Dear Family,
Howdy-do! Was that Texan? I don’t think so. I just made that up. So, I know what you all are thinking right now. Crazy ole Elder Droge has gone mad! He’s angry as ever and is having a pity party. He is immature and needs to grow up because he has the most negative attitude ever! Why is that mean old hag even a missionary? He’s doing a horrible job and might as well go home.
No.
I love life.
I was just experimenting.
Here’s the thing I was experimenting on. FEAR. DUTY. LOVE. I found it gratefully ironic that the letter Dad sent me talked about just that. That backs me up. It’s an equation that really works. People react 3 different ways. One – Fear. Some people react when they are condemned because it scares them into doing things the right way. Two – Duty. Some people react when you say they have the duty to obey or when you give them a calling of responsibility. Three – Love. Some people react when you show them how much you care for them.
There are numerous examples for all three. Yes, love is the absolute best motivator, and I hate to defy the laws of nature, but it doesn’t work every time. Every person is different. In Brady there is a lady I mentioned named Mae Usher. She is an 84 year old black lady who was investigating the church for 3 years going on 4. She has been loved to death. I am not joking. There is no person on the face of this planet that has been loved more than Miss Mae. However, she hasn’t reacted. She knows it’s true, but won’t be baptized. Normally after a while you’d move on. But no, there was a missionary who did that. He saw that she wasn’t progressing, so he stopped visiting her. Right thing to do? Nope. Worst decision of his mission. The whole branch hated him. No joke. They literally hated him. So we had to visit this lady. Do you know what we decided to do? Yep. Fear approach. We read chapters like Alma 5 and 2 Nephi 9. It made her think. It really did. Now, I don’t know what happened because I got transferred out, but hey. Same situation with a guy in Midland. He has spent his whole life almost searching for the truth. It seemed to pain him a lot. We taught him for a long time. I was the one that found him, so I wasn’t obligated to keep teaching, but I just couldn’t get myself to stop going over there. We were bold. We used the fear approach and it got him to think. Especially when we read 2 Nephi 9. It works with people.
Duty approach works as well. 2 less actives in Midland had been loved to death, but weren’t progressing. With the first guy, he had been on and off his whole life with his testimony. One day (before I got there) someone told him that he has the duty to raise his 8 year old son in the gospel. Well, it worked. His son got baptized and his testimony was really strong. Even though he struggled coming to church with his job, he felt the blessings from the gospel come for the first time in his life. 2nd guy was a recent convert baptized Last November. He was still very new in the gospel and shallow because of a rough life. He had started to slide back a little. What happened. They called him to be the Secretary in the Elders Quorum. Soon after, do you know what happened? Well, we stopped over and he had been reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church more. We asked him what sparked that. His response, ‘I got to. I’m the Elder’s Quorum secretary now.’ He felt the duty of his calling and responded.
Love works best, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had several people respond to us because we were loving and kind and showed them that we were down to earth, normal people. It is the best. I know this goes against the popular vote, but I try to be loving in most of my letters. What happens? People love and respect me back thinking that I am a great missionary, but the missionary stereotype is just too strong and they don’t feel obligated to respond in words. I tried the duty approach at the beginning of the transfer a few weeks ago and that did the opposite effect. People still had the missionary stereotype in mind. So what did I decide to do? Fear approach. Did it work? Well, I got letters from Mom (2 – 4, I believe), Dad, Bruce, Joe, and Dave. You decide for yourself. Just note to self, don’t use fear approach on Dave, he’ll make you look and feel like the smallest person on earth. But hey, I got a sports update out of it, so all’s good right? I commend him for being very blunt about what he says, though. I hate it when people try to sugarcoat their feelings. It happens all the time and it bugs me. Lots of people tell us that they are interested just because they don’t want to hurt our feelings. NO!!!!! TELL ME THE TRUTH, YOU HEFFA; I DON’T WANT TO WASTE MY TIME! But hey, life goes on. Like I told Dave, out here I have been told so many times that I’m not going to make it to heaven because of what I believe, it’s not even funny. Actually it is, but that’s beside the point. Also, I love debating on internet blogs and forums and I spent lots of time on them during high school. It always seemed like I was being attacked. I was told that my view and thoughts were stupid almost every single day, but I loved it. It was fun. I especially enjoyed all the grief I got when I said the Giants will beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. That was fun. I started to get a little respect when that happened. Nice timing, eh? Now I’ve disappeared off the face of the planet in the internet debating world.
