Chapter 26: A Very Merry Christmas

Elders Anderson and Gomez (the Facebook Hype Specialists in their district) made this awesome video last week. (the sound is a bit hard to hear for the first little bit, but seriously, make the time to watch this 1 minute clip, you will laugh so hard!!!)

Facebook Hype Specialists in Grand Junction West

12/21/2020

Today was the day that Saturn and Jupiter aligned to form the star of Bethlehem! It was really cool to see, we had a member who brought his telescope to the church, so we got to see it without even having to leave the comfort of the building we locked ourselves in for Pday. Other than that, I’m pretty sure that the only notable thing that happened today was that I bought three cartons of eggnog today. Our members took really good care of us last week, we were lucky that we didn’t have to spend any money on groceries, so that meant that we got to use our budgets today for mischief, as in, three cartons of eggnog. I also spent $17 at Hobby Lobby for a small package of pens. My wallet cries every time I enter that store.

12/22/2020

Today was really busy, we’re just now finishing up at 10:20 and I’m going to bed in five minutes, so this is going to be short. We spent all day filming and it turned out amazing, I need to find a way to share the video with all of you.

Super Summary:

I’ve been so busy for the last few days that I neglected to write in my journal for like, three nights straight, so I decided I would do a summary recount of the events that have transpired all in one rather than trying to separate them out in my head. Our Facebook hype videos turned out amazing. In two days we produced two videos, made more impressive because we had to redo them after we got more COVID restrictions. The videos turned out great, and the effects were amazing. We have a shared calendar that we all fill out together so that we can coordinate our Facebook efforts, and everyone hates filling it out. That calendar was the subject we talked about in our “Christmas Special” and after our video people actually started filling it out, we played an incredible role in unifying our Zone! Because of all the excitement/stress from those videos, I didn’t think about Christmas at all until it came. Christmas day (yesterday) was a lot of fun. I spent a while making a Christmas gift for my old district with Collins, and then we spent the rest of our day driving around to various devotionals and Zone activities. We had a District service project, and it was really fun, but very cold. We frosted cookies in the freezing temperatures. They didn’t end up looking great… frosting doesn’t spread very well when it’s frozen, but it was good enough. I got to call my family yesterday, and it ended up being a great Christmas.

12/26/2020

Today was great! We went to Chick Fil A again, this time courtesy of Elder Gomez’s family, and they messed up my order again. If we ever go again I’m seriously going to ask them to let me take my own order. The most significant thing that happened today was my sister’s baptism. Katie turned eight this last week, and entered the waters of baptism today. The Spirit was so strong in that meeting, and it was especially cool because I didn’t think I was going to get to see it. We really have been blessed with some incredible technology, the ability we have to communicate across the world is an amazing blessing.

12/27/2020

Today was a great Sunday! We had our Christmas services today since the last time we met was three weeks before Christmas. People voted that it made more sense to do it today than three weeks ago, and I was more than happy to keep Christmas going for another week. The special musical numbers that we heard were AMAZING! We also had the best Christmas gift from the ward: My companion and I got to bless the Sacrament today. We had a few lessons, and a great Sunday devotional, it made for a very good end to such a wonderful week.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a verse from Isaiah:

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

This verse is so powerful year-round, but especially at Christmas time because of these powerful natures about the babe that was born in a manger 2000 years ago. Christ was born, he took upon us our weaknesses, pains, and sins. Because he overcame all He is Wonderful, our Counsellor, our might God, the Father of salvation and exaltation, our Prince who brings us peace, and I love Him.

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Chapter 25: Losing Elder Collins (The Second Time)

12/14/2020

Today was probably the busiest Pday I’ve ever had. Somehow we had five lessons with members tonight, and still managed to eat dinner, which we should not have been able to do. Our planner highlights lessons that we have in yellow, and our night was pure yellow. I also made a Christmas tree ornament rather hastily tonight. We need them for our Zone Conference, and I put off the making of mine until 9:30 tonight. It turned out pretty well, though.

12/15/2020

Today was our Zone Conference! It went really well, we had a long time to talk as a District, which was unusual, and heard a couple of trainings. I think people have gotten sick of hearing my voice, since I wasn’t asked to do anything for this Conference. That’s okay, though, I really liked the thoughts that were shared, and I got to talk to my district which was a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to Chick-Fil-A, which was the best lunch ever, except that the guy who took my order somehow got everything wrong. I wish my Sister had been taking my order, she would have done it right, or that the worker had just given me the IPad and let me fill out my order myself. I could have done it a lot faster, and a lot better… We also got to wrap presents for a family that didn’t have much today. It was a really fun service, and I got taught how to actually wrap the presents, which means that I’m prepared for Christmas as a dad now. Presents look deceptively easy to wrap, but are actually quite difficult. Hopefully the early ones that I wrapped don’t end up ruining Christmas for this family.

12/16/2020

Today we spent our time running around to a couple different service projects. At one of the projects they asked if we could also come back to help build their massive model train track (this thing took up the bigger half of a good sized room), which would have been my little brother Matthew’s dream come true. Unfortunately we can’t go inside for service right now, but hopefully that ban gets lifted soon because that would be an incredible service to get to be a part of. The other notable event today happened tonight; It was the birthday of one of our members, in fact, the member that made me a cake and a feast for my birthday. We went over to wish her a happy birthday, we didn’t go with any gifts or any treats, just our testimonies of God’s love for her. The Spirit was so strong, it was incredible. She and I both started crying when I shared my testimony of how God sees her. It was really cool to see that was the most worthwhile gift we could have given her, nothing else could have compared to the joy that came from that.

