Dearest family,
I was in the Salt Lake Tribune? Um, what?!?!?! I had no clue that was going to happen. I remember the service that it's talking about... I think, but I honestly don't know how it got in there. There were never reporters or anything. Who knows. Some of the people in charge took pictures, but oh well. Who knows. But I'm famous! Cool! :)
To answer your questions, I am in a car this time. Thank goodness. This used to be a bike area for sisters, but we cover two wards, and it would be WAY to hard. It's super hilly here. So I am luckily back in a car! yay! Our teaching pool is awesome! We've been finding so many new investigators that have a lot of potential, and we're hoping to set two baptismal dates this week. Hopefully they'll happen. For service we do different things. We help out in this community garden once a week, we help at meals on wheels and habitat for humanity, and salvation army, so that's all fun. And we're doing a special service this week. We are helping out at the AT&T golf pro tournament here at Pebble Beach golf course and Monterey peninsula course. Unfortunately, I won't be located at Pebble Beach: I hear it's BEAUTIFUL! But I'll be at the Monterey Peninsula course meeting (okay probably just seeing) famous people that I have NO CLUE who they are. Fun right? Maybe I'll recognize someone and tell you all about it. :)
So you asked if I have any great experiences... of course I do! We always have great experiences as missionaries! This week... hum. I left my planner in the car. Whoopsie! I guess one of the highlights of the week has been the amount of work we were able to do! We got 32 lessons, with 11 of those being with a member present. Which is a mission high for me. Our goal for this next week is to get 15 member present lessons. We've just been killing ourselves with the work, coming home every night completely exhausted, and wanting to pass out in our beds. And then still having to plan and update the area book and all that stuff. We also have found a few new investigators this week. 7 I think... It's hard to keep track. One of them is this guy named Carlos. I guess before I got here, Hna. Spackman and her companion contacted him at Mi Pueblo (speaking of, do they have those in Utah? They should...), and then a week ago he was at a less active and his nonmember "wife's" house. So we taught him too, and he was pretty cool. Seemed interested, but didn't think a ton about it. Then we got a referral from the MTC for a guy named Carlos. It's the SAME GUY. He called the number on a card for a Book of Mormon. Hna. Bench and Hna. Spackman met with him while I was on splits with someone else, and he had read all of 2 Nephi 31 and memorized the chapter headings, and had read a whole bunch of other stuff, so yeah. He's super prepared. And Heavenly Father knows that, and knew that we needed a push, so he put him in our path 3 different times. Yup. Thanks. :)
So we were reading the talk called "Hastening the Lord's Game Plan" by Gifford... that really animated guy. It's so good! I invite you all to read it for family home evening tonight, and then put the plan he has into action. Remember that that is basically scripture for us, and we need to be doing it. So talk about it for FHE, and then do it! Do those three steps he talks about. 1-praying for missionary experiences, 2-praying for the missionaries in your area and their investigators by name, and 3-invite someone to an activity in our out of your home. Or just invite someone to do something. Post a link to a mormon message on your facebook, I don't know... it can be so simple! So will you do it? Good! We need the help of members. Every missionary does. Even in Utah where they cover like, 8 billion wards. We all need help and prayers and action. The Lord's work is hastening, and he needs every player.
I love you all! I hope you have a fantastic week!
Love you lots,
Hermana Bingham
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Sister Bench and I at the butterfly garden. There were NO butterflies.
Well, like one. And one dead one... :)
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| The three of us at the wharf last pday. |
Here is the Salt Lake Tribune article:
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| Photo from the Tribune article |
Mormon missionaries ditching suits, donning jeans to do more service
LDS » Bay Area elders and sisters are spending their days helping area nonprofits.
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
| The Salt Lake Tribune
In Northern California, the image of Mormon missionaries in dark suits and white shirts, knocking on doors at inconvenient times, is being replaced by the sight of these name-tag-wearing twosomes in blue jeans and T-shirts, hoeing gardens, scrubbing off graffiti, dishing out food in homeless shelters and reading with refugees.
