Every Member a Missionary

I have to admit I feel a little hypocritical writing this post. I'm not the best member missionary, or really a missionary at all. I could give you a hundred reasons for why I am not but I won't waste your time or mine with excuses. The missionaries in our area spoke in our Sacrament meeting today and one of the elders gave us some very interesting statistics (which a have no source to verify, but no reason to doubt). He said that only about 1 in 1000 converts who came to the gospel by way of proseletysing remained active in the gospel but about 1 in every 3 converts who were referred and welcomed by a member missionary (a friend, neighbor, family member, co-worker, etc.) remained active. He then shared a personal experience to illustrate the point. He and his companion had a referral in North Ogden and when they approached her, she became extremely angry at them, yelling and telling them never to come to her home again. So they approached her neighbor who was a member. The neighbor said she would invite the friend into her home to recieve the discussions from the missionaries, which she did. The friend accepted the invitation, recieved the discussions, and was baptised three weeks later. I don't get out much and probably 99.9% of the people I see on a regular basis are already LDS but I'm sure there are other things I could be doing to share the gospel.

On a side note, they announced in my ward this afternoon that they will be creating a new ward in our stake and as a result, every ward in the stake will be having their boundries realigned. I'm terrified. I hate change and I LOVE my ward. They will announce the change next week. It will be a long week for me. :(