12/17/2020

Well, today was kind of disappointing. For the last couple of days I’ve been learning and growing a lot, especially with Collins. Our Zone instituted a daily accountability program where our District Leader would give us a call to check up on a daily goal that we had set for ourselves, and see how it was going. Well, Collins and I always made really big goals, we were taking an extended amount of time to talk about how our goals were helping us. Some of our District members would say stuff like, “my goal for today was to drink more water”, an important goal for sure, but not one that really helps you progress. Collins and I were doing some amazing work together, as every night McKasson, Collins, Gomez and I would call each other and help each other to continue to grow. This has been one of the best weeks ever, but tonight our districts got rearranged. There was only one change, Monument 2 (us) was removed from the Redlands District (Collins’ District) and put into the Fruita District (Not Collins’ District). I’m pretty sad about that change. We got to give a widow a blessing today, though, which was a really cool experience.

12/18/2020

Today was a really emotional day. We spent a long time talking to the widow we talked to yesterday, and saw several miracles happen today. Her sister passed through the veil, and yet, the widow was completely fine with it, she was full of peace, instead of the emotional stress that normally comes from the passing of a loved one. That widow really does have an incredible testimony. We also got to participate in our nightly devotional tonight. We were asked to talk about a symbol of Christmas and spoke about the evergreen tree. We referenced the part of Hosea 14:8 that talks about the ‘fruit of the fir tree’ and talked about how the fruit of our evergreen tree is the everlasting life and joy that Christ offers to all of us.

12/19/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We had some productive roleplays with some of our District members today. We got to use them as an opportunity to share our expertise with those around us. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and people were very surprised when I whipped out Moroni 8:25-26 and the five big points of the Gospel were recorded there. I felt bad because they requested for me to share my notes with them, but my notes are in Portuguese, so I’m the only one who can read them. I’ve considered trying to translate them and made a couple of attempts at it, but it is a very slow and unfulfilling work, so I tend to lose motivation quickly. Guess that means I should study patience tomorrow. If I study patience though, I’ll start adding to that section, and that seems counterproductive if my goal is to translate my notes as fast as possible.

12/20/2020

Today was a good day. We had a service project today where we went around taping up fliers on people’s doors for Christmas carolers; The carolers are going to walk in the middle of the street, so the people who want to hear them just have to poke their heads out their door. I’m not sure how Christmas caroling became a thing, of all the things that you could do to show Christmas Spirit, knocking on someone’s door and breaking into song seems like one of the most uncomfortable things you could do. It is quite beautiful, though, so I’m glad that it’s a tradition. We had a lot of member lessons today. The coolest thing though was when Braeden Pope called up Elder Gomez and I and told us we had an assignment from our Zone Leaders. Today we were asked to be the Facebook “Hype” Specialists, which means we get to help our missionaries to be engaged. Our first episode debuts this Friday, a Christmas special, and we have some pretty great ideas for it.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a scripture from Ether 2:13: And now I proceed with my record; for behold, it came to pass that the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands. And as they came to the sea they pitched their tents; and they called the name of the place Moriancumer; and they dwelt in tents, and dwelt in tents upon the seashore for the space of four years.

The chapter of Ether 2 describes how the Brother of Jared went forth being guided by the Lord in His glory, then, in this verse we see something really important: The Brother of Jared and his family stayed by the seashore for four years; They stopped progressing because they stopped praying. When we cease to humble ourselves before the Lord we lose our ability to progress spiritually. Every day we have to choose to turn to Him, but we can have the sure knowledge that as we do, every day, we will see the Lord leading us.

Chapter 24: Brazil Week

I'm a bit reluctant to use this picture that Elder Anderson sent. A family of investigators gave he and his companion some green tea without realizing that members of our church don't drink it. I guess these Elders think its pretty funny and decided to make a Christmas card out of it!

Elder Anderson's organic basil plant had some flies on it, so after watering the plant and watching the flies scatter, he created this greenhouse to allow his plants to receive light, but to block the flies from returning to live on his plants.

The COVID-friendly way to prepare Terere, a Brazilian drink.

Terere district party.

During our Pday call today, Lily asked her big brother if he could do anything cool with his tongue like she could, so we all tried to see what we could do...

12/8/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We had a few lessons today with members, and even had one with our friends, the Wonderful family. Today was a very important day, because I made Brazilian Rice and Beans from scratch today, and it turned out really well! I was very proud of it, I took a bunch of ingredients that weren’t edible individually, and they came together in a beautiful way for the meal I survived off of for eight months. I was asked by my mission today to do a technical write-up of one of the applications we use: MaaS 360. It’s an app that’s used to control what content we as missionaries have access to on our phones, and I was very proud of the writeup I did. I felt a lot like my dad, for writing such a quality piece about the functions, abilities, and limitations of this program. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying the flaws in these programs, and so our mission seemed very interested in my knowledge of MaaS 360 and insights as to how to improve it. The lessons that we had today were a lot of fun. We ended up playing a game that we usually only play with kids to get interaction from them with a family that were all high school and college aged kids, plus the mom and dad. No one was ecstatic about the game except for the dad; And he was ecstatic about it. We had a lot of fun in those lessons and loved seeing people take such an interest in what we were teaching.

12/9/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We spent a long time driving around, and it was all for the Wonderful family. We were pretty disappointed tonight, because we found out where that family lived, they live over on the opposite side of the city, which means that they’re outside of our area. Still, it’s God who gives and God who takes away, we were able to do the job that He wanted us to do. In the course of a week we were able to go from not knowing this family at all, to having their kids on date, and now we’ll get them passed off to the missionaries who are right for them. We drove around today to pick up some Books of Mormon to give away to them, we needed six so that we could give each member of the family a personal note in theirs. The Wonderful family outdid us, though. They gave both of us Christmas gifts, which were incredible. They also gave us a lot of food, and so we’re stocked for a good amount of time now. They also gave us green tea. We’re going to have to have our pass off lesson to the new Elders be about the Word of Wisdom…

