Elder Jacob Hill: 40/40/40

Malo soifua!!!

After deep contemplation, and many dedicated in-shower thought sessions, I've decided to begin including a preview section of my email for those who either don't have the time or don't love me enough to read the whole email, haha.

Today, on The Elder Hill Show:

We put our friend Qeonna on baptismal date!! We set it more as a goal to help her begin keeping commitments, but I'm super excited to keep working with her.
"Member Madness" - Our latest zone initiative to help us work more with the members
"Prayer group" rooms on Facebook are a great way to randomly meet people haha.
Elder Kelley and I are training this transfer!! We're going to pick up our new companion this upcoming Thursday.
Our mission set a goal to have 270 baptisms in the next six months. It's a big goal, but we've all got the faith. (See my last paragraph down below).

Alright, now for the full scoop.

After having a couple lessons with Qeonna, and introducing her to the Book of Mormon, we finally put her on baptismal date! This was done primarily to give her an awesome goal and desire to work towards. She has a strong desire to be baptized, so we are helping her learn to keep commitments that will help her come closer to Christ.

This past week our zone (the Brooklyn South Zone) and our neighboring Brooklyn North Zone put together an initiative to help us work more with the members in our respective areas. It's called "Member Madness" (think "March Madness"). Every day, the zone leaders give us certain tasks to do during the day, and point values assigned to each respective task. Our goal is to then score as many points as we can each day by working a bunch with members. Each morning, Elders Koster and Wood would drop a video recap of the previous day (Sports Center style), telling us how we did against North Brooklyn. It's been a lot of fun, and we've all done a LOT of working with members, haha.

At the suggestion of our old Social Media Specialist, Elder Kelley and I teamed up with the Sisters here in Staten, and we had a couple of "prayer room" group calls on Facebook. Basically, Elder Kelley creates a group, and all of us four missionaries join on our own devices (so we don't look like teams of weirdos, just individual weirdos haha).We then just start cold-calling a bunch of people to join our group and pray with us. What's super cool is that people will either just not respond, or they'll join and chat for at least a second or two. Some people aren't super interested, but some will stay on and just chat with us for a few minutes before saying a prayer together. It's awesome to just meet random people here in Staten and just connect through prayer. Hopefully it pays off, and we can strengthen our friends that join, and maybe even meet new people to teach because of it.

On Wednesday, Elder Kelley and I got a call from the APs, asking us if our apartment could hold three missionaries. We said it can, and they said cool. Elder Kelley mentioned to me after the call that he had gotten a similar call a few transfers earlier, right before he trained his last companion. We waited for the fated call from Pres Teuscher, and on Friday it finally came. He called us and asked us if we would be willing to train a new missionary. We answered in the emphatic affirmative. Pres then asked me specifically if I felt ready to train, and I answered honestly and said that I did. So this next Thursday, Elder Kelley and I will be driving to JFK airport to pick up a new elder fresh off the plane.

Also on Friday, Pres Teuscher had an "emergency meeting" in person with the Brooklyn Zones (he had been visiting all of the zones in person, and we were scheduled for Friday). He talked a lot about plans, goals, and unity, and how they are crucial for a mission to have to be successful in bringing people closer to Christ. He also introduced our major mission goal for the next six months. He called it "40/40/40" and then "50/50/50". Basically, our goal as a whole collective mission is to have 40 baptisms in the month of February, 40 in March, and 40 in April. Our goal then expands to 50 baptisms in May, 50 in June, and 50 in July. This will combine for a total of 270 people baptized in the next six months. It seems like a big goal, and it is, but, in the words of Pres himself, "in a mission with over 13 million people, I am confident that God has prepared at LEAST 270 people to receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ."

I would like to ask all of you to join us in our mission-wide prayer for all those that are being prepared to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray with us that we as the missionaries may be best able to find those that are ready. Pray for the members to be in positions to help both their friends and the missionaries. Pray for those who are learning, or who have not yet heard, that they may be touched and feel the Spirit, that they may be prepared to make covenants with God. I invite all of you who read this email to join me in this prayer, and I know that as we join forces in praying to God, and unifying in our collective goal, even impossible things will become possible through the God who made us all.

Faafetai mo lo tou alofa, fesoasoani, ma o tou tatalo!!

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou!!

Elder Hill

Photos:

I made this picture post on Facebook based on D&C 121:7-8, and I just love it
Our last district council of the transfer (RIP Sister Yan)
Elder Van and I decided to have our accountability call on the floor this week, so that was fun. We're using slippers as head-rests.
Picture from our first Facebook prayer group.