Sister Katy Tyler's New Hampshire Manchester Mission Experience: Moved to Vermont!

The view she had while emailing!

I'm back in this amazing state of Vermont! I'm so happy to be here, especially in this beautiful time of year! And I'm hoping to get my hands on some real maple syrup before I leave here, too.

It has been such an interesting week. I got to Montpelier on Tuesday and we immediately started making plans for a competition to help motivate all the missionaries in the stake to finish rescuing the 200 people we need in the state of Vermont to help our mission accomplish the goal of 1000 people rescued in the year 2015. It is a big goal, but I know we can do it. Once we broke it all up, we found each unit only had to help save a few more people, so we decided to make it a competition to help motivate everyone to work at a more efficient pace in their wards/branches.

A wonderful member in the

Montpelier Vermont Stake

got this picture of

Sister Tyler and her

new companion Sister Petersen!

So, we (the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders in the stake) prayed to know what we all needed to change to accomplish this goal, and we came up with the “Daily Three.” [see 1st of three pictures below] These include many things, but the one I'm most excited for is the “Ballard Points.” The inspiration for these came from a quote from Elder M. Russell Ballard that is famous in our mission [see 2nd picture below].

A little back story: Earlier in my mission his words also helped create the ITL (Invite To Learn) approach which was used for quite some time to track how many people we talked to and invited to learn about the gospel. I myself had noticed that it's not as effective and there is much less of an impact when missionaries (just for the sake of inviting) would immediately “Invite To Learn” by asking a person if they want to learn about Christ. Also...people tend to think we are Jehovah's Witnesses. :) Since then the mission has chosen to focus on another approach.

So as we were coming up with our plan to train our missionaries how to find people to teach, we didn't want to just start up the ITL approach again. However, as I listened to the video with the quote, I realized that we weren't doing that, so I showed Sister Petersen and explained that what we wanted to call a “Ballard Point” was different than an ITL. A “Ballard Point” encourages missionaries to have a quality conversation with someone in which they somehow share a doctrine or principle in a casual way that encourages that person to make it a part of their life [3rd picture below].

I love this approach because I get to introduce what I feel missionary work is all about. Helping people see that Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have an amazing spirit behind the doctrine that we know and love, and that it is possible for everyone to learn about it. And even more, it isn't as scary as it seems to learn about it.

I know that by introducing this system of having quality conversations, we will find those who are sincerely interested in the gospel because they've heard a gospel principle and how it has application. I know the Lord is on our side when all we want to do is share the joy we feel in proclaiming the gospel to all the world.

The church is true, and I'm so excited to introduce this plan we created for our stake to all the leaders in the mission tomorrow at MLC (Mission Leadership Council). We get to do this because President Stoker thought it was a really good plan, so he wanted us to work with the office staff and compile information for each of the stakes in the mission so as to get this plan going in each area in the mission, not just the Montpelier stake. :)

It is all such a great opportunity, and I am so excited for it!

Sincerely, Sister Tyler