Chapter 13: The Perishing of Elder Anderson Due to Some Really Spicy Chicken

Elder Anderson and his district were able to go on a hike on their Pday to the Colorado National Monument. Elder Anderson loved this hike and the amazing rock formations.

9/21/2020

Today was a great Pday. We were pretty busy trying to make a video for our Facebook page for our ward, but it turned out really well, it was well worth the effort. On top of that, Morse and I got to play basketball, and have a shootout with Nerf guns. We had a blast, so we're definitely going to make sure dart tag is one of our District Pday activities soon. We had a couple of meetings tonight to discuss how the development of our ward has been going. I was glad we had them since we've been struggling a lot, and at least got to bring up what it was that we were struggling with to our Zone Leaders.

9/22/2020

Today was great, we had an all mission meeting this morning and it was a lot of fun to see so many of my friends on that call. We were running low on time today because of how much we had to do, so we went to Sonic for lunch. They're very kind to the missionaries, they give us our food for free. Because of Sonic's kindness we were able to grab lunch quickly and get both the Redlands Elders and ourselves to our separate areas in about 30 minutes. Morse and I worked on a drawing for a Facebook post today and it's turning out really well, considering that I've only put two hours into it so far and it's looking to be a three hour project, it's very good quality. I also have been practicing hymns to use as background music in our Facebook videos, and today it came up that I don't know anything about music theory. So I learned music theory from a drummer (Morse). He taught me some tips of things to look for in songs, and that was very satisfying to learn. We had a very long dinner tonight, but it turned out okay because we liked the family a lot. We're only supposed to be at dinner for one hour and we were there for two because they asked us to come over when they started preparing dinner. We didn't know we were going to be there for so long, but we think it had been a while since the last time that they had missionaries and just wanted to get to know us, so it was still a pretty good use of our time. I connected very well with the wife who doesn't use recipes when she's cooking, because I also don't use recipes. She was ecstatic to teach me what she could about cooking. That was also a cool family to visit because when we walked up to their house we were greeted by some very cool sights. Their daughter riding a horse in their front yard probably should have been what caught my attention, but instead what I thought was cool was the door decoration they had of the Hebrew word written: Shin, Daleth, and Yod, signifying "mighty" or "powerful". Unfortunately none of them spoke Hebrew, but it was cool to me to find a little snippet of the language I had been studying as a greeting. That family also gave us a taste of their 'finest milk', they brought out shot glasses and shared some of their unpasteurized 12% with us. Trying a taste of milk that rich in shot glasses felt like the edgiest thing that I'll get to do as a missionary.

9/23/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We had a service project this morning where we went to help a guy in our ward clear tumbleweeds out of his lot. I was trying to imagine what my ideal service project would be as we were driving out there and had no clue what we were doing before I finally decided that my ideal service project would involve a shovel in some way. Thus, I was pretty excited when I found out we would be digging up tumbleweeds today. The tumbleweeds in Colorado are huge, but really  satisfying to remove since this massive plant only stems from a single root, and so it feels really cool to unearth such massive plants without doing much work. The guy we were helping out today had a three year old son named "Matthew". That little guy was adorable, he would follow me around everywhere, he had a little shovel and was actually able to remove a couple small tumbleweeds all by himself. I was very grateful for the help he provided to me in what would have been otherwise impossible weeds to remove, but thanks  to my cheering on of his three-year-old muscles, and my enjoyment of child labor, we were able to get a lot of work done together. He really reminded me of my little brother, Matthew, especially when he stopped to point out to me the tractor on the road. The dad thought it was pretty cute that I had a little brother almost his same age with his same name. After our project we had a district counsel, then I made lunch for Morse and I, and then we went to work at the church. I finished another drawing for our Facebook page, this one was fun because I spent about three and a half hours on it over the course of the last few days (so hardly any time at all) and it still looked presentable (kind of). We had dinner with the Case family tonight, in which we were told that they were all VERY excited for the Elders to visit them. We had asked the dad beforehand what kind of message he would like us to share and he requested one about "obedience and consequences", so we talked a little bit about the joy that comes from obedience. The kids loved it (much to my surprise), and the dad said in awe as we were leaving, "You Elders are the best". It was cool to see that he really meant it. Obviously we didn't do anything special, we just gave the message that was put into our hearts, but since we're not able to have a lot of interaction with families now, those compliments were very welcome. It can be hard to feel like you're being effective when your options are so limited to speak to people, but at least the interactions we do have Morse and I are able to make use of. We really, really like the Case family, and so it felt good to see that they really liked us too.

