Actually it means mangos but you get the point. I love Manga more than any other area I’ve served in. The people here are as good as ever. The branch continues to strengthen every week. Last week we had a frequency of 201 and we established the goal for 207 for this past Sunday. This past Sunday we surpassed our goal and got 209! As far as our area goes, we’ve dropped a ton of families who aren’t prepared yet and are starting over other than about 2 families that were being taught before I got here. To get to know the area better Elder Thomas and I walked with the ward missionary leader Joaquim Conde. Sunday after church we walked for two hours with him and he showed us where the majority of the members in our area live. With that knowledge that we now have we are going to focus just in that area and create a nice center of force. I gave a training this week to the district leaders in my zone on how to create a center of force. The training went super well and they are already applying it in their areas. Elder Robinson the district leader in Manga 2 told of how they taught a family who lived near a members house. They had marked the day before and apparently when they came the next day the family they had marked with had actually invited the neighbor member over. Elder Peterson, the district leader for Manga 3 had over 40 lessons this week, on Saturday they taught 13 lessons. I asked him how he was able to do it. He said that the only way was by using centers of force. Okay, so what are centers of forces. All areas are large for the most part and would take much of a missionaries time to walk the whole are every day. The Idea of centers of force is to only focus in one or two small areas within your area. How do you determine where to create your center of force. One of the main things you need to keep in mind is that the center of force needs to be where members live. It also needs to be near a high traffic area where it is easy to find men and families walking around on the streets and paths. Why do centers of force help? It helps especially where the church is still relatively new. It helps because as the families we teach will become members they will be living in a community with other solid families and recent converts, they will support eachother. Also visiting and home teaching becomes more practical. Also for those that live within the center of force but are not members begin to see the difference in the lives of the others around them and begin to have a desire to also have that happiness.
Now that Elder Thomas and I know where the majority of our members live we will be focusing our time in that center of force. Another great thing that is happening is that we have a collective marriage planned for the 21 of September. So far the manga 3 district has one family who has opened up the process and elder Thomas and I will be opening it up with one of our families this Wednesday. We are going to have 6-8 families getting married and baptized. It is going to be a beautiful thing. The manga 2 district will have a family married and baptized this week and also in the coming week. Okay, my time is up, but more than anything I want you to know that miracles truly are happening here in Mozambique. I’m loving serving a mission. I’m more busy than I ever have been before, but its good.
-Elder Greenman
No comments:
Post a Comment