Round 2 vs Duke
We went up against our Zone Leader this week. He called us halfway through to let us know how very thrawted we would be. The Crusaders had some...well, I'll be honest, our numbers were less than impressive this week. In fact, they were flat-out low. The lowest of my mission thus far, to be exact.
However...
We got a baptismal date, and that trumps the lowest possible numbers. A girl in a part member family is going to be baptized with two other girls in another part member family in June.
I am finding it SUPER tough to not be discouraged about how low our numbers were because numbers are a poor measurement of so very much...there are geniouses who can't pass a standarized test, but according to numbers they are failures. We worked so hard and literally walked the perimeter of the whole city several times tracking people down, but no one was home and people juked us time after time after time...
Some weeks are like that.
Even in Australia.
However,
this is a brand-new week and it is going to be just utterly and absolutely amazing!
Valpo still has not lost her stride.
March Madness: Round One
Valpo beat North Carolina 124-77.
And we were one new investigator shy of mission standard.
Today is P-Day and hooooooly cow have we ever earned it!
Next week is Duke. The only thing that trumps points is setting a date with someone to be baptized. Suppossedly Duke has set up to make 3 dates next week because they know its the only way they will beat us.
But what they dont know is that so do we...
As we said, "Tessék".
Interesting note...mother Nature decided to welcome the week with a blizzard. A
blizzard. In
March.
It's madness!
I am a little ashamed to admit...that until the story I am about to tell you happened, I had forgotten all about March Madness. But once I remembered I was sad to realize I would miss two of them in my service for the Lord.
But let's put this into perspective...two NCAA tournaments in exchange for the best 18 months of my life....I am definitely getting the sweeter end of this deal!
So, our friendly neighboorhood Zone Leader has cleverly devised a March Madness just for the East Zone in the Hungary Budapest Mission. For every lesson we teach, every member we have with us when we teach one, every investigator at church, every find we contact, everything we keep track of as missionaries is worth points to each companionship. He even made a schedule of another team within the Zone that we will play every week to see who will be the champion companionship in the Zone.
I am sure that every mission has this, but I haven't served in those, I only know what this mission is like and here in Hungary, we have a Mission Standard. Mission Standard is that every week, you teach 3 lessons with a member present, 12 other lessons (but every member present lesson over 3 knocks one less off of Others you need), contact 2 referrals and 15 finds, add 4 new investigators to your pool and teach 5 lessons to less active members or recent converts. Finds contacted are worth a point. Lessons with a member are worth 3, as well as 3 more for every inactive and investigator at church. All other lessons and every referral is an easy 2 points, and every category of Mission Standard you hit gets you a bonus 4 points.
If Sister Kubricky and I would have had our numbers count for points last week, we would have scored 104 points and beat the team closest to us by 64.
Yeah, we worked
hard.
So when the time came to pick our school, at first of course I wanted to be Kansas. Other companionships picked schools like Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse, but we decided to go for something a little more original. After very little time spent thinking about it, we took upon ourselves one of the most beautiful Cinderella stories we remember and went with the Valapriso Crusaders.
Valpo did some amazing things...but everyone wasn't out to beat Valpo going into the tournament, and everyone knows we have been striving for higher numbers and they want to beat us...
Whatever motivates, them that is what we say. We already had these goals before the District Leader came up with this game.
But the thing I love about my companion is that we both have the same attitude about the numbers: Mission Standard is awesome, and we finally hit it last week. But it isn't the top floor of our capacity. It is only the baseline.
So we say to those eager companionships out to beat us, just one word:
Tessék.
Tessék has many meanings in this awesome language but here it translates undeniably into one notion:
Bring it.
If wanting to beat our numbers gets others to work harder to bump up theirs, why not double mission stanard while we're at it, eh?
