Share the gospel! Be missionaries!

September 11, 2015

This week I was studying in Preach My Gospel chapter 9. That chapter starts with this sentence: "The doctrines and principles in this chapter will strengthen your faith tha the Lord is preparing people to receive you and the restored gospel. He will lead you to them or he will lead them to you." Then it lists some scriptures to show how the Lord is preparing his children to recieve the gospel.

1. Alma 13:24  For behold, angels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory.

2. Alma 16:16-17 the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming—That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might receive the word with joy

3. D&C 84:88  And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.

4. D&C 136:33 For my Spirit is sent forth into the world to enlighten the humble and contrite, and to the condemnation of the ungodly.

After reading those scriptures, I asked myself some questions:

1. Do I believe that there are angels at this very time in my area preparing people to receive the gospel? 

2. Do I believe that the Lord has poured out his spirit upon the people of my area? 

3. Do I believ that there are angels around us supporting us?

I´d like to say that I have have faith in those principles, but that faith could definitely be stronger. We can develop faith by experiment, as Alma teaches us. We can experiment upon these things by following the principles we are taught in Preach My Gospel.

Also, the way that people are most frequently prepared to receive the gospel is through the members...you guys! Share the gospel! Be missionaries!  You can be the angels that so many people that are wandering looking for the truth need.

I thought you guys would like to get to know my mission president better. This is his Mormon.org  profile, complete with a video: https://www.mormon.org/me/7c2m

I´m pretty much out of time for today, but now that I´ve got some time here, I can more succefully explain what I do as a secretary. So I´ll try to talk about that next time. If you´ve got questions about that, send them to me.

I love you all! Thanks for all your support!

Elder Hilton

Things are finally calm again

September 4, 2015 

Dear family,

Things are finally calm again. The busyness of changes are over. But it will be back in a few weeks. Time seems to go by so much faster in the office. 6 weeks seemed like a lot more time before I came here. Maybe it´s because our work is centered so much around changes. 

Change week (week 1): sooo busy. 

Week 2: recovering from changes. 

Weeks 3-6: preparing for changes.

Then the cycle repeats again. 

We have two pretty positive investigators now: M and M.

M came to church a few weeks ago. He also went to a baptism service. He´s reading the Book of Mormon. And he´s praying. He says that he can´t fall asleep at night because he´s thinking about it so much. He says he´s sure that he wants to be baptized, but he wants to wait. He´s thinking about being baptized next year. We´re working on that. We think that the problem is the way he´s praying. In his prays he just says "give me understanding" and stuff like that but he doesn´t specifically ask "Is the Book of Mormon true?" or "Was Joseph Smith a prophet?" I think that once he does that, he´ll be able make a decision.

M also wants to be baptized. His challenge is that he´s trying to stop drinking. He´s been drinking almost his whole life. But he´s trying to drop it.

Dad asked when I first heard the "music of the gospel." I honestly can´t think of when I first heard the music. I think that´s because I had such great parents. I´ve been reading the Book of Mormon ever since I was born because we always read together as a family, every day. We always prayed as a family. We always had our family home evenings. There was a big focus on the temple. I was taught how to read the scriptures daily, how to do family history, etc. The list goes on. Our home is truly a holy place. I´d say that that is was mostly what made the difference for me. So I suppose that in order to strengthen the youth you need to strength the parents.

Well, I love you all!

Elder Hilton.

Elder Barwick says hi.

This week was great.

August 28, 2015

Dear family,

This week was great. This week we had:

1. A temple trip

2. A visit from President Nelson and the area presidency

Wow. So good. First of all, the temple trip. I brought a ton of cards. We got 20 names done. The temple is so peaceful. 

Today was the visit of President Nelson. That was great. It was the 3 missions in El Salvador combined. Our mission put together a small choir. I got to be in that choir. It honestly wasn´t the best sounding choir I´ve been in, but the best part of it was that be got to be in front with all the mission presidents, the Seventy, and President Nelson.