9/24/2020

Today was great, we taught two lessons, had a service project, and a mission tour led by Elder Ringword (I think? We only heard his name once, he spoke to us over Zoom call and instead of the call showing his name, it said "COB257", so for all intents and purposes I'll probably refer to him as Elder COB257). His wife is one of President Nelson's daughters, and both of them gave fantastic messages to us. The service project we had today was fun, we trimmed up a bush, but it was a pretty big bush and the lady we were doing our project for wanted it cut back at the base, so I dove into the bush and went to town on it for the space of an hour. It took a lot of scrubbing in the shower afterwards, but I finally got the smell of pine off of my arms and out of my hair. Pine isn't necessarily a bad smell, but there were a lot of dead bugs in there, so it was the foresty pine/bug carcass smell that I wasn't very fond of. The lessons we taught also went super well today, the Spirit was so strong in both and we got references in both! We hadn't gotten any references since we'd gotten here, and now we got two in a day, we're very happy.

9/25/2020

Today was a good day. We filmed a video for a Sunday devotional our zone is putting together, and it turned out really well! We were talking about the importance of our trials and how they can empower us to help others. We shared the story of Alma the younger and how because of the events in his life he turned not only his life around, but was able to help all of his sons as well. This video took us a LOT of takes, but it turned out very well in the end. We also tried working in the public library for the first time. We can only have one companionship in the church at a time, so going to the library allows us and other companionships to get more work done. The library was also a super nice place. When we work at the church we're the only ones there, so it's pretty quiet, but library quietness is just a whole new level of quiet. Morse got a personal library card, and I'm thinking about getting one that's tied to the area email so that any future Elders and Sisters that come here can have access to the library as well. We also got to have a lesson with the Whitesides today which was just a rehashed summary of what we talked about in our video today, which they really seemed to like. The Whitesides just sent their son into the mission field so I think Sister Whitesides really liked having us over because it reminded her of her Elder.

9/26/2020

Today was great! We had a service project this morning where we got to pull weeds, make huge wire bundles, and move heavy objects like giant pipes and rocks. Our service project was with the Case family, and we got to share a message with them as well, which they really seemed to enjoy. Afterwards we had a training from our Mission President where we were taught that we didn't need to be afraid of extending the baptismal invitation. Morse and I lamented that we would love to be bold in our invitations, had we any investigators to be bold with. We got to do some Facebook work today, another progress check-up with our Zone Leaders where we found out that the mission collectively has no hope for our area, and suggested just studying for the remainder of this transfer. We weren't ecstatic about that. We also met the coolest members though, tonight. The Nelson family invited us over for dinner, and much to my delight, had returned from serving a mission in Portugal a little more than two years ago. They didn't speak a lot of Portuguese, but they understood me when I spoke which was pretty cool. It was pretty funny when Sister Nelson said that they had served in Portugal, and then I asked them in Portuguese how long it had been since they served. She replied back in pretty good Portuguese and then very accusingly demanded, "wait, how do you know Portuguese?"

9/27/2020

Today was a pretty slow Sunday, other than our District Sacrament meeting, we didn't have a lot of contact with anyone, but it was a good day for work. Most of our work time was spent on Facebook trying to do what work we could. We didn't have a lot of success come out of our work today, but at least we were able to put ourselves out there and try. One of the more notable things that I did today was a large portrait of our mission president in chalk on one of our church chalkboards. It turned out pretty well so I sent a picture of it in our Zone chat. Then, during our devotional tonight, Morse and I made sure that President Rees's massive face was directly over us. We got some air time on the Zoom call, as soon as the camera switched to us I started getting messages about the "artwork" I had done. Everyone thought it was pretty great, hopefully President liked it too, I would be very disappointed if I had to erase it too soon.

After writing this I realized I completely forgot to include the spicy chicken incident. What happened was this: One night this week we didn't have dinner. Morse wanted to remedy this by going to Buffalo Wild Wings, one of the perks of being a stateside missionary. I made up a dinner so I wouldn't have to spend extra money, but we still went to get some food for him. They have a type of sauce made out of Carolina Reapers, which Morse was very happy about because he really likes spicy food. I've seen from Morse that a lot of his happiness comes from doing dumb things with his friends, so when he asked if I wanted to suffer through those wings with him, I thought "time to be a good comp" and accepted one of those devil pieces of chicken. From the moment I ate it I started hiccupping uncontrollably (a reaction to the spice, go figure, that had never happened for me before) and my eyes started watering a lot. It was weird to be so emotionally distant from what my bodies reaction was, because I wasn't in any emotional turmoil, yet everything about my appearance said I was going through immense suffering. After about five minutes I was fine and ready to do it again.