12/10/2020

Today was one of the best days ever. Elder McKasson from my last mission and I are in the same Zone, and we found out that due to one of our district members leaving today that we would be doing a combined district council together. The immediate response was to have a Terere party. Now, we used to have this drink called Terere at a good number of our district counsels back in Manaus. Some of my favorite counsels were done with Terere in hand. Terere is a big culture thing, it’s a flavored cut up leaf that you pour water or a juice through, and then drink just the water or the juice. This is really popular in Manaus, because the erva (cut up leaves) can be reused so many times, is so flavorful, and ice water is relatively easy to make, which makes for a sustainable refreshing drink that everyone enjoys, especially when you live in constant 90 degree weather. When McKasson told me he was going to be bringing that erva, I knew that this was our once in a lifetime opportunity to give the CDSM (Colorado Denver South Mission) a taste of the jungle, so we engineered up a way for everyone to share a drink in a COVID safe way. Terere usually involves sharing a straw and a cup, which is like, the least COVID safe thing ever, but this morning I whipped up a special cup that would let the gallon of juice I made filter down into a disposable cup below, we made it COVID safe, and gave everyone their own cup and their own straws. It was pretty awesome, and everyone really enjoyed it. They also probably liked it because I made up some of the juice that the patriarch taught us how to make that greatly enhances Terere. These districts have now been taught the law of the jungle.

12/11/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We had a couple of lessons and a lot of stuff going on. We got to walk Sister Thompson’s dogs today which was a lot of fun, and the Sisters apparently walked her dogs later as well, so those dogs got a lot of exercise today. Our conversations with Sister Thompson are always fun because she is such an avid student of the Gospel, she’s really interested in everything that we have to say. She told me today that I was her hero, and that melted my heart. Later tonight we got to have a fun joint dinner with most of our district. We had to distance for COVID, but all of us, except for Collins, were there getting our dinner at the exact same time, so it worked out really well. We then did a roleplay with one of our Sisters who wanted to practice lessons with us. She didn’t feel very comfortable teaching the lessons, and so we listened to her speak for a while, and then Gomez and I did a joint roleplay as an example. The roleplays were very beneficial for the Sister, and it was cool to get to help out someone with something that was such a strength for Gomez and I. We then had the greatest District service project. We all were cutting out these pictures to make little Christmas picture books, and they ended up looking pretty great. There’s still a lot to do, so we’ll end up doing some more after I’m done writing and during our mission wide training tomorrow.

12/12/2020

Today was a great day. We had a big recording session this morning where we noted all the progress that we had made in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I procrastinate too much, so we took time to catch up today. We also had a training this morning on being better teachers which was cool, because we did a lot of teaching roleplays today. I roleplayed the message of the Restoration with my companion, and he acted as a devout Catholic. Sometimes I had to remind him what he believed in because he wasn’t perfect at remembering everything, but he did a really good job and we had a lot of fun. We also roleplayed a lesson with our Sisters tonight which was very beneficial for all of us. We had a couple of lessons today with the older members of our ward, and took the gift of Terere to a widow. She was very excited to try the “jungle juice” but later decided that it was an acquired taste. We then had a really awesome treat, my family had dinner delivered to us tonight from Cafe Rio, and that was so nice, Elder Gomez said this was the second fullest he’d ever been in the mission (the first time was when he ate three dinners). Today was a very busy and effective day.

12/13/2020

Today was my birthday! I didn’t think much could top my last birthday, it was spent in Brazil and characterized by the number of investigating families that sacrificed to celebrate the day with me. However, today was an equally amazing, uniquely touching day. We had an older couple break down in tears, thanking us for our service and what we do for the ward. They were the one family who knew that it was my birthday (they asked if they could bring us food last night, and I told them my parents had taken care of us because of the special occasion), and they offered us an incredible feast and cake, stating that they had wished they could have given that very same thing to their son and daughters on their birthdays when they were serving missions, and so it kind of felt like repaying Heavenly Father for the way He had watched out for their missionaries. Today was also a great day because I got to talk to President Chipman for an extended period of time. Later tonight, at the one, tiny moment when we were getting dinner from the fridge and the Elders we share a car with, and the Sisters we share a ward with were also grabbing their dinners from the fridge, Elder Collins gave us a call. I picked up and he immediately started singing “happy birthday”. My knee-jerk response was to hang up (I know, I’m a terrible person, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it), but unfortunately they had all heard, and so we spent the next ten minutes celebrating. A few minutes into the unplanned festivities, the Monument ward Primary President walked into the room because she had heard the joint singing of “happy birthday”. She promptly started it up again, and then informed the rest of the ward that it was my birthday, and that we all needed to celebrate it. That lady has connections. We had people signing up for lessons left and right, and somehow had treats dropped off to us within the hour. All in all, it was a very fun night.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share an answer to one of the questions the family we were teaching asked. This family wanted to know how they could know how they could tell whether something was good or bad, especially when there are so many things in this world that appear good, though they're really quite bad, and so many things that are made out to be bad, but in reality are actually quite good. In response to their questions, we shared how through the light of Christ we can have a perfect knowledge of what is good and what is evil, and the light of Christ works by teaching us this one truth:

Moroni 7:13 But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God.

That God who we can have perfect faith in teaches that anything which teaches to love Him is inspired of Him, and if we're willing to hearken to that voice, so too will we be able to abound in good works, never doubting when we hear the voice of the Lord who that voice belongs to.

Chapter 23: The Return to Teaching

An impromptu lesson with Ian Roach, Elder Carter Eden, and Elder Anderson

Elder Anderson's district

11/30/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We had a great Pday, and more success in 30 minutes today than we do working all day most days. We had a lesson with a family that was seriously prepared for us. We just got to know them a little at first, which mostly involved me messing up their names repeatedly (there were six people in the family, and three different last names, I was struggling a bit), and then we taught them a simple lesson about how God is our loving Heavenly Father the lesson went really well, and we were so excited to get to teach the family. We were amazed, we read a verse with them from Isaiah about how God knows us by name, and they all understood it pretty well! That’s not an easy place to start, if I read anything besides psalms to families in Brazil they didn’t really get it, so it was amazing to see how smart these kids were, and how they were understanding concepts that adults couldn’t. We were so excited after that lesson, on top of it being an awesome, inspired lesson, we picked up five people because of it, and so we immediately called around the District to spread the good news. Everyone was so excited and celebrated with us, it felt so good that we were all seeing such incredible growth in these last few days, this was an actual miracle. 

