July 9, 2012

Hey mom, 

This past week was pretty good. We had a good fourth of July. We had Zone Leader Council that day so all the zone leaders came into town and we had our monthly 6 hour long training meeting. It was crazy, President pretty much gave me and Elder Hawkins the whole thing and let us train everyone. He only took 45 mins for himself. We did the majority of the training on studies (personal and comp), having more frequent but shorter lessons and something i came up with called WPM (Words per minute). That one has had the biggest impact so far. We have SO many young and even old missioanries who have a 50 minute lesson in which they just talk and talk and talk and tell and tell and tell. Several months ago when i was a zone leader i watched President do a role play in ZLC that was amazing! then right after, a zone leader did one that was.... just ok. I thought to myself, what's the difference? They taught the same thing but one felt like true teaching and one just felt like explaining.

      It clicked that alot of it was the speed with which they spoke. The actual speed at which words came out of their mouths. And the quality. President never uses any filler words like "um" or "Like" or "you know what i mean?". It's like the prophet speaking at general conference or the scriptures. Every word means something. The very way you allow words to come out, accompanied with how much you pause and think can have SUCH a huge impact on the spirit in the lesson. You go from being an average person explaining something to a whole lot more. It was that and the questions asked. Since i had that epiphany months ago i've striven to teach like that and it has sure allowed the spirit to do alot more with my teaching. I brought it up to elder Hawkins when we got to be companions again and he slowed down his speach and what a difference it has made. We notice it everywhere now ha in Sacrament talks, in testimonies, in other peoples teaching etc. There's power in speaking like the apostles and prophets. So we did the majority of our training in ZLC on that. It's something so small but turns out if you want an easy way to take any  6 foot missionary and help him become an 8 foot missionary, is by teaching him how to control his WPM and how to ask better questions. It's already had a real good impact.

     Besides that, we just taught the rest of the 4th. Then thursday and friday we were up in Mt. Pleasant , then Price on exchanges with the zone leaders up there. That was a very fun productive trip. Then saturday we had a baptism of a girl named Audrie. She is really neat.

     Well, we still have a bunch more stuff to do tonight for Zone Conferences coming up this week so i'm gonna go. I love you!

                       -Elder Spurlin