Golden Ratio

#TodaLaFuerza wrist bands

In his weekly letter, president Catala changed the mission goal numbers...big time:
         21 lessons with member present
          13 other lessons
          8 families in focus group
          5 new investigators
          3 investigators attend church
          2 investigators with set baptismal date
          1 baptism

That is a lot of work. 34 lessons in one week. Good news is - my comp and I have done it here before, so we know it's reachable.  But as I looked at pres' goal, I couldn't help but wonder about the number of numbers.  This is one long number sequence.  The previous goal was much shorter.  Hmm, curious.  As I thought about it - it finally hit me.  I know these numbers!  The light bulb of nerd nearly exploded in my brain.  This is a Fibonacci Number Sequence!

Fibonacci Sequence
Most people have heard of the Fibonacci Sequence from math class.  It's a series of numbers where one number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

The person we know as Fibonacci was actually Italian mathematician Leonardo da Pisa.  These numbers appear in his book Liber Abaci, published in 1202, which taught the western world the methods of arithmetic we use today.

photo:  nifty homestead

What's awesome about the Fibonacci Sequence is that these numbers appear in nature:
The number of petals in a flower is a Fibonacci number.
The number of spirals on a pineapple is a Fibonacci number.
And so on-
from galaxies
to hurricanes,
to sea shells,
and sunflowers,
and now our mission goals.
Our mission president is so cool.

Fun Fact:  Dan Brown used the Fibonacci Sequence in his book The Da Vinci Code.


Gold Star for Christofer!
We had a fun activity at the church this week where we were divided into teams and had to find answers to questions of the soul in the Book of Mormon.  My team had the questions:

"Will I be with my loved ones after this life?"

"How can I know that God has a plan for me?"

I found the scriptures in Alma 40 and Moroni 10, but Christofer, my recent convert, explained it in front of everyone.  He is AWESOME.  That just makes you feel good.


Something's A-Foot in the Plaza Jerusalem
By Saturday, we reached our goal: 23 lessons with members, 12 others, and 8 new investigators. Awesome!  It got to the point that the teaching opportunities came to us even when we weren't looking for them.  For instance...

Plaza Jerusalem

There's this guy named Leonardo, who came up to us a few weeks back and said that he had listened to missionaries 15 years ago. That was that.  Well, Elder Sharp and I were studying in a small park when Leonardo pops up and wants to know what we were reading.  (You don't need to tell us twice about a good teaching opportunity!)  And he says, "I want to go to church."  And he did. Showed up to church all by himself.  By Sunday evening, Leonardo set a baptism date of November 4th. Gold!

The park we were in, by the way, is called Plaza Jerusalem.  While we were in this park, a strange gypsy ginger lady came up to us asking for a picture of Jesus. So we handed her one, and she left.  In the middle of our lesson with Leonardo, she returned and gave us each a blue plastic stone.  Something's a-foot in the Plaza Jerusalem.

Goals are lofty.  I am going to try to get my entire District up to the Fibonacci Sequence before I go.  Lots of work for the last 6 weeks and I wouldn't have it any other way.

#TodaLaFuerza-GoldenRatio!

Love You All,
Elder Connor Nef