Plan, teach, commit, follow up.

We went on exchanges ( go to another area for a day), I went to Lichfield. They have a very old cathedral there, here are some pictures.

 The work is so different there. They look for people to teach all day because they don't have many people to teach. It's hard work. Talking to people you don't know is easy. Talking to people you don't know about Jesus can be hard. But I'm realizing, the best way to do it... is to learn to love with a Christ like love. When you love every person you walk up to, it doesn't matter what happens. If they shout at you, you can move on. If they listen, you can teach with love. However, if you don't extend that love to everyone, you get irritated and try to retaliate, or try to prove them wrong.
I really like a scripture I came across yesterday. I'll write it down and quote it better next time but it essentially goes like this. If you're called of God and teach not by the spirit your words are not of God. And godliness is required in the manifestation of the spirit. Or in other words. Even as a missionary called by God, If you do not use the Spirit in your teaching... You are not acting of God. That struck me. Even if you're trying to represent Him, you are not representing Him by Him (if that makes sense). It's hard to describe, but teaching and teaching by the Spirit are totally different from just teaching about the gospel. You have to focus on entirely different things. I'm learning to put away the logical, and open up to the Spirit. It's hard but necessary in being an effective missionary.
There are a lot of things we learn as missionaries that are applicable to regular life.

Two of which, I want to share. The concepts of planning, and teach, commit, follow up. We plan out not just what we do in the day, but we make plans on how to help us achieve our goals... and often times we do role plays to get certain things solidified. We do this even though every single lesson is supposed to be taught by the Spirit, and most of the times it deviates from the plan quite a bit. It's applicable to life in this way: if you want something (especially like improving yourself or others), you have to plan what you want and then how you will help yourself or other people improve. The other part is what comes after. Teach, commit, follow up. After planning, we teach people (what we planned hopefully) commit them to take a step forward (after they have grown an understanding of why they should) and then follow up. We have to make sure they did what they said, and be super firm in helping them know it's important. If we don't we set a president that laziness is okay. That is a very hard idea to undo. Also it should be said that we try to make everything personally applicable to how it can help them specifically as an individual, and make sure as they do what we ask we help them see the benefit.
I think this totally applies to life. Hindsight is 20/20, but yet it is so hard to look back and see the change from a day or a week. I think that can be super discouraging. ( ie. but I did it for a week and nothing happened!) Most the time our perception adjusts with our experience. We forget exactly where we were and think where we are now is where we were before we made the change. That's why if we help people see the improvement, they will be more willing to continue down the path.
Following up has always been the hardest for me in my life, and I'm learning to get better at it. But it only really improves from the difficult effort it takes to do it. Anyways, I thought I would share that

Thinking of America makes me want apple pie. On the exchange the dinner appointment we had was with a family in which the mom loved America. She made us apple pie. It felt like heaven eating it. haha