Monday, February 28, 2011

Back to work!!

So here is a quick update for those of you who are following the blog and realize we haven't posted since the end of January.  Kyle had a really rough February.  Almost all of his letters home said, 'Please don't post this.'  So we didn't.  Anyway, things have settled down sufficiently.  So, here is today's letter:

I loled! (I'll assume you understand, but if you don't ask Darren.)
I love Daryl! and Sister Craig! I can see sister Craig's face and hear exactly how she said it! and I miss Edy and Richard! =P Are his papers in yet?
yup....that's Johnathan. lol


(I asked Kyle if he uses questions to teach his investigators or when he is teaching on Sundays.)

Depends on my audience. Lately I've been encountering many people who don't have the religious background or vocabulary to answer the most simple of questions, but I can't lecture unless I'm angry. The principle of learning is Socrates. He is the ultimate teacher and his method is the best way for anyone to truly understand. So I mimic his style. Without problems I ask logical questions and then support their logical answers with scripture. And then when there is a problem I try and use the Socratic method to deduce their problem until only the right answer is in front of them. And then when they don't accept it, I don't understand. lol Some get it, others hold too fastly to family traditions and the fundamentals of their old life.
I can't teach with out questions, it isn't possible. teaching is based entirely upon the understanding and foundation of your audience. If you don't ask questions, how will you know their understanding? If you don't ask questions, how will you know if you've laid a foundation to continue? It's not possible. And by lecturing you will loose even your most understanding of students due to the fact that no human mind can maintain focus without being intrigued.

Cool Mission story, or rather maybe not, My companion and I received a reference from one of the members and meet her for the first time at church. On Divisions, my comp went there twice without me to teach her and then the third time I actually went there. Their lives are horrible! Not their living conditions, while those are bad too, but the children were raised without respect and the mother doesn't know how to be a mother. She looses her temper and gives in to their temper-tantrums to get them to shut up. I couldn't feel the spirit, or teach or do anything. it was horrible, but she was living all the commandments and had been taught everything so we set up an interview. she had the interview and passed, but as leaving no one knew if she was actually ready and she had also been showing the others all of he bills in hopes that they would try and bribe her to be baptized. So no one was too optimistic,  but we decided to wait Saturday and if she came Sunday perhaps it really hit home and she was more prepared than we gave her credit for. Sunday came and she wasn't at church, so Sunday evening we went to go find out why. Apparently Baptism had really gotten to her, because she had wanted all of her children to be baptized and since one if four years old she can't be baptized in our church so she took all three of her children to the catholic church to be baptized instead of coming to our church on the day that the others had marked for her baptism....we very emphatically taught her baptism again and marked another date for two weeks from yesterday...yeah after we got with the other elders we all had a good laugh about that. "Hey did you hear? São Carlos 5 had three baptisms this week! FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!"

The big problem is she doesn't read and has the attention span of a five year old three children that that don't listen to her and fight and sh being 36 or 37 years old has a HUGE CRUSH on my companion, for which he is mortally scared lol It's an interesting situation lol

Hey, no one answered my question, where are the pictures we took the night before I left?
And I think that's all for this week, the Assistance surprised us all this week and showed up at District Meeting with surprise Splits, to which our Zone Leaders were late because they took the wrong buss, but that's about it! lol
Have a good week everyone and take it easy! =)
Peace oUt
Elder Lund