It’s part of the LDS Church’s recognition that its long-held practice of "tracting," going door to door handing out church materials and delivering religious messages, is no longer effective. Now few people are home during the late morning and early afternoon, and those who are may not want to be disturbed.
"The world has changed," LDS apostle L. Tom Perry said in June 2013. "The nature of missionary work must change if the Lord will accomplish his work."
People today, he added, are often "less willing to let strangers into their homes."
The LDS San Jose Mission already had discontinued tracting. Mission leaders got the word three years ago from church headquarters in Salt Lake City: Find something else for these eager, young full-time missionaries to do.
And it’s not about baptizing.
So San Jose leaders proposed that missionaries provide two hours of nonproselytizing community service every day, five days a week — up from the normal four or so hours a week. This meant that Mormons would have to build partnerships with charitable organizations in their area that might need regular volunteers.
With the help of Web designers in Utah, LDS public-affairs officials in San Jose created a website called justserve.org,which lists organizations with service opportunities.
"We met with a lot of nonprofit organizations," explains Randy Mack, an accountant and regional LDS public-affairs co-director with his wife, Pat. "We said, ‘Here’s what we are doing. If you have anything we could do, let us put these projects on our website.’ "
The Mormon missionaries have taken to their new assignments with relish, he says. "Because of their being involved with service, people love the missionaries. They are welcomed and get very positive responses — a much different response than knocking on doors."
On top of that, they have more meaningful ways to fill those daytime hours, Mack says. In addition, missionaries are less likely to have health problems or depression, and relationships between the pairs known as "companionships" have improved.
"It’s all been very positive," he says. "The mission president is really excited about it."
The San Jose initiative was a pilot program, but was followed about a year ago in Dallas and Denver.Others are urging that all Mormon missionaries perform extra community service.
Elder Chad Le Beau,18, of Peoria, Ariz., has been in the Bay Area for about seven months, as an American Sign Language missionary (both his parents are deaf). He and his companion spend a lot of his service hours helping out at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont.
"We volunteer at homecoming events, set up parking, cook hamburgers for everybody and help out at basketball games — keeping score, working the shot clock and interpreting for the refs," Le Beau says in a phone interview. "I love service. It builds friendships and love that cannot be obtained through any other means."
Le Beau enjoys this part of his mission a lot.
"Being able to help someone and noticing that you’ve made a difference," he says, "I don’t see how you could not feel good about that."
Other missionaries are helping with an after-school program in a low-income area in East San Jose, which serves kids who are at high risk for joining gangs, says September Higham, an LDS Relief Society president in Mountain View, Calif. They "hang out with the kids, play handball, help with homework and provide other mentoring services."
This organization reached out to the missionaries in particular, Higham says, "because they had trouble finding volunteers who were available between 3 and 5 in the afternoon."
These young Mormons also help a neighborhood association clean up trash around the so-called "Jungle," a large homeless encampment in San Jose and one of the biggest in the nation.
About six to 12 missionaries clean out cow stalls and chicken coops, put in irrigation systems, and weed and mulch once a week at Hidden Villa, a nonprofit educational organization, Higham says. Another 15 missionaries work several times a week for a wildlife-habitat-restoration group called Acterra, removing invasive plants, planting native species and providing other services.
"The missionaries were recently honored at the [Acterra] organization’s volunteer dinner as the ‘largest core group’ of volunteers," she says.
Each pair of missionaries has to find its own service opportunities, which fit within established guidelines:
• The service has to be within or near their assigned areas.
• Missionaries are not allowed to use power tools and can go only four steps up a ladder.
• Missionaries are not allowed to work directly with children in most cases. (Exceptions are where there are lots of adults around and the service is in a public area.)
• Missionaries always must be within sight and sound of their companions.
• Missionaries always have to wear their name tags.
When evaluating service prospects, missionaries are told "to use good judgment and protect the name of Christ."
Higham celebrates this move toward putting more service in Mormon missions.
"We’re sending a whole generation of young missionaries back home with the awareness and the experience to engage in service in their own communities," she says. "Some of these missionaries will become community leaders and the experience they gained at age 19 or 20 working with the homeless, at-risk youth, disabled individuals and other disadvantaged populations will become invaluable."
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