A Week with The Finders

January 14 - 19, 2020

This week of work was pretty fun. The companionship that our mission refers to as "The Finders" came and worked in our area. They are special assignment missionaries that travel to each area and help teach the missionaries how to find better. Their purpose is to help the area progress and help increase the amount of investigators at sacrament meetings. The finders are Elders Wilson and Coontz. Usually both of them go to the same area and do splits with the companionship but our experience was different because Elder Coontz just came and worked with Elder Powell and I the entire week while Elder Wilson went to Bangui and worked with the other companionship in our district. Overall, our week was fun and all but we still had zero investigators that attended sacrament despite having the help from "The Finders." We did learn how to make finding every day a little more enjoyable though which is nice since that's basically all we do now.

Tuesday - 

After our district council we had our first day of work with Elder Coontz. I've met him before and I really like him actually so it was cool to actually work with him and see what type of missionary he really is. The first day I was just watching him to try and identify the difference in his approach of finding people. The only thing I was initially able to find is that he just acted very unnaturally bubbly and excited when we talked to anyone. That in and of itself made people a little more willing to talk with us. We found a couple people that said they'd go to church even though they didn't seem overly enthusiastic about it.

Wednesday - 

The second day I was able to figure out a few more things about the difference in approach of Elder Coontz. Honestly, what he did is exactly the same as what we do but how he acted while doing it seemed to help a lot. After the second day of work I realized that he just acted weird (which is something I think he learned from Elder Wilson since he said that Elder Wilson "acts crazy" when they work) and it was pretty funny. He initially just starts conversation with people by speaking poor english (if it's too grammatically correct they don't seem to get it as well). They are immediately entertained because they think we're just a bunch of white people that only speak english. Over time, we then slowly transition into Tagalog and then start saying strange things. We joke with them and tell them things like "we Americans ONLY eat burgers. We don't eat anything else." We also will say things like "Naimas ti aso!" which is Ilocano for "dog tastes delicious." People will always look at us weird initially but always believe us. We also call old guys "pogi" (handsome) and old women "napintas" (Ilocano for beautiful). You also just comment about anything you see and say anything on your mind. It keeps people engaged since such a weird experience with white people is such a different situation than their normal everyday life. Also it's fun because you have to keep thinking of weird things to say. My favorite is calling all animals dogs. Also, at this point speaking really bad english is more strenuous than just speaking Tagalog so it always keeps you doing something.

Thursday - 

It was just another similar day but this time we talked to slightly less people because we traveled to a further area called Dampig. Here we talked to lots of people in bad english including a little girl you will see in the picture below. She was very entertained by us and pronounced english better than most of the adults we meet.

Friday -

Another thing that I realized can be done to help finding is just by saying small phrases in Ilocano. You can just be speaking in Tagalog or English for a while but then all the sudden say something like "nasinpet ka" (you're nice) or "nabangsit isuna" (he/she smells bad) and people also think it's funny.

Saturday -

Our day of work was simply going back to all the people that said they'd go to church or had at least moderate interest. We also got some more interesting finding in our day as well as we talked with people about hypothetical scenarios or random "what if" type stories.

Sunday -

On Sunday we finally were able to see how effective our finding was at church. Unfortunately we had no investigators at church once again. This is my fourth sunday in the area and the ninth week that there hasn't been any investigators from our area that have attended church. Though we didn't find people to attend church like we hoped, it was at least a fun week and Elder Powell and I were able to learn how to make the experience more enjoyable. I do think that this technique over time could help get people to church though.

Also, this is just a scripture I read and liked -

Deut. 31: 6-8

6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
7 ¶ And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.
8 And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.

Pictures - 

that little girl that kinda spoke English and us taking a shortcut through the bukid