Listen

Hello to everyone.  Well I would first like to tell everyone that we had a baptism last week. It was quite nice. The daughter of the woman we baptized a few weeks ago also decided that she wanted to get baptized so we baptized her.  She was already going to church and doing Personal Progress (a church program for young women)  so I guess it was just the logical next step.

Continuing with my series of what I have learned on my mission, I have learned that communication is important.  It is actually really important to talk to people.  You can be the smartest person in the world but if you don't know how to talk to people, you will never be anything.  The phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword" has always puzzled me a bit but now I think I understand what it means.  Influential people are not the people who are able to make people do what they want, they are the people who are able to make people want to do what they want.  And this requires communication.  The most important thing in communication is listening. There is the phrase that you never really understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.  What many people don't understand is that does not mean that you can just put your shoes where theirs are and start walking.  The question is never what would I do in that situation?  That doesn't really matter, you are not in it.  The question is:  What will they do in this situation? And to know that. you have to listen.  Many people are never able to motivate people because they think that those people are motivated by what motivates them, but that is really dumb thinking.  That is why rich people have trouble talking to poor people. Ninety nine percent of the time, rich people are rich because they wanted to be.  They chose wealth and influence over every other thing in their lives.  Poor people are poor because often they want to be as well.  They chose other things in their lives instead of money.  It doesn't really work that well to motivate a poor person with the ability to become rich, if he doesn't want that.  You have to listen to people to work with them.

Well this week's letter got a little off track but these are important things that I learned.  I love you all!

Elder Russell