Week 97 - Trio Power

Hello and good afternoon to everyone! It has been a good week

On Wednesday we had exchanges with the Elders in the Spanish ward. I stayed in Del Cerro with Elder Jezik. He's been out for about the same amount of time as I have and we had a good time. We haven't ever really served around each other. Here is a picture of us preaching to the birds in accordance with Mark 16:15. A lot of the humans haven't been very humble, so we are expanding our outreach efforts to other species.

 

None of the ducks listened to us either. However, we did meet some cool people that day. One girl asked us who we were at a park and we talked about similarities and differences between our church and Evangelicals. She expressed interest and we gave her a Book of Mormon. She wants to read it on her own for now, but she has our number so hopefully she'll reach out again or something. At the end of the day we also met these dudes at a park and we couldn't not take a picture with them.

 

In our mission we have these new types of missionaries called "Traveling Missionaries". It's one companionship and their job is to split up and go into various areas in the mission. They go into the areas to see if there's any way they can help or improve the work. On Friday night we had Elder Wayment come into our area to be with us until Monday. We came out at the same time as well and he goes home in 2ish weeks. It was good to have him here. I'll share one story from this weekend.

We were at Lake Murray park, which is the busiest place in our area, and were talking to people. We got some phone numbers and handed out some copies of the Book of Mormon. It was a productive time. We were there for maybe 45 min to an hour and on our way out Elder Wayment pointed out a guy reading on a bench. He was like "That guy is still reading. He was in the same spot when we got here". He rolled down the window and yelled out asking what he was reading and he said it was the Bible. We were leaving the park, but decided to turn around and go over to talk to him. He's a cool guy and has been recently turning his life around. He's with an organization and is going to be baptized there soon. We asked if we could also do a bible study with him sometime and he was super open to it, so we set a time to meet tomorrow. 

On the way back to the car we started talking to another guy named Ryan. He is a cool dude. We got his phone number and set up to meet the next day. He comes from a Christian background but hasn't been practicing. We started talking about prayer and how God is our loving Heavenly Father and it was the message he needed. We invited him to pray 2x a day and he said he would. He is YSA and is interested in meeting with the YSA missionaries more, but it was super good to meet him. He said he is excited to talk to us again.

and Then right after we met Ryan on the first day another guy came up to us and asked if we were Mormons. We introduced ourselves and he said he's always been curious we gave him a Book of Mormon as well and got his contact ingo.

There's still a lot that happened this week and I wouldn't be able to tell you guys all of it, but just know that it was a good week. We've found a lot of people and it was fun to be in a trio again. I haven't been in one since December of 2021. We met a lot of new people and I feel like we are on a good high right now. I'll do my best to keep it going. Here are some pictures.

 

 

I listened to the talk "Be 100% Responsible" this week. If you haven't heard it before, I recommend that you do. It is really good. I will share one story that he gives:

In 1983 a few partners and I started a new ­company that taught time-management seminars and created and sold day planners.

For corporate seminars, we sent our consultants to the client’s headquarters, where they taught at the corporate training facilities. Prior to the seminar, two employees in our distribution center would prepare and ship several boxes of training materials, such as the day planners, binders, and forms. Also included was a participant’s seminar guidebook of around a hundred pages with quotes, fill-in-the blanks, graphs, and illustrations.

The two distribution center employees would normally send the seminar shipment ten days before the seminar. At the time that the following incident occurred, we were teaching around 250 seminars each month. With so many seminar shipments, these two employees would often commit errors, such as not shipping sufficient quantities or omitting certain materials or not shipping on time. This became an irritating and often embarrassing frustration for the consultants.

When these problems occurred, the seminar division would file a complaint with me, as the distribution center was one of my responsibilities. When I spoke with these two employees about errors and system improvements, they never wanted to accept responsibility for the errors. They would blame others, saying things like, “It’s not our fault. The seminar division filled out the Seminar Supplies Request form incorrectly, and we sent the shipment exactly according to their specifications. It’s their fault. You can’t blame us!” Or they might say, “We shipped it on time, but the freight company delivered it late. You can’t blame us!” Another excuse was, “The binder subsidiary packaged the individual seminar kits with errors, and we shipped the kits as they were given to us. It’s their fault.” It seemed these two employees were never responsible for the errors, and so the errors continued.

Then something critical happened. The director of training for a large multinational corporation attended one of our seminars and was so thrilled with it that she invited us to teach a pilot seminar to its fifty or so top executives. On the day of the seminar, our consultant arrived and opened the boxes of materials and discovered that the seminar guidebooks were missing. Without the seminar guidebooks, how would the participants follow along and take notes? Their training director was panic-stricken. Our consultant did the best he could by making sure each participant was given a pad of paper on which to take notes throughout the day, and the seminar turned out reasonably well, even without the guidebooks.

Extremely embarrassed and angry, their training director called our seminar division and said, “You will never teach here again! How could you have made such an embarrassing and inexcusable error with our pilot seminar?”