12/1/2020

Today was a great day. We had service projects all day which were a lot of fun. We got to go up on a stepladder to clean out the gutters for one elderly family, which was a lot of fun. I was the one who went up on the stepladder since Gomez was afraid of heights, even though “heights” as a missionary can’t exceed ten feet, so we weren’t in a dangerous position at all. I had a lot of fun cleaning out the gutters because I would throw all of the stuff down on Gomez who was below me (just kidding, occasionally I’d try to hit him with a leaf, but leaves are pretty hard to throw at people). After that service project we went to go help out another member in their front yard by raking all of the dead leaves out of their yard. The Elders we share a car with also had an appointment at the same time, so they dropped us off a little early and we just hiked through no-man’s land for the fifteen minutes before the family got home. Well, apparently the land did belong to someone, we were wandering around right next to the road and a long distance away from houses, but when we eventually turned around from the roadside we’d been hiking along and went back for our service project a person started shouting from their backyard, called us over, and then told us this was private property. We apologized, and they just kept staring at us angrily. We apologized again, and then walked away. We were wandering a couple dozen feet away from the road in unfenced, uncultivated land, which definitely wasn’t a capital offense, but we felt bad that we made someone mad nonetheless. The second service project also went really well, we raked a ton of leaves. A ton is an exaggeration, but it was definitely over 200 pounds of leaves, which is a lot. Then we went back to the church for the lessons we had, and got to finish out the night in a very relaxing way.

12/2/2020

Today went really well. We had a lot of lessons with our member families and one with the nonmember family that we’re teaching as well. It’s a good thing that we connect to this family so well and can do no wrong, because I am really out of practice as a teacher of an introduction to the Gospel. I’m going to spend my time regoing over and practicing teaching these lessons tomorrow because the stuff I contributed tonight was not on par with what I was doing in Brazil, and I was teaching in Portuguese there, this should be way easier in English, but now I just have more of a tendency to ramble. My teaching hasn’t actually gotten worse, I think I’m just starting to notice more when people aren’t understanding than I used to, and so I did what I could to help those who were struggling along tonight. I was sad because I was looking forward to virtual exchanges with Collins and Hatch tomorrow, which meant that we would have been teaching as a group of four instead of two, but they cancelled on us because they hadn’t actually figured out all the rules for how we’re going to be doing it yet. We have interviews with President tomorrow, which is very exciting. One really uncomfortable thing did happen tonight: During our missionwide devotional, there was an unplanned prayer shared. We always join the devotional virtually right after working, and so sometimes if we’re running a little behind it can be stressful to try to wrap things up to join the devotional. Well, evidently that’s what happened tonight with two Sisters when they had been having a very tender conversation, and so while one Sister was using her phone for the call with the family they were teaching, the other decided to get on the devotional so that they could switch over right after. Well, the Sisters forgot to mute themselves, and so right when it was time for our opening prayer, the Sisters were offering the closing prayer for their meeting. The prayer they offered that took the place of all of our’s (unbeknownst to us) started off, “We know that death is a hard thing…” and at that moment both Elder Gomez’s and my eyes popped open and we made eye contact. So the opening prayer for our meeting addressed the plan of salvation and reflected the pain of the passing of recent loved ones. After the prayer President started the devotional like normal. He’s so busy sometimes that I don’t think he even noticed that an out of the normal prayer had just transpired.

12/3/2020

Today was a great day! We had interviews with our President and they went really well. We talked a little bit about our efforts in this area, and then he promised us that we would succeed in our purpose to bring souls to Christ in February. February will be a special month for our whole mission, because we’re all going to find a lot of success in that month. President detailed his promise to me in our interviews today, although it sounds like he hasn’t revealed it to most of the mission yet. We had a couple of lessons today and they went really well. We (I) embarrassingly double booked a couple of lessons tonight, although fortunately we were able to reschedule them so they all worked out. We had a service project with Sister Thompson and Brother Case tonight. It was a lot of fun, because it genuinely felt like we were all there as friends, it just felt good to be there and to get to help Sister Thompson. Sister Thompson also pulled me aside at one point and tried to give me money so that I would buy sweatpants on Monday (she saw that I was wearing shorts in the 24 degree weather), and I had to assure her very firmly that I had the funds to buy some warm pants myself before she was willing to relent. The members here are too nice to us, they take really good care of us. That offer also showed an incredible sacrifice, because she later revealed to us in our lesson with her that she has been incredibly stressed lately, especially about finances. An offer like that takes a lot of love, she has a really good heart.

12/4/2020

Today was a great day. We had a service project this morning, we walked a widow’s dogs. That was the first time I had ever walked a dog, and I actually had a lot of fun (probably because it was a voluntary, and not a mandatory activity for me) There were two dogs, I told Elder Gomez he should take the tamer one, and that I would take the more rambunctious, crazy dog. We walked with both dogs and the Sister for a bit, until one dog started whining because of the slow pace we were taking, so the Sister took the other dog back and we went for a run with the crazier one. I really enjoyed the run, the dog was a little older so my fast jogging speed matched the dog’s running speed pretty well, and when the dog got really excited it would pull me along and cause me to go even faster. Elder Gomez didn’t have any help running, so he tired out a long time before I did thanks to that dog doing a lot of the work for me. After our service we got to do some planning and then teach some lessons. The planning went well, and the lessons went even better. It’s sad to say, but I just now feel like I’m starting to figure out how to plan effective lessons with my companions and we’re learning how to teach really effectively together. I suppose there isn’t really an overarching strategy that you can use for everyone, really it’s just about adjusting to each companion to build off of their strengths, but now it’s happening for Gomez and I. The lessons that we’re teaching are perfect, not because we’re saying all the right things, but because the Spirit is there, and He carries the message to the hearts of our families far better than we ever could.

