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Missionary Support Raising Training: Stories to Inspire - Creativity(Coach Curt shares some real memories from his life, and his favorite sermon illustrations. He hopes you are more than entertained, but inspired and built up in your faith as you pursue your support raising.)
On this particular Sunday morning a few of the people wanted to get baptized by immersion in water. The only place available was a creek. After some investigation I found a spot deep enough to work. We were having a good morning as the baptisms were going well. The next person to step into the creek was named Jonathan. Jonathan was a gentle giant. He was mildly retarded, although I was not familiar with his “official” condition in medical terms. His heart had been really touched through the weekend and he wanted to be baptized. As we went through the preliminaries, I explained to him that he should hold his nose as I leaned him over backwards to put him under the water for a second. As I attempted to lean him back, he didn’t budge, he was like a 300 pound rock. It was then he told me that he was scared of water, and had never had his head under water before. 
After some conversation and encouragement, we thought we would try again, and in the back of my mind I was planning on using a little leverage to get him to go under. I knew he really wanted it, so I figured it was a good idea. In the second attempt, I pushed hard, but again he didn’t move. He was frozen with fear. What to do?I had baptized hundreds of people before and never run into this before. In the denomination I was serving at the time, we had always baptized a certain way by gently having a person lean backwards into the water while they held their nose shut and the baptizer would take one hand to support the back of the candidate, and the other the arm to help them lean back into the water, and then back out of the water. So there we all were. I asked everyone to pray, and as they did an idea popped into my head. We finished praying and as Jonathan and I were still in the creek water, I turned to him and faced him - face to face. I instructed Jonathan that we were going to bounce up and down in the water for a minute. We held hands, standing face to face, and bounced up and down in the water going from about our mid chest level and back up. We kept doing this until we got neck deep. I then instructed Jonathan that at the count of three we would go all the way under, face to face, and then come back up again. When we came up out of the water together we could only hear the cheers and applause from our friends. Jonathan was ginning ear to ear as the water ran down over his face.
Insight to apply to your Missionary support raising training and activities:The goal for Jonathan was to get baptized. We were both trapped. He was trapped in fear. I was trapped in a fixed mindset on how something can or should be done. Many times in our support raising we will run into issues that will reveal our fears. At those moments we shouldn’t panic. Jonathan could have quit, or just gotten out of the creek. He was determined to find a way through. He faced his fear and came out victorious. At other times we will need to get something accomplished and our regular way of doing things simply are not cutting it. We will need to ask for help. We will need to think out of the box and try new things. One Possible application:I get emails from my missionary friends that say “Hi Everyone:” or “Hi Friends:” If these emails are not getting the results you want, then it is time to learn to get creative and discover how to send personalized emails. It isn’t hard, but does take some time to learn. To increase your support raising you will need to face some fears and think and act out of your comfort zone.Missionary Stories - Support Raising Training Stories |