The temple trip and the visit took some time, so we´ve been more busy than normal, but that´s ok. Someday we won´t be so busy. We´ve been so tired lately. But oh well. It´s better this way. It makes us grow.

Mom asked how often I see Elder G. He was in the choir to (we´re actually standing together in the picture) so lately I´ve been seeing him about 2 times every week. But now I´ll probably see him at most once a change. We´re like best friends now.

Well, I love you all!

Elder Hilton

I´m sooo busy

August 21, 2015

Hello family!

Well, things haven´t really calmed down much yet. I´m sooo busy. So this will be a short one again.

Thoughts about this week in the order they came to mind:

1. We had changes this week again. Wow. Lots of work. And yes, stress. But I´m managing it well.

2. Today I helped President and Hermana V with their family history. That was really fun. The hardest part was helping them get over the technological barrier. And finding out Hermana V´s password.

3. Last week the ward had a family history activity. Our bishop asked for our help. I helped someone find 5 names. That was great too.

3. This morning I had to be in 5 places at once. We had choir practice, we received a shipment from the distribution center, closed an area, I had a meeting with President V, and I did my first baptism interview. I´m now a district leader. It´s like President wants me to grow a little bit more.

4. Elder V, the secretary with the most time in the office is training this change. I´m the secretary with the second most time so that would mean that it´s likely I train next change. That would put me leaving the office in about 3 months.

5. Next Friday President Nelson will be coming to talk to the 3 missions in El Salvador. That´s why we´re having choir practices. We´re going to sing for that.

6. Pictures! One with Elder G, at choir practice, they other at a service project. We were cleaning up trash. There is a lot of trash in El Salvador.

7. Last week we actually were able to find 12 new investigators. So far this week have 4.

8. Our most positive investigator is M. At first he didn´t want anything to do with the church, but then he went to the temple activity. Every since then it was different. He´s committed to coming to church this week. He is seriously considering being baptised.

Well, that´s about all I got. I love you all a lot.

Elder Hilton

August 7, 2015

Well first of all, I´m now doing much better. I´m not sick anymore. I´m just somewhat tired. But that´s all.

Yesterday we had another trip to the temple for investigators. It was different this time because we were running it, not just attending. We were there all day. There were 3 sessions divided by location for the entire mission. In all, 1700 people came. It was a pretty big event.

The best part was when we saw everyone from Nueva Concepcion. Hermana V had assigned us to buy pizza for the missionaries that ran the temple activity. So Elder V and I took the mission pickup and went to Little Ceasers. When we came back there was a bus blocking the entrance to the temple so we were waiting outside the gate when suddenly Elder V told me to open the window. I did and there they were. We had a little reunion there in the street but then the guard got mad at us so we parked to car and ran back real quick. Their bus was waiting for everyone to get back so we got on the bus to say hi to everyone. There was President M, his wife, R, M, I and R (President M´s mom and sister, they got baptized too after I left), I (President M´s daughter), R (President M´s son), M, E, and D (President M´s grandkids), L, N, H, R and E, and M. While maybe not all those names are familiar to you, I was really excited to see them. Elder V too, because he actually started his mission in Nueva Concepcion. 

R was so happy. He kept telling me over and over again, "I will never forget you." Over and over again. M seemed close to tears. I feel such a strong connection to the M family. Well, to everyone from Nueva Concepcion. I don´t think I will every feel like another area like I do about Nueva Concepcion. Unfortunately I didn´t get any pictures with them.

Well, that´s about all I got this week. I love you all!

Elder Hilton

Truly Good and Without Guile

July 25, 2015

This week I read the talk "Truly Good and without Guile" by Elder Ringwood from the last session of general conference. It made me think of one of the sisters in our ward, Hermana Torres. She´s an old lady that lives alone. I´m not sure if she´s a widow or not. But she´s quite possibly the most converted person in the ward. She always goes to church despite physical limitations that come with age. She always reads the scriptures. She always does her family home evenings, even though it´s usually just her alone. She goes to the temple regularly. She tries to do her family history even though she doesn´t know how. She fasts and pays a fast offering. Basically, she is truly good and without guile.