12/5/2020

Today Monument earned its name since we had a monumental day. I cut my hair this morning, it turned out pretty well and baffled my district that I would have the audacity to go get my hair cut at a barber shop on a day other than pday (I didn’t, I just cut it myself while listening to general conference talks, by far the most spiritual haircut I’ve had yet). Then we had a service project at Brother Case’s house. We were mixing and applying cement, although the work that we were doing here was easier than mixing it by hand in Brazil, the only hard thing I had to do was lifting those bags of cement to load them into the mixer. Raising them above my chest was quite the struggle, and so was shot-putting it onto the machine to mix it. Fortunately I got to practice it a lot since mixing the cement up was my job. The whole project was a lot of fun, and I was very impressed that their whole family was out there doing it. The only unfortunate moment was when the cement mixer splashed some water containing chunks of cement powder into my right eye. We aren’t supposed to go in houses as missionaries right now, but the family made an exception for me so that I could flush my eye out. Fortunately I was able to clean my eye okay, and return to shot-putting cement bags afterwards. All of that was fun, but not the reason why today was so monumental. Today was an incredible day, because we put two kids from the family that we’ve been teaching on date for baptism. The date is for before the end of the transfer, so we’ll get to be here for their baptism. Teaching this family is really cool, because they know almost nothing about religion. A couple days ago we taught them about who Christ is, they didn’t really know anything about Him. To have gone in a week from never having known these people, to now having them on date for baptism is a miracle in and of itself. It shows just how much God’s been preparing this family for us, as does the fact that today was their daughter’s eighth birthday. Their mom (the person in the family with religious background who used to be members of the church) asked if we would be willing to talk about baptism since it was their daughter’s eighth birthday. They really have just been prepared for us in every way. Our lessons with this family have been so powerful, tonight the mom told us it looked like our faces were glowing when we shared our testimonies.

12/6/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We had our Christmas church meeting today, we’re still on a three week rotation, and today was the last time that we would meet before Christmas, so we had a couple of special musical numbers and stuff today. It was an especially good meeting because Sister Adams and her family got on to attend it, so we had investigators in Sacrament today! We had a great day today, we were able to get 15 lessons this week with members which was a little lower than we hoped for, but still in the mission standard of excellence. We got to watch the First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional tonight, which was an awesome break from how hard we had been pushing ourselves to work. Then, Brother Case brought by the best smelling apple pie ever to thank us for helping him mix concrete yesterday. It was really good to get to see their family, and we were more than happy to accept that pie.

Today the scriptures that I want to share come from a revelation that Joseph Smith had. In Doctrine and Covenants 42 we read:

49 He who hath faith to see shall see.

50 He who hath faith to hear shall hear.

51 The lame who hath faith to leap shall leap.

These are some of my favorite verses about miracles because there are no conditions attached, they plainly teach that miracles can be accomplished according to our faith. Now, another miracle that happens in accordance with my personal faith is being able to be led to those who seek to hear the Gospel. So why haven't I been finding people every week if I had the faith to find someone this week? Why are there blind who still can't see, deaf who still can't hear, and lame who can't leap, despite blessings from God's authorized servants promising that all these things can happen in accordance with our faith? It's because God's preparing a way for these miracles to happen. Every time you exercise your faith, that doesn't go unnoticed, it's used to prepare miracles. The veil is being rent, God is showing Himself to His people, and we are being prepared to witness miracles.

Chapter 22: The Rameumpton

 11/24/2020

Well, today is a sad landmark, I’m now 2/3rds of the way done with my mission. It’s sad to think that the amount of time that I spent in Brazil is all that I have left to be able to touch people’s lives as a 18-20 year old missionary. It wasn’t such a hopeless feeling prospect until I hit my year mark, and then it stopped feeling like I had a lot of time left, to realizing that I only would get to do that one more time. Now it feels all to short. In reality, I should be grateful that I’m getting this feeling with eight months left, instead of only a couple like is the case for some other missionaries, I still have lots of opportunities left, but landmarks always make the time feel horribly limited. Today we taught a couple lessons which was a lot of fun. We had a mission wide meeting this morning where they shared our numbers with us as a mission, and my zone found out we were reporting the lowest numbers in the mission. Somehow, inexplicably, this always seems to happen to me. I shared my lament with some of my district members and they all remarked the same, “yeah! This keeps happening, I’m always in those areas” which actually gives me a lot of confidence that the Lord has put us here because He knows we can help this area get to be the treasured area He sees it as. On a more apostate note, I built the rameumpton out of metal folding chairs. It was about as physically stable as the proud Zoramites were in their mental states.

11/25/2020

Today was a good day. We had an incredible lesson with the Gammon family. We played a game with them called “The Gratitude Game” which is like a hot-potato style game where family members will share what they’re grateful for about each other. There was a family in our ward with a record of saying 41 things they were grateful for when the Sisters taught them, and the highest we Elders had seen before was 23. Well, we challenged the Gammon family to be 41 and they did… with 42. We were all so excited, it was an awesome moment. We got to do a lot of walking again tonight, which was fun for us, but not a lot of fun for Gomez because my walking speed is still set to ‘Brazil’. One of the Elders we share a car with was passing a kidney stone tonight, and so Collins called us telling us they were going to come out to give us a ride. Well, they live almost an hour away and don’t have the miles to use for a drive like that, so we told them that we would walk the hour to our house. It actually went really well, and we were grateful for the opportunity to destress while we walked. The Sisters were really nice to us and offered to bring our stuff to us in their car, so we didn’t even have to pack all of our stuff back home, which made for a very nice walk. The Elder who got the kidney stone is fine now.

