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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Life of a Sister Missionary part 9: Well companion, what do you want to do tomorrow?


Before Planning
After a long day of work, we top it off with a little planning.  Each night for 30 minutes we plan for our next day.  We fill each moment of the day with: what we will do, teach, where to go, who to visit, who to call, and what to study.  Almost everything in the day is planned out for every hour in the day, plus backup plans.  All of these plans are written in our handy dandy missionary daily planner.  Of course, we begin the planning, with a prayer.  We pray for guidance and direction as to what to plan.  After we fill each hour, we outline the lessons we will teach.  We make a list of things to do.  We plan out what we will study the following day in our personal and companion studies.  And we set goals for the day.  During all of this, we strive to be guided by the Spirit.  We are representatives of Jesus Christ; we are sent to do what He would do.  At the end, we pray (YAY). 
After
Back home, I did nothing like this.  I sorta had a list of "to do" items in my head, but I definitely didn't know what I was going to do each moment in the day.  My time is so much more effective now.  It isn't wasted on things that I don't want to do or that have no use.  Planning allows for my time to be spent doing things I want to do rather than things that I just "end up" doing because of poor planning, like watching a TV show I don't like, or sitting and doing nothing.  I would much rather be swimming, out with friends, or reading a book by Orson Scott Card.  Proper planning = an awesome day.

3 comments:

Elder Chris Spendlove said...

hmm... returned missionary nightly planning! what a novel idea! you should write a handbook akin to Preach MY Gospel for RMs called "Anxiously Engaged"! You'd sell millions :)

Brian said...

Planning is something I too have learned on my mission. I am not sure how in-deph my planning will be after my mission, but I know I dont want to "end up" doing things just to fill my time! There is so much to learn and experience!

Unknown said...

So true! Planning really makes a difference in the day! I just wrote a blog post about this too because I meet a lot of people who say, "Well I'd love to help but I don't have time". The real answer is "I'm not willing to make the time" because you can get a whole lot more done in 24 hours than seems possible!

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