I realize that I´m pretty far away from that. I lack much. But "the good new of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the desires of our hearts can be transformed and our motives can be educated and refined.

We do that by making and keeping covenants with God. When we got baptized we started the process of converting ourselves into new creatures and each time we take the sacrament we take a step closer.

In Doctrine and Covenants it states that "in the ordinances thereof the power of Godliness is manifest." The power of the atonement is manifest in our lives as we participate worthily in ordinances of the priesthood: baptism, confirmation, the sacrament, temple ordinances on behalf of ourselves and our ancestors. It´s a process.

I feel like the mission is a special time we have been given in order to further that process of conversion. We are able to focus all of our time on helping others enter into covenants with God and receive those ordinances. I´d say that focus definitely has an effect on us. I´d say that family history has the same effect on us.

Answers to questions:

1. How do we find new investigators?

We talk to everyone and we ask everyone for referrals. We don´t really tract. But someone will give us a referral, we find them and knock on their door. Even if they don´t receive us, we´ll ask them for referral. Then we look for the referrals that they give to us and do the same thing.

2. Why do I think new investigators is most important?

Like it says in Doctrine and Covenants section 4, the field is white and ready for the harvested. Our main purpose as missionaries is not to plant seeds. We are here to harvest. We need to find the people who are already prepared, the chosen of the Lord. So we need to find a lot of investigators. Let´s say in one week we find 12 new investigators. Of those 12, maybe 2 will keep there commitments and progress. Because our time is so limited, we stop visiting the 10 that don´t progress, keep visiting the 2 that do progress and find 12 more. So in order to find the prepared people, we need to find a lot of investigators.

There were more questions but I´m just about out of time.

I attached a picture of me directing a missionary choir. We sang at a recent stake conference. The class I took at BYU has really come in handy. At one point I used both hands to conduct and everyone was really amazed at that. I don´t think they´d seen anything like it before.

Well, I love you all!

Elder Hilton

He said that if we think we´re working harder, but we don´t achieve more, we´re not working harder.

July 17, 2015

Hello family!

Things are going well over here. I´m enjoying the mission.

I feel like I´ve finally got the hang of balancing our time in the office and the area. 

In my extra time in the office, I like to make graphs so that I still feel productive. In our mission we have 4 standards of excellence: Baptism dates, church attendance, progressing investigators, and new investigators. I wanted to see which of those key indicators affected baptism most. So I added up all the standards of excellence for 9 areas over the last year and a half. Then I compared that to the number of baptisms they had. Then I made a scatter plots, and took the lines of best fit.

 

The more horizontal the line is, the more the key indicator affected the number of baptisms. If the line is vertical, it hardly affected it at all. So, I found out that the key indicator that most affected the baptisms was new investigators. Then came church attendance. Then progressing. Then baptism dates.

I also looked at the history of my area. I have all the numbers back until the beginning of 2013. The standard of excellence for new investigators per week is 12. With the exception of one week, our area had never gotten that many. It´s not that our area´s a really hard area, but I think that past secretaries have that because we´re in the office it´s ok if our area doesn´t do as well. But that is not true.

We´ve started working a lot harder in our area. A little while ago Elder A, an area seventy, visited us. One of the things that he taught was that if we work harder, we achieve more. He said that if we think we´re working harder, but we don´t achieve more, we´re not working harder. I  have come to know that that is true. So, we´ve started to work harder, and we´ve achieved more. Two weeks ago we found 14 new investigators. Last week, even though it was changes week, we found 12. That was truly a challenge. Monday through Thursday we had barely spent any time in the area and had taught only one lesson. But we worked like crazy on the weekend and were still able to achieve it. 

So statistics are somewhat limited, and numbers are just numbers. But they help up focus more and they do help motive us to work harder.

I´m pretty much out of time so this might be it for today. Mom asked me to explain how we find people to teach, but I´ll explain that next week. Just remind me.

I love you all!

Elder Hilton