11/26/2020

Happy Thanksgiving! Today was one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve ever had, and definitely the best one I’ve had on the mission, since last year I didn’t realize Thanksgiving had happened until a couple days after it had passed. The reason our Thanksgiving was so good today was because of the service project that we got to do as a DIstrict. This was the second time that I’d ever gotten to do service with my District, and it was a blast to get to engage with them over something so simple, yet almost trivial compared to the high stakes work we’re always obsessing about. To be forced to take a break and do something fun as a team was really nice. We had the goal of picking up trash alongside a river trail, and we didn’t have high expectations because of how well maintained it was, but fortunately we were still able to ransack a couple areas where people had left behind piles of litter. “Ransack” is probably the best term to describe what we did, because among my finds was a black trash bag sack, that I ran away with. It might have belonged to someone, I’m not sure. We managed to get SO much stuff, and I felt very useful, since I spotted so many well masked litter hideaways, and dove through thorny bushes and dense forest enclosures to get to them. At one point, we even found a partially buried sign, which was sticking out of the dirt, and when we King Arthur style yanked it out of the dirt, I’m pretty sure that we instantaneously saved like, three turtles. The amount of trash you pick up is proportional to the amount of turtles you save, so I personally saved like, 16 turtles today.

11/27/2020

Today was a lot of fun! Everyone’s still pretty busy because they’re recovering from their turkey induced comas (I guess), but Gomez and I were still able to get a lot of work done. Today was also the day that I finished the Prophet’s challenge to post on social media for seven days with the #givethanks tag. It was incredible to see just how true the Prophet’s counsel was that I would be more full of hope afterwards, gratitude does have an incredible ability to shape our lives for the better, and to help us to feel of God’s joy and love.

11/28/2020

Today was pretty busy. We had two different service projects today, one was with our Bishop and the other was with a widow in our ward. We really like doing service projects since it’s the one way that we can meet with people in public. The meeting that we had with our Bishop was also especially significant, because that was the first time that I’ve gotten meet with him in any way. We’ve had Ward councils and Sacrament meetings where we’ve seen and talked to him, but never a personalized meet-up where we were able to talk to him outside his capacities as Bishop. He introduced us to his sons today which was cool, because I had no idea who the members of his family were. Our other service project was also super successful. We were clipping tree branches and trimming bushes down. The Sister that we were helping didn’t have very many tools so we did the best with what we had. She wanted some really thick branches cut down, and had some not-very-big branch clippers to get the job done. Gomez and I remedied this by making up for our lack of leverage with brute force. He would grab one end of the handle and I would grab the other, and we would push together as hard as we could. This worked for several branches, all of them ending in loud snaps as we crushed the limbs between the clippers. Eventually Gomez and I got to a branch that was just a little to big though, and as we pushed we ended up snapping the clippers. The metal end of the clippers that was used to cut the branches snapped off. Gomez and I felt pretty good about our strength after that, but horrible that we had just damaged this widow’s tool beyond repairs. Hopefully Walmart sells some cheap since we also don’t have a lot of money to replace them… After our “service” at that Sister’s house, we walked a half hour back home, although Google says it should have been 45 minutes. We’re good at taking shortcuts, and only had to cut through one wilderness area that might have been someone’s yard, we’re not really sure. The only other significant event today was when I courageously rescued my companion from the clutches of a dangerous spider. Well, that might’ve been exaggerating. The spider was about the side of a quarter, although I did wrestle with it for a full five minutes to keep it on a piece of paper long enough for me to take it outside. I would pick it up, and it would immediately run and jump off the paper, and then I would yell at it for not being very smart since I was trying to save its life, which probably agitated it more and caused this cycle to repeat for five minutes until the spider eventually wore itself out and I was able to get it outside, much to my companion’s relief.

11/29/2020

Today was a really good day. We had a goal as a mission of doubling the number of new companionships that found someone, which meant going from about 50% of people who had found someone going to about 80% (20% of our mission finding pretty regularly, so our goal was more about increasing the number of companionships that were finding rather than just increasing the number of people being found). I had been here for 13 weeks, and we hadn’t found anyone yet, but today we were able to set up an appointment with someone for tomorrow, which will be a pickup lesson and a new person. It won’t count towards this week’s finding stats since this week ended tonight at 8:30, but it was still fun to be a part of the wave of finding new people. We found through a small Facebook group, which I didn’t think was very likely in our area since we had really tried as a District for a long time to work on the Facebook groups in the surrounding area and we just weren’t finding anyone, but tonight all of our efforts paid off. Tomorrow we’ll get to have a pick up lesson.

Today more than a specific verse I wanted to share a message that we see through the book of Daniel. In addition to having a brother who was named after this prophet, this book has always stood out to me because it is such a spectacular account. Daniel was a prophet who was highly favored, and served in high positions under five different kings. Daniel much like most of us, would occasionally wonder why the Lord had picked him to receive such incredible blessings, in which case he always heard the reply, "for thou art greatly beloved". The greatest gift that we've received is that of the Atonement from Christ, in response to this great blessing all of us are left wondering, 'how can it be that Jesus Christ would make an Atonement for me? And the answer will always come to us the same as it did to Daniel, "for thou art greatly beloved". You are greatly beloved and that is a promise that I make to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I love you all!

---

Chapter 21: Success and Exploding Keyboards

My Alphasmart keyboard that I would type up my journals on died this week, which was pretty sad, especially because I lost a couple days worth of notes. Fortunately I was able to get another keyboard today so I'll be able to go back to writing insanely long emails next week. If it somehow comes as a disappointment that I didn't write as much this week, then enjoy the break, you deserve it after getting this far through my mission's accountings. 

