Goals

I learned a lot about goals and plans this last week. I learned something interesting about how it works. I always make the plans first, plotting out how the day will go, and THEN we make the goals. It made for a good check for whether our plans were actually working out, and I always found good success in applying it. If we failed something, then we needed to merely execute the plans better. If everything went well, we completed our daily goals. Whoohoo!

What I learned was that that's actually completely wrong.

Because goals should come before the plans. That's how one exercises faith, is planning on completing a goal whose path to completion you can't necessarily see in the beginning. It forces you to think, forces you to be creative, and with spiritual goals it forces you to use faith. By making the goals according to the plans, I've circumvented this important part of exercising faith for a long time! Man, I wish somebody would have taught me this one before! Perhaps I should have thought about the Joseph Smith story better...however, we took the opportunity to pass these basic principles of goals and planning to our zone, and we had them as a practice replan the WHOLE day. I actually think this is something that is lacking on my whole mission here, so I'm gonna give President buzzing in the ear in a little bit here.

In the meantime, the new planning method made us REALLY bust our butts. We even got somebody into the water this week! Her name's Rafaela, and she's gonna be a baby project for the next good while because she's had a rather hectic teaching curriculum, after being passed back and forth between a few cities and missionary areas.

We're trying to help somebody else get into the water too this week, but there's a lot of things that need to be taught and despite several attempts we've yet to contact her mother. I'm mainly looking forward to developing the new habits I'll need to adapt to the new principles I've learned...we've got a whole new week, brand new goals (realistic and challenging, hopefully), and a lot more time and energy. I want these goals completed! They're gonna be my life's focus for this next week, so...yeah, this is why I've merely a single scripture to share this week:

http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/103.30-34

Scroll until the highlighted part.

Don't forget to write, I love y'all!

-Erich

Don't be alarmed by a post from my profile on Facebook - President let us use the widget on the missionary panel. But...that's about it. I have no idea what's been going on on Facebook still. :P