Monday, October 7, 2013

Lead by example and set realistic goals

Dear family,
     This week was good. We watched Saturday and Sunday morning sessions live (at 6:00 pm here), and we also watched Saturday afternoon live. I really need to download priesthood session and listen to it in our apartment, because priesthood session is always one of my favorites. I'm so happy that Austin can go now! Going to priesthood session with dad is always super fun.  It's super weird that women would try to get into the priesthood session. I thought they had it on the internet this time anyway? It's not like they talk about special secret priesthood only stuff, it's just talks directed more specifically towards men. It would be the same as guys watching the general women's broadcast. I think that women who think they want the priesthood don't really understand the priesthood, and clearly don't understand at all the basic foundation of the gospel, and of how the church is lead. The church isn't just some political organization where we can vote and stuff and that can be influenced by what people want. That's what just about every other church is, and that's why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the one legitimate church on the earth, because it's the only one that is run by Jesus Christ, and not by people. That's maybe the biggest mental block we run into with people here. There is way too much of a political and social association with religion here. People aren't members of a religion because they like it's teachings or doctrines more, or even the "fruits" of what different churches do. It's all just political, social and cultural and less so much about actually finding out what god wants for you.
     To answer your question about what leadership principles I've learned; I think the thing maybe that I've learned is that first you have to lead by example. You can't tell people to do stuff that you don't, so the first and most important thing, and if you don't do anything else, you need to set a high standard for, and work hard yourself. Once you have worked hard and been able to accomplish something, you can then tell other people how you did it. After you've done that, be realistic when you set goals. My first 1 transfer the zone leaders were great, and set a really great example, but they always set goals way higher than what we were currently doing. It wasn't a bad thing, and may have helped us a bit, but often we just sort of didn't care too much about the Zone goals, and it wasn't nearly as effective as it could be. If you set goals just a little higher than what's currently happening, you are more optimistic about achieving it and will be even happier when you do. For example, President set a new mission standard of excellence to find 3 new investigators every week, but the average was only 0.75 per companionship per week, we first made sure we as Zone leaders were finding at least 1 per week, and then we set the zone goal as 1. Then, once everyone did that, we have now set a Zone Goal for 2 per week (and we have to still be sure to work hard and do that ourselves). Once we can average at least 2 per week, we will match the standard and set a goal for 3, it might take a couple months, but it's better than if we had just put it at 3 and then everyone sort of disregards it. When we started with just 1, missionaries saw that that was really easy and achievable, but something that we weren't consistently doing. Once we achieved that we were motivated by our success and more excited to make it even harder.

Have a good week this week. Thanks for your prayers, and know that I pray for you too.

Schyler

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