11/20/2020

Even though my keyboard broke, today was an awesome enough day that it merits the pain of typing out a journal entry with just my thumbs. Today we heard inspired counsel from the Prophet to utilize gratitude to help us find hope, and eventually, faith. We also received harsher COVID rules, scaling back our ability to teach in homes, but it worked out okay today. They told us that the rules would go into effect starting at 5:00 today, which I guess is when the COVID comes out? So we crammed all of our in person lessons in before five tonight when the rules would change. Yes, we had to cram them in, because today we had five lessons with members. We broke our record again! We were ecstatic to have so many lessons today, and were even more joyful when we repeatedly heard the phrase, "that was exactly what I needed today". We also got a really nice thank you from a member afterwards, thanking us for acting as more than missionaries, acting as members of their family who truly loved them and completed their home. Those were incredible words to hear.

11/22/2020

We're really starting to gain momentum in Monument. Today we taught seven lessons, blowing the record we made earlier this week of five out of the water. Seven is even a little better than what we were normally doing with nonmembers in Brazil, we would average about five or six lessons a day there, so getting seven here with our members made it feel like we were really being efficient. Our lessons would be unplanned in Brazil, all people who we would find that day, which was exciting, but not a super efficient way of working. Today we had a couple unplanned lessons, but the majority of them were planned, which was cool to see that some of the skills I'd gained from Brazil are useful here, but that we were also following a better, more well structured plan than I use to. This week we also hit the mission standard of excellence for lessons, which I wasn't sure if we would ever do. For an area that has quadrupled in the number of missionaries, we expected the area to be overwhelmed, and incapable of supporting all four companionships as far as work is concerned. Hitting the mission standard of excellence (between 15-20 lessons a week, and we got 17), is a really big deal and a testament to how our ward is grown. This is a really big landmark because it shows a lot of reactivation among members, and an overall effort on everyone's part to be more Christlike. Members taking an interest in meeting with the missionaries is an activity indicator, and so it's really cool to see that even with Coronavirus, this ward is becoming more active than they ever have been before.

I realized that my emails aren't completely accurate, they're about a 50% view of what's been happening for me. I've shared all the details of what's happening in my life, except for the lessons that I'm learning, and so I wanted to share some additional thoughts besides my regular Spiritual thought. The reason we were so successful this week was, in part, affected by one of my decisions. In Alma 26:22 we read of the account of Ammon who describes his mission experiences: Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance. 

This promise hit me with incredible power, I've read through this verse many times before and never had my heart touched in the same way. Why was this so significant? The area we've been working in is one of the least fruitful areas in the mission, so to feel the Holy Ghost, God Himself, make this promise to me on conditions that I repent, exercise faith, labor diligently, and pray without ceasing, that I will be an effective tool in His hands to learn, prophesy, help people find the same joy of the Gospel through repentance that I've found, is an incredible promise. The success that we found this week was proof of that promise. I had tried for 12 weeks to hit our mission standard of excellence and failed. I failed twelve times in a row before we hit this goal, something that changed the moment I started exercising my faith. Miracles follow our faith.

Additionally I wanted to share a thought from a talk I liked. Elder Soares in his talk from the October 2020 General Conference shared the metaphor of a magnet, representing sin: "Metaphorically speaking, yielding to temptation is like approaching a magnet with a metal object. The magnet’s invisible force attracts the metal object and holds it tightly. The magnet loses its power over it only when the metal object is placed far from it. Therefore, just as the magnet is unable to exercise power over a faraway metal object, as we resist temptation, it fades away and loses its power over our mind and heart and, consequently, over our actions." That analogy is incredible, but and I would like to expand upon it. In this world it is impossible to remain stagnant. Just like it's impossible to truly balance a metal object to be suspended between two magnets indefinitely, so too are we always moving. Elder Soares described the magnet of sin and temptation, and the other is the magnet of Christ. As we allow ourselves to be drawn to the sweet music of the Gospel we are moving closer to the magnet of Christ. In fact, anything that we do to exercise our faith in Christ, moves us closer to him and further away from Satan. I love this analogy for a couple reasons: One is that the magnet of Christ does more than allow us to draw unto Him at quicker and quicker speeds, the magnet of Christ actually pushes away Satan and stops his magnetic fields from affecting us. As we draw close to Christ, even the loud seemingly powerful pull of the adversary is completely blocked by infinitely stronger power Christ is.

I love you all, I'm praying for you!

Elder Anderson

The pictures are of the lengths that we went to so that we could have internet during our lessons. Our house is completely shielded from data, so we climbed this mountain to have a great backdrop and data during our lessons. 

Chapter 20: Heavy Machinery

11/9/2020

Today was a great pday. It was one of the first in a very long time that we haven't really had anything going on, it's too cold to be motivated to go on a hike or something, and COVID rules don't allow for much right now anyways. So I got to spend my day studying, and talking with my family. It was very nice to have a relaxing Pday. Then we had a meeting as a Zone to discuss our goals and what we wanted to do as a Zone. The meeting was pretty slow, and definitely not the most engaging one I've been to, but we set some goals for next week so it was a productive meeting.

11/10/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We got to see the Hudsons, who I love talking to because their dad served in Manaus, and we share so many common stories and interests. We both lamented tonight over the great fruit and fish that we wish that we could be eating, but are being deprived of in the United States. He was very excited to hear about the Feijao Carioca that I got gifted, because he really misses the beans and rice we would eat everyday as well. At the end of our meeting, he very kindly gifted my comp and I a bottle of Guarana, a soda from Brazil. I excitedly called my District afterwards and told them about the treasure we had received and we all made plans to do a soda taste test on Thursday when we all get together for our District counsel. Some of the Elders had already tried Guarana, and remembered how much they loved it, which only added to the excitement of everyone else. We're going to have a very good meeting on Thursday.

