This week was good. I ended up playing piano in the Primary program yesterday. We went to the church building on Saturday morning to make some calls (we have only 50 minutes per month on our cell phone, and the bishop offered the phone for us to use). The primary was starting to rehearse, and we were there talking with some of the kids when one of the women asked if I knew the song they were rehearsing. I told her yes, and ended up practicing the whole program with them. I was really grateful for having learned how to sight read! It was also pretty cool because I was also able to play some awesome primary songs.
So we have Elder Tiago now as part of our companionship! He's from
Fortaleza, Ceará, Brasil. He's pretty tranquilo
[quiet], pretty relaxed, but he is also pretty creative and funny. So now it's him, Elder Lierley, and me. The two are pretty much like, "yeah, you know what you're doing...we'll just let you take the reins". So, I'm thinking about what I can do to help them be more independent, self-sufficient. Maybe I'll designate one of them to act as senior for a week.
One of the pressures of being a leader is that you must be obedient with exactness. Of course, you have to have obedience to have the Spirit, but if anyone following you sees or hears of you being disobedient, they lose confidence in you as their leader and will not ask for or easily accept your opinion or vision. It kind of bothers me that some of the missionaries in our zone hold me up against a higher standard than they themselves try to reach. It's like "well, you're our leader, so you need to be perfect, but I can do what I want and you're not going to bug me about it". I was thinking about that and it came to my mind that never was my zone of missionaries asked to give a sustaining vote, like they do with church callings, with the right hand for me to serve as zone leader. Neither was I interviewed or set apart by the laying on of hands specifically to be zone leader.
What a blessing it is to have a calling in the church and receive a sustaining vote by every single member of the ward or stake! Any district/zone leader can come in and the missionaries will decide - can I depend on this guy or not? Will I listen to what he'll say or ignore it? Will I tell him what I need or should I save my breath? So as appointed leaders we have to win over the other missionaries, in a sense. I often think this is because of the maturity level of some missionaries, but when I really think about it more, I see that I do this too. I'll keep working on it.
Have an awesome week! Thanks for the Prayers!
Elder Bradford
We did a family home evening at a members house and we made more of those donuts (like we did for the recent ward party). We had arranged with some people we are teaching to come, but they didn't show, unfortunately. But, it was still good.
