors or contact people in the streets. We still can, but it is supposed to be as the Spirit directs. The new idea is that we will spend our time working with the members, less actives and actives alike in the time where we arent teaching investigators and then we will teach the members and rely on them to give us referrals as our main source of people to teach. That way we strengthen the members and involve them in missionary work and we have investigators who already have friends who are members to help them get to know more about the Church. It is really interesting, and I am really excited to see all the changes that are going to take place.

Elder Matthew Bray

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