Digital Mission Madness!!

Dear everybody.

The digital mission is insane. It's so cool in here. I can't even explain how different it is compared to what I was thinking it'd be, but it is actually incredible! 

So here's the breakdown. Maybe this will make sense, maybe it won't. So bear with me!

My new companions (yes companions!) are Elder Tait and Elder Vecchi! Elder Tait is from Las Vegas, Nevada and Elder Vecchi from Sao Paulo, Brazil! It is easily one of the funnest companionships I have ever been in! We are constantly laughing.

Elder Tait

We 5 missionaries (us 3, and 2 sisters named Sister Zickella from Florida and Hermana De Lion from Guatemala) are working in what's called "The Fishbowl", it's a room in the Longfellow Park Chapel in Cambridge, MA. It's called The Fishbowl because it's a room with a big glass wall, and everyone can see in and what we're doing. It's basically a computer lab that we're working out of! We are called "full time digital missionaries".

Elder Vecchi

Sign reads: My Mission is changing me because it is teaching me how to receive revelation. My Mission is successful because we are establishing ZION!

There are 16 areas throughout the mission called "Extender digital missionaries", and they continue their normal proselyting, but they have 3 hours every morning to do the same thing we're doing here at Fishbowl HQ. So we do our work, and ensure the extenders know what's going on.

So here's a bit of an outline of what we're doing:

We do online proselyting. That entails, using a specially coded search engine called "stand as witnesses" that helps us find blogs where people are talking about gospel related topics. We leave a comment on their blog, hoping to start a gospel related conversation. But here's the problem, people don't really check their blogs, so recently, we started using a website calledhttp://interpals.net - It's basically a internet penpal. You can message with people from all over the world. It's an awesome website, people just want to talk! Occasionally, you get some creeps, but you just block them and keep doing your stuff. So you strike up a conversation, and turn it to a gospel related conversation, then invite people to learn more!

We use our Facebook, so once they are interested in learning more, to show them we are real people, and then from there, we'll take the conversation to facebook and hopefully invite them to Skype. 

It works SO WELL. I have skypes set up for tomorrow with people in Haiti (I found a Haitian! =D), Australia, The Gambia, Turkey, Italy, and Ukraine. We have had so many skypes this week with people from all over. It's is my favorite thing ever, because everyone doesn't feel threatened by an invitation to skype and it's going so so well. I love the digital mission!

So once we skype, we teach the message and ask them if they'd like to hear more. We keep teaching them, and we call the mission president for the mission the person lives in, and refer the people to the missionaries there. We continue to coordinate back and forth, and then work towards baptism, just as if we were in a physical area! 

We aren't assigned to a ward. So we can attend church where ever we'd like!

Great view!!

We have some awesome plans for this week. We don't usually have a car, but we will be borrowing one for the week, going around the mission, giving trainings to all of the extender areas. It's going to be sweet, 15 areas in 4 days, just bunking at other elders apartments! 

Information for mom:

I love being here, my companions are great!! The apartment isn't the nicest, but we are hardly there. We ride the T again, just like when I was in Boston. Cambridge is incredibly nice and we are about a 5 minute walk from the Harvard campus. I actually run into a lot of Haitians up here too, kinda sweet. I am in the same zone as Elder Welker and Elder Hodapp. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

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Ⓔⓛⓓⓔⓡ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛⓘⓝⓖ

PS New Address!!
Elder AJ Halling
1 Oak Terrace #106
Somerville, MA 02143