Goal Setter, Hitter and Exceeder

This week was a pretty good week. I have begun the process of being a master goal setter and a goal hitter, and also a goal exceeder.

It really does help me be a lot more focused to have goals to work towards. It takes a lot of pondering to figure out a method to make goals and have them organized and ready for review and fulfillment with them almost always at the head of thought. That was the hardest part for me to figure out so that I could actually set the goals and follow up on them.

Out of all of the places I will want to visit when I come back to South Carolina, my favorite will be in the middle of nowhere, in Orangeburg. The last entertainment anything was just closed. They just had the only movie theatre with 4 screens in Orangeburg County close because nobody wants to go the the movies. The members are awesome and I intend to spend time with some of them offering my service where I can help. There are a couple retired members that have experience with a lot of traits and they always keep themselves busy doing some other project. Bro Paul Ross and Bro Larry Odum especially. I look forward to coming back eventually.

There are many investigators that we are working with that are occasionally coming to church. Now they just need to figure out where they are at in life and act on the invitation to be baptized. They have all felt the spirit and they all know that this message is true, they are just scared of the required change of themselves. Isn't that all of our issues? We're just afraid of change? I think it's a big part of what prevents us from obeying all the commandments asked of us. There are a lot of borderline investigators that are inching their way towards the gate of baptism that leads to the path with the iron rod to the tree of life.

Our ward is awesome. They just finished the draft of the ward mission plan and the method they intend to implement it with the whole ward, and I think it's inspired. I'm expecting lots of miracles this year.

I have found that studying with a purpose, or with a question in mind makes a more meaningful study. Thus I am going to ask a question of you both that you are both obligated to help me with that will require the manageable task of a minimum of 16 thousand words each (or 24 thousand together will do). Here's what you can enlighten me on:

We often have investigators that tell us all of their life problems or experiences just to have somebody listen to them over the course of 30 minute intervals without us getting a word in. Many of those stories are very interesting, they usually aren't even boring, but it's not the best use of time. We also have investigators that like to go on a lot of tangents, people that ask questions that sort of are aligned with the lesson but not really and they won't accept a simple answer that we can pass by them to get back to the lesson or an answer like "if you get a testimony of the Book of Mormon, you'll get a testimony of that too, because it will fall into place." With some of the investigators, if we tell them we will answer their question later down the line, they still expect us to answer it by the end of the lesson which doesn't always happen because their question doesn't even apply to them or their salvation at the moment, and it would take an entire lesson to answer the one question. What do you suggest?

(Note: I have ideas on how to handle those kind of situations, and I've tried some of them and some work better than others, but I don't want to mention any of them to put words in your mouth to prevent you from getting some other answers that may help with teaching.)