Tuesday, Dec. 9

I hope I have the gumption to follow through on even the weakest of impressions of who to invite in church.  I really like going after those that are so obscure -- very little risk of hurting the relationship if there's no relationship to begin with!

I was home all of Mon. and half of Tues. since Kathryn is sick.  When I was home, the lawn guy (Mike) called.  DEFINITELY not who I would think to invite to church.  But when I hung up -- and there was chaos on all fronts  (it was the suicide 'after school hour' and we had one more child than our 4 in the house) -- I thought:  "Hey what about Mike?"

It's kind of the chicken way, but I'm going to send him a family Christmas card with the invoice that I have to send this week, and a short note saying "If you need a place for church on Dec. 21, we'd love to have you come".  Longest of long shots he'd come - but again, it's about the invite.

I've also thought of two other people I can make an ask to....the first is a woman who took the discussions in our home about 3 years ago, and came to church, but it didn't go beyond that.  But we're still friends with her kids....everyone needs a place for Christmas.

The other is a tad scary.  I had a dream last night about inviting one of my clients from Hasbro.  He and I are good friends, but he's 2nd in command for PR....AND he's a Mets fan, so he's not exactly one of us.  He's Jewish, but he says his family calls him an honorary Mormon.   I sent him Mormons for Dummies a long time ago, and we talk church (esp. Mitt Romney) all the time.

How bold would it be to invite a client to church, esp. when he lives in Rhode Island.  But does a dream count as a prompting?

Monday, Dec. 8, 2008

I admit that even if she comes, this doesn't count for me as an invite, as all I did was encourage someone else to invite someone to attend the Christmas sacrament program.  But I did receive an inspiration on this and acted on it, so it counts for something.

We talked in Ward Council about Donald who was our landlady's son.  Well, she (Catherine) came to church a time or two, including Donald's baptism.  

We haven't seen her in 2 or 3 years, but she is still Dustin Jones' landlady as they live in that same house now.  I decided to play the "Bishop card" and have asked Dustin to invite Catherine to come to church on Dec. 21 by saying "You'll never believe....you remember that Mark Newman guy?  He's now the bishop of our congregation!  Come see him flop while conducting the Christmas service!"

He's also going to play the "since Mark is sitting on the stand, his wife needs someone to help wrangle the kids during the meeting....could you come and help out?"

I know....kind of lame to use those "excuses", but it's a start.  Dustin agreed to extend the invite, especially since she still talks about the missionaries who used to come around.

But I need to find a person to actually invite...I'm not off the hook.

Mark

Intro and Overview of This Blog

I'm going to try something a bit novel.  Elder Ballard in a commencement address at BYU-Hawaii has encouraged us to use the new communications tools made available to us to further the work of the Lord.  As blogs seem to be all the range in the ward -- and because it provides a reporting-type mechanism for me to ensure I keep missionary work top-of-mind -- I've decided to create a "by invite only" blog that can be read by members of the ward council, if desired (it's private so as to not embarrass any one who I'm approaching to share the gospel).

I expect most postings will be short sentences that may say nothing more than "I was thinking I should talk to this person", or "was going to invite this person, but got a bit chicken".  By recording such action (or inaction), I hope it will me keep me accountable to me.

Bishop Newman