An upset senior vice president of our seminar division called me and said, “This is the last straw. We are about to lose a million-dollar account because of the distribution center’s errors. We simply can’t tolerate any more errors!”

As one of the owners of the company, I couldn’t tolerate such errors either. At the same time, I did not want to see these two breadwinners fired. After pondering possible solutions, I decided to implement an incentive system to motivate these two men to be more careful. For each seminar shipped correctly, they would receive one additional dollar, or a possibility of an extra $250 each month—hopefully enough to focus their attention on quality. However, if they made one error, a one-dollar penalty wasn’t much of a loss. I therefore decided to also include two $100 bonuses for no errors. With the first error they not only lost one dollar but also the first $100 bonus. If they made a second error, they lost the second $100 bonus.

I also told these employees, “If there is an error, you will lose your bonus, regardless of where that error originates. You are 100 percent responsible for that shipment.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” they responded. “What happens if the seminar division fills out the Seminar Supplies Request form incorrectly and, not knowing, we send the shipment with ‘their’ errors?”

I said, “You will lose your bonus. You are 100 percent responsible for that shipment’s success.”

“That’s not fair! What happens if we send the shipment on time but the freight company delivers it late?”

“You will lose your bonus. You are 100 percent responsible.”

“That’s not fair! What happens if the binder division commits errors in prepackaging the individual seminar kits? You can’t blame us for their mistakes!”

“You will lose your bonus,” I once again responded. “You are 100 percent responsible for that shipment’s success. Do you understand?”

“That isn’t fair!!”

“Well, it may not seem fair, but that’s life. You will lose your bonus.”

What I did was eliminate the anti-­responsibility list as an option for them. They now understood that they could no longer blame others, make excuses, or justify errors—even when they were right and it was someone else’s fault!

What happened next was fascinating to observe. When they would receive an order from the seminar division, they would call the seminar division to review the form item by item. They took responsibility for correcting any errors committed by the seminar division. They began to read the freight company’s documents to make sure the correct delivery date was entered. They began to mark the cardboard shipping boxes “one of seven,” “two of seven,” etc., with each box’s contents written on the outside of the box. They began sending shipments three or four days ­earlier than they had in their previous routine. A few days before the seminar they would call the client company to verify receipt of the shipment and the contents. If they had somehow omitted any materials, they had three or four extra days now to send missing items by express shipment. Errors finally stopped happening, and the employees began to earn their bonuses month after month. It was a life-changing experience for them to learn firsthand the power, control, and reward of being 100 percent responsible.

What these two employees learned is that when they blamed someone else, they were surrendering control of the shipment’s success to ­others—such as the seminar division or the freight company. They learned that excuses keep you from taking control of your life. They learned that it is self-defeating to blame others, make excuses, or justify mistakes—even when you are right! The moment you do any of these self-defeating things, you lose control over the positive outcomes you are seeking in life.

I really liked that and I think it is very applicable to missionary work. So much of missionary work depends on other people's agency. Some people choose or don't choose the gospel. But, we should do everything that is in our control! For example, when it comes to getting friends to read the scriptures we can invite them at the end of a lesson, and then leave the ball in their court. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I think it's better if we read the scriptures with them, give them specific chapters, call or text to remind or check in, etc. It is about doing everything we can to help someone. They still have their agency, but the approach is much more likely to lead to better outcomes.

I've also been thinking also about this thing I heard from Elder Jezik

“You can’t tell the character of an individual by the way he does his daily work. Watch him when his work is done. See where he goes. Note the companions he seeks, and the things he does when he may do as he pleases. Then you can tell his true character.

People can be either eagles or Hogs. Let us take the eagle, for example. This bird works as hard and as efficiently as any other animal or bird in doing its daily work. It provides for itself and its young by the sweat of its brow, so to speak; but when its daily work is over and the eagle has time of its own to do just as it pleases, note how it spends its recreational moments. It flies in the highest realms of heaven, spreads its wings and bathes in the upper air, for it loves the pure, clean atmosphere and the lofty heights.

On the other hand, let us consider the hog. This animal grunts and grubs and provides for its young just as well as the eagle; but when its working hours are over and it has some recreational moments, observe where it goes and what it does. The hog will seek out the muddiest hole in the pasture and will roll and soak itself in filth, for this is the thing it loves. People can be either eagles or hogs in their leisure time."

Especially since we have the gospel in our lives, I think we all need to be Eagles. We need to do things in our spare time that edifies us and lifts others. We have the gospel because we are being trusted to do so. We need to do our best to live up to the blessings that we have been given, and be Eagles.

Anyway, I think that's all I have for this week. Love you guys and I'll see you soon. I got my flight plans not too long ago, and it is confirmed that I will be arriving at SLC on August 25th. I'll be in Utah until September 8th when I go up to Rexburg for school. Excited to see you guys soon!

- Elder Wride