I'm going to start with a story where I got reprimanded. These stories combined may make it look like I was the most rebellious, worst missionary ever, and that was not the case, but they are usually the things that come to mind, and hopefully there ends up being a point.
It was Christmas of 1993 in Modesto. One of my companion's mothers had sent a bunch of dolls that we could give out, and as we were figuring out who would be the recipients, we started thinking about everyone in the area. Some people would not really want dolls, but we wanted to do something, and some things would be good anonymous and as we were working all of this out, it ended up resulting in a lot of baking, assembling, and sneaking up to doors and dropping off.
There was a total rush with doing it, and we felt great. I think we made a lot of people happy. We were over our regular services hours for that week, and we were under our normal study hours. That ended up being necessary for getting everything done.
Our district leader expressed some displeasure with that, and we explained why, but we were clearly not repentant enough, so at the next district meeting he had another elder direct the spiritual thought at us. It was passive aggressive and blatant, and we were ticked.
That doesn't make the elders bad either. I think he was frustrated that we were not conceding that we were wrong to not have completed the full study hours. We were mad because it felt like he was denigrating something beautiful and important, but also because he did not seem to grasp that we this was the first week we had ever not completed our study hours, and it would be the last week that we didn't. It was a one-time thing.
As a full-time missionary you have a pretty structured schedule, and that's a good thing. There are various things that are helpful, and rewarding, and missionary work is all you are doing, which is an amazing opportunity, but it can be hard to stay balanced.
For example, with the weekly service hours, (I believe it was four), serving is a good thing. Love is important for the work, and service helps with that. Also, sometimes there are opportunities to find people to teach through it. With the soup kitchen that we helped at, we were not likely to find anyone to teach there, but it felt good, it helped the community, and I learned a lot. So that time was valuable, but spending more time there would not have been an effective use of mission time. We had other things to do.
A big part of the lesson is the focus on goal-setting, because a lot how you use your time comes from the goals you set and planning to make those goals. At one point there was a push to increase the number of contacts, because that can lead to more potential investigators. We tried many different ways of finding new people, and none of them were very effective, because it turned out that we pretty much knew everyone.
Much like the language study, it was okay to try different things. You don't always get it right the first time. Also, it's usually not that you get it right and then you don't have to think about it again. The situation will change, and the methods you use have to change again.
Our goals were always correct - to help bring people to Christ. Towards the end of my mission, that mean getting members reading The Book of Mormon together, instead of working towards baptisms, but it was really the same overall purpose.
Now I still have that purpose, but I also have a job and responsibilities that were not there when I was a full-time missionary. Still, a lot of the principles are the same. You plan. You pray. You readjust when things aren't working. It requires some flexibility and humility, but that's as it should be.
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