11/11/2020

Today I wasn't the model of responsiblity, I completely forgot that we had a Facebook post to put up tomorrow. Fortunately we had a lesson today, and so we were able to twist the lesson into a filming session. The family that we filmed did great! We would have just put something together ourselves, but the mission decided that for these next couple of months we would only focus on members, not on missionaries, and so we're being encouraged, or rather coerced, into making videos of members and their families. That isn't a setback though, it's actually a really good thing, and it's something I've been trying to do since I was with Elder Collins. By having a majority of the posts that I've put up focused on members, we've gotten a lot more interaction from other ward members. We also had a service project with our district today. We were putting together bags of food for the homeless and it turned into one great assembly line where we organized everything as fast as humanly possible, as we had a one hour time limit thanks to COVID rules. That was a really fun service though, that's the first time that I ever got to do service with my district, so that was pretty cool. The other significant event that happened today occured as we were leaving the church. Elder Gomez was playing around with new ringtones today and finally decided on one of a small child saying, "bring, bring" (like, "ring ring" but with a little bit of a tongue roll on the "r"). That ringtone sounded perfectly normal in the daytime, but as we were walking out, we were both startled to hear a small child say "bring". It came from about waist level-the exact height a child with a voice like that would be, and I thought that there was a demon child following us since that voice came out of nowhere. It also scared Gomez, but whereas I was just startled, he actually jumped several feet to the side and screamed. He jumped so high, that's the hardest I've laughed in a long time.

11/12/2020

Today was a great day! We had a District Counsel today, and it was pretty normal except for two Sisters who had to join over Zoom since they were exposed to COVID. We (The rest of the District) also were exposed to those Sisters after they were exposed, although fortunately we don't have to quarantine since the Sisters aren't showing any symptoms. After the District Counsel, we broke out the bottle of Guarana. I checked the "Best by" date, and saw that it expired in October of last year. I didn't even know that was possible. It was a very flat soda, but still very good. We had a couple of lessons today which went even better than usual, and we posted a video that our members made on Facebook. We also got to do another service project where we used a lawnmower. We don't know if we're allowed to use a lawnmower or not, it's a gas powered tool, but apparently they're used quite frequently and no one's answered our question about it yet. Either way, we mowed the lawn for an elderly couple, so it was definitely a necessity; They're a really cute couple, they keep insisting that we're "God-sent". I mean, we are, so I guess it's not a bad summary of our mission calls.

11/13/2020

Today was a great day. We had three lessons, one of which was a birthday lesson. We might have just become Gospel entertainers? Like, entertainers, but we use the Gospel. I think it's pretty entertaining. The lessons went well. We also made family connections for like, three different families in our ward. It's really weird when you get to know everyone seperately, and then it turns out that everyone you know has ties to each other. I feel very left out; I'm not related to anyone in this ward. They should stop being related to each other to make me feel better. Collins and I have been accumulating a library of historical documents and the records of various general authorities who've spent time analyzing them. It's been going pretty well, and been some very interesting stuff. We also got some nice surprises from people in our ward. Several families brought us treats tonight, and one family even dropped off food for us which was a miracle since we ended up having to feed ourselves this week a lot more than we thought we would, and we were running pretty low on food supplies. Getting more supplies was an incredible tender mercy.

11/14/2020

Today was good! We had the coolest service project that I've ever gotten to do. We went over to Brother White's house (The White House) originally expecting to rake leaves, but when we got there his next door neighboor and son was shoving all of his fallen branches from our big winter storm a couple of weeks ago through a wood chipper. Brother White was over there helping his son out despite his advanced age, and so I think it was good that we showed up because we were able to help him and his son out at the same time. I thought that getting to use a shovel was about the most fun I could possibly have, but I was wrong, getting to send giant logs through that woodchipper and watch them disintegrate was a lot more fun. Then we got to shovel the woodchips out of the back of the truck where they were collecting, so a shovel + a woodchipper = best service ever. Everyone was very timid about the machine that would suck everything up and destroy it, but I had a lot of fun playing up close and personal with it. Playing with a woodchipper probably isn't a good habit to be in, though.

11/15/2020

Today was a great day. We had a couple of lessons which went really well, and my companion and I finally got to give talks. Gomez refused to go first, which was a timing problem for me. I can talk for an insanely long time, and so I'm great at adjusting my words to either be shorter or longer depending on the amount of time that I have. I've had a lot of practice with cutting my messages down in length since I'll generally overprepare with too much information (like this journal, this is very information saturated). One talk I gave I read 19 scriptures I found on a subject over a couple of days and tied them together. There wasn't any time to give my own thoughts, but that's a good example of how I usually prepare. So when Gomez said he wouldn't go first I was very nervous, knowing that there was a good chance that we wouldn't end up anywhere close to the time limit we were asked to speak for, and that's exactly what happened. We were asked to speak for 20 minutes together, he told me to leave him four minutes, and then spoke for 15. Both of our talks were really good, though, and no one seemed mad that they had to stay the extra ten minutes, so everything seemed to work out pretty well. Gomez did do an incredible job on his talk. I had planned to speak about the role of the ward in missionary work for the past four weeks and prepared specific breakdowns of what everyone's parts were and how we could be more unified and work together as a whole, but about a half hour before I gave my talk I felt prompted to throw out all of those ideas and share some thoughts on repentance. So I called our ward to repentance. I thought that they might hate us afterwards, but they actually seemed very grateful for it. A lot of people really, really liked the messages. That's always important, the more of the Savior's love that they can feel during talks, the more they seem to like it, and so I think we did a really good job.

The Spiritual thought that I wanted to share today was from Daniel Chapter 3, about Shadrach, Meshach,  and Abed-Nego. These incredible men were valiant examples of faith, in the story of how they were cast into a furnace for their beliefs, they placed faith not in their deliverance, but in their loyalty to God. They told king Nebuchadnezzar that regardless of God's omnipotent power and His will, they would choose to trust in Him.

17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

I pray that we have the same strength to resist Satan in our lives, the same strength to look unto Christ in all things, and I promise that all who exercise faith in Him will find perfect deliverance from the attacks of the adversary.