Elder Graden Reber: First Baptism and JIFFY

Heyyoooo!

Wow what a week!

Well first of all, I had my first baptism this week! It was for a little 9 year old girl named Euko:) Her dad used to be a member when we found them and he said he had been thinking he should get her baptized, but he hadn't been to church for so long. It was cool to teach him and Euko together and watch them grow! The best part was that he got to baptize her so that was fun to see that we had helped him come back to the church, and taught Euko too!

We started up a program called Jiffy in our mission. It stands for "Jesus Invites Friends, Find Yours!" Basically we gave every member a piece of paper and asked them to pray about 10 people they know that don't have the gospel that they think could use it in their lives. Then we have them circle 2 names, or families, that they think would be most likely to listen to the missionaries. We ended up getting like 94 names of potential investigators! So now over the next few weeks we are going to be going to meet these people with the members that referred them to us. The goal is to have the members at the lessons to help us get in the door, and then if/when the investigators start coming to church they will have a friend right from the start! It is super smart and has already been making our mission a lot more successful! So to all my friends that are on missions or about to leave, maybe introduce that idea in your mission:)

I had my first zone conference yesterday! I learned a ton about how to become a better learner, and a better teacher. I LOVE PRESIDENT HUGHES! Like wow, he is the smartest most motivating guy I've ever met haha! He talked for a long time about the learners mindset vs Judgers mindset. Basically we talked about how we need to look at every time we "fail" as just a learning opportunity. When we do this we eliminate thoughts of failure from our lives and we learn to improve a lot faster than if we beat ourselves up. We just have to ask ourselves questions that allow us to figure out how we messed up, what we can learn from it, and apply it. He gave a bunch of examples of when he was starting businesses and that made me super happy haha I know I'm going to learn so much from President! He started his workshop off yesterday by saying "I can teach you principles that will put your life on a rocket ride of growth and success, but you have to act on them. I'm not here to babysit you guys along the way." He taught us some of his life principles to success and I can't wait to try applying them!

We also talked a lot about habits. It is important to do good things, but even more important to develop those into habits. We have to do them over and over until we don't even have to think about them. We learned more about how the things we learn here shouldn't be temporary. We should always be planning, setting goals, evaluating, and adjusting our plans in order to accomplish them. I know goals are super important for us if we want to accomplish anything. That is one skill I hope to develop more on my mission and take it home with me so I don't procrastinate as much in school lol.

On Tuesday night we got to go do a JIFFY with the stake president. He invited his friends that he wanted us to teach over for dinner, and we had such a good dinner! They live in the rich part of my area that we aren't really allowed in to proselyte so it was cool to see some houses that kinda looked like America! First off, the meal we ate was a full on pig!! I took a pic by it that I'll send, but right after the picture President Cilantro took a huge knife and just cut a chunk out of the pigs neck and gave it to me to try. It basically tasted like a chip (skin) with a bunch of fat on it haha. It was a little gross but not too bad. Then the inside of the pig tasted pretty good! After dinner we taught that family a lesson about the restoration and we got a return appointment with them for this Friday:) They were super nice! Hopefully we can keep the lessons going with them!

On Sunday we had the primary program. It was soooo sick! Haha all the little kids were singing solos and like harmonizing! It was so funny at some spots because they would get way off tune and just keep singing as loud as they could. I loved it haha! My ward is super fun!

I'm loving it out in the field so far! Do some family scripture study bc the scriptures are so sick! I wish I read them a lot more before haha but now I'm gaining such a stronger testimony that they really can help us through anything! Bc let me tell you, learning a new language isn't very easy and I've been beating myself up some days. But I'm going to try to have a learners mindset now! Hope you guys are doing amazing back home!

Love ya!

-Elder Reber