Letter 03-11-2014

Sometimes a doodle during lunch is the most telling of how I'm feeling during the week... so here's one :)

From what I've heard the Arkansas weather is pretty bipolar lately... the Utah weather has been too. We had 70 degree weather a couple days ago, and we're getting scattered snowstorms today. At least it keeps things interesting, although I am ready for the day when we can tuck our suit coats away for good and wear short sleeves again.

Things are SO BUSY lately. There's seriously nothing better than having teaching appointments scheduled from 4 til 9. We've got so many people that we get to meet each day, and any moment we have that we're not teaching we're meeting the members and getting to know them.

We were sitting in church Sunday with a couple investigators, and a member taps me on the shoulder and tells us there's a couple people outside waiting for us. Turns out there's a few people from Iraq looking for jobs and the gospel. We're going to start teaching them soon, so we'll see if we can bring some Muslims into the church. I'm amazed at the diversity of people I've taught on my mission... every single culture and nationality it seems is here in Utah.

Things are going well--

Elder Chandler

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thought: leadership and management

For those of you who didn't know, my current companion Elder (Max) Bass actually was sent on his mission from the Grove Ward in the stake. So he remembers a lot of the same stake meetings and stuff, ha. Anyways, we were talking last night before bed about how sometimes it seems like in our mission we're very short on leaders and very high on managers.

I feel very strongly that my calling as a district leader is not to just manage what my district's doing, how much time they spend doing what, etc, but to "lift, inspire, encourage, motivate, and bless". I find a lot more fulfillment and see a lot more success by focusing on leadership first, management second. In some ways being a leader rather than a manager is a lot harder to do. It requires more prioritization, more listening, more people.

I guess you can't work with people like they're things. With things, fast is fast and slow is slow. With people, slow is fast and fast is slow. The most important thing I can do as a leader is help others find their "voice" in this mission, and then to help them use that voice to fulfill the Lord's work.

Sorry kind of random things and not much explanation but to me they ring true.