Teaching for Understanding

We did have transfers this week. Elder Monzales went off to his second area and I am now with Elder Alfeche. He is from Marikina City in Manila (same as Elder Paaño). I have known him for a long time now. He is a great missionary and I am happy that I get to work with him. He is really good. I have gone on exchanges with him before in the past and so I am really excited that he now is my companion.

So this week . . . It went by very quick it is hard to remember what happened this week.

Tuesday was a day of saying goodbye for Elder Monzales and Wednesday was picking up Elder Alfeche. The rest of the week was about normal. Jona is doing the same. She didn't come to church this week and we don't know why so we will follow up with her. Earljohn is still struggling to come to church. We will probably have to take another approach to help him. We didn't make it Spencer this week. We were very busy with some mission assignments so we didn't get to do as much work as we wanted or could. It made things a little bit ruff this week. If you remember Anafe, she is doing really great. She loves to talk to others about the gospel and share her testimony. We are working with her to get a referral so that should be coming soon. We are still working with the Turuel family. Sister isn't there anymore. There was some things that she has to do somewhere else so we won't see here for a long time. Other than that we have been working with members and less actives to help them come back or continue to enter the fold.

I would just to tell you a little bit about what I have been studying lately. It our district meetings, where I give my lessons, we have been focusing on chapter 10 of Preach My Gospel which focuses on how to teach and improve your teaching skills. Last week I gave a training on Teaching for Understanding. I was thinking about that last Monday on how I would present my lesson and I thought about it for a long time. I finally figured that I would focus on language and about not giving too much information as we teach. A big concern in all teaching is that we want to be so clear that we share everything making a disturbance and a change of focus. That causes things to be very unclear so we need to give the needed information and a couple extras that that person can understand. The Spirit is the guide for how much we can give. That is been a big help in my teaching is focusing on what they can understand and teaching a simple understandable manner in the language they speak. In this language, there are lots of old terms the people don't understand that we are taught to use. But as we simplify it, they receive a greater conversion.

I think that is important in all teaching whether religion based or not.

Love you,

Elder Nielsen