Busy, busy, busy

Dear family, This past week was a pretty trying and hard week. We had preparation day on Monday, district meeting on Tuesday, new missionary meeting on Wednesday, interviews on Thursday, weekly planning on Friday, correlation meeting on Saturday and church on Sunday. All of these ate up a lot of each day throughout this week so we had to work extra hard to meet our standards of excellence, meaning we should teach 20 lessons a week and meet key indicators which show that we are working and we still managed to meet them. It was an amazing answer to my prayers because it was a super busy week. It has showed to me that we should make sure to plan our days well so we can be effective and say to people when we meet them that God has sent us here specifically today. It is awesome to say that and really helps me and Elder Payne to be effective missionaries. We have really been helping those that we teach to prepare for baptism by really focusing on their needs and making sure that they have friends in the ward that they can be fellow shipped by and also helps the conversion process better because we cannot keep teaching everyone that has been baptized. We help those that have been baptized by having them join us in teaching appointments and having them see the influence of their strong testimony and it also helps the people we teach see how much the gospel can change their lives. Gospel studies have been way more effective this last week I have been applying Preach My Gospel to help me be a trainer and the things that me and Elder Payne study and role play have been more spirit guided and really help me to teach and also learn. I love how the spirit is working not only when we teach others but also as I learn and teach myself and also help Elder Payne become the type of missionary to be ready to teach others well. I will probably finish the Book of Mormon this week and that has been an amazing testimony builder for me. I have said this before but I really love the Book of Mormon and how it has blessed my life and how much it can influence everyone's life who sincerely reads it. Those hike pictures look awesome. I have never hiked in that area and it looks so amazing. CEFY sounds like it is going to be a blast. The Slaugh's place is so perfect and I bet the youth will love it. For your lesson this Sunday dad, my studies have always been more effective when they start with a prayer and end with a prayer. It shows Heavenly Father that you are really ready to heed the promptings of the spirit. The spirit really helps me to understand the things that I study. Also, another thing that really helps is that I use a study journal. Preach My Gospel talks about how if you show that you treasure insights and spiritual experiences by recording them, you will be more apt to receive experiences like that. I love how these thing have made my studies more effective for me. These principles can also apply to more than gospel study, but also for school tests and other studies. Anyways I hope that helps. I love you all and hope things go great for this weekends CEFY. Love Elder Nathaniel Shoemaker