Point being, if you want to give me grief and call me an idiot, bring it on! I’m used to it. Also, if you would like to throw in your opinion on what the rule is on missionaries writing home and what the purpose is in doing so, I have formulated my opinions on that and am ready to respond. Like I said, I enjoy debating.
As for missionary-wise, this week was a dud statistically, so not much interesting things to tell you. Like I said, this area has been bone dry in accordance with investigators when I got here so we have been spending much of our time building it up and I feel we are getting close to getting some investigators that will go somewhere and when it happens you’ll be the first to know. Ok, I lied. My journal will be first to know. Then the district leader, because he calls Sunday night. Then you will know third, maybe fourth, because I have to email President Robison, but you get the point.
Mom – Thanks for those Halloween pictures. It was great to see the fun that you had. Like I said, I had fun on Halloween as well. You’ll see the pictures later. I can’t remember if I got Emily’s wedding announcement from you this last week or the week before. I think it was last, but thanks. That was nice to get and scary as well. It hasn’t really sunk in that Emily is actually married right now. I wonder how many others are married. Someone should find out for me. Ask one of the Pond twins or Emily or someone like that that graduated and let me know or have them let me know. That would be interested. Also Mom, you mentioned something that made me sad. You said that you think I would move to Texas after I finished college. That grieves me. I would never do that, unless the whole family moved down. Even then, I would miss Utah. I would love to visit Texas a few times and keep in contact with some of the people down here, but as for moving permanently, I couldn’t do that. I’m too much of a Utahn.
Bruce – As for Julien, I never actually tried Culver City. After I gave up and decided to bring that back up, I found a map of Los Angeles and found Culver City. But I still need help from everyone, how would you for mat this address, “3742 Hughes Avenue Culver City Los Angeles California 90232.” I don’t think that all goes on one line and I can’t get it to work with the mail system. Also, Bruce, you mention High School and a few of your teachers. I’m glad you find high school easy. I found the same thing. People growing up blew high school out of proportion. You mention 2 teachers, Gunnerson and Springer. I never had Gunnerson, but I remember the name. As for Springer, I did have him and I remember that I was one of the few people that actually liked the guy. I thought he was real cool. Not too many people did, however. But if you take another computer class, here’s the teacher to get: Coach Boog. His real name is Clark Stringfellow, I think. He is the coolest, easiest teacher ever. If you do your work, you get free time to either browse the web and play games and such or do your homework. No joke. He’ll give you an assignment to do that takes 30 minutes or so and you have 2 class periods to do it. It’s awesome.
I have news about transfers, which is this week. My companion is leaving and I am staying. I know my new companion, but I’m not supposed to know, so you get to wait till next week to find out about him. Plus, I’ve spent way too long writing this letter. Don’t expect letters like this in the future. Enjoy my stupidity in getting carried away with my letters because I am going to fix that. I was about to say I will try to fix that, but Elder Pearson said to stop using the word try and Yoda said Do or Do Not, there is no try. But I gotta go. Everyone peace out and know that I am not negative and immature. I have a very good feeling about life and I am enjoying every minute of this. I don’t really want to come home. I’d just assume sign up with the 3 nephites, but that’s not an option here, they have to kick me out eventually, and when they do, don’t worry about me going back. Even though many of you think otherwise right now, my family means a lot to me and that’s who I want to be with during life. So farewell and GIT-R-DONE!!!
Elder Adam R Droge
The DrogeMiester
No comments:
Post a Comment