Chapter 12: A Trip to Utah

 

9/14/2020

Today was Pday which was awesome! We didn't have any special activities, but Morse and I did get to play basketball with the Redlands Elders so that was fun. We spent all day running around to do different things like shopping, haircuts, and getting balloons that we ended up not even using in our Come Follow Me devotional, which was our original plan. The coolest part of today was getting to start divisions with Elder Collins, their house is freezing, but now I'm freezing with Elder Collins, so we're having a blast. It's so cool to get to be comps with Collins again! Tomorrow is when we're going to do the majority of our work, so we're very excited for what the day will entail.

9/15/2020

Today was a blast, working with Collins was so much fun. Today was awesome because I got to hear about all of the long term effects of my work in Melody Lane from Collins. We did a lot in that area, but it was great to get to hear from my comp what the aftermath of that area was from his point of view. The biggest piece of news he shared with me was that we woman we had found and put on date (he attributed it to me, but it was definitely something we did together which shows just how great of a companionship we were), the woman that we put on date together got baptized! I got to teach lessons to her, and even though I wasn't there for the baptism, it was incredible to hear that I still got to make an impact on this woman and teach her. It was also very flattering to hear that Collins really appreciated the time that we spent together as much as I did, he spent the whole time in eulogy of how I "put our area on [my] back". Again, it was something that we did together, but it felt good to hear that my comp truly enjoyed working with me and thought we made a great team as much as I did. We taught a couple of lessons together today, and it was incredible, just like our time together in Melody Lane, we did an incredible job of teaching and testifying. Collins said that people were still talking about the talk that I gave my first Sunday, it was good to know that the preparation I put into that talk really touched the members and helped to make it an area where Collins and his new comp could work with more success, I'm glad I got to have a positive effect on that area. As a fun side note: I got to talk to Elder McKasson from my CTM district in Brazil for a while today. It was very fun to reminisce about our times together and the changes we had seen in our missions with him. I also got a lot of interest in my "blue book" (my scripture journal). As legend has it, apparently any time someone asks a question, I can open that book and point right to the scripture they need. I'm not sure where that story came from, my journal definitely isn't that comprehensive, but it is a nice collection of some especially meaningful scriptures. Elder Collins and I had an incredible comp and language study together today. Collins is a really special guy, we're both seeking to truly learn the Gospel, and so it was awesome to get to come back together, talk about everything we had learned, and share powerful insights. In our language study, we got to join efforts to share everything we've been learning in Hebrew, and we made some awesome discoveries as we put all the information that we had learned separately together. Getting to sit down with Collins and learn from and with him was amazing. The best part about today was definitely our lessons, though. We were both very sad that we hadn't gotten to spend more time together, because our lessons together were so incredible. It is a real shame that we didn't get to testify together more, because there is real power in the testimonies of those who are humbly seeking to learn the Gospel; That description is of Collins, every word of it is. I'm so lucky to have gotten to spend even the three weeks that I did with that Elder, because he is an incredible disciple of Christ.

9/16/2020

Today was pretty great. Elder Morse and I spent most of our time setting up for tomorrow, we organized all of our members into a couple different lists and ordered them in a way that we would be able to drop off our pictures with them without making the mission too mad about the exuberant number of miles we're about to add to our odometer. Morse and I got to teach a cool lesson today, one of the guys there was also really into art, so we got to talk about that for a while. He had done a lot of paintings of various temples which was really cool! The other really significant event was that I got a new missionary tag. Well, it's not really a missionary tag, but it looks just like one, so I'm thinking of wearing it to my interviews with President tomorrow.

9/17/2020

Today was interesting. We had interviews with our President, and they went really well. It was great to sit down with him and get to talk about my area. I lost all hope for going back to Brazil when I talked to my mission President's wife and she told me about  the state of things and what my chances of going back really are. That was pretty horrible. We also found out that we can no longer use the church for work, this is a punishment for our district since the mission Presidency believes that we aren't using the building as we should be. Despite the protests and testimonies of all of our district members who've been using the building, we're all confined to our houses for the next few weeks. We called the APs and informed them that we have no internet anywhere except for the church, which means that we have literally no way to work unless we're at the church, but we were told to just "be patient and obedient" even if that obedience hurts our ability to work.

9/18/2020

Today was a good day, the first day of not being able to get any work done at the church, but luckily we had plans to drop off letters at less active members houses, so we ended up not even needing to go to the church. We got through a good number of people and had a lot of positive interactions, even some who had been vehemently against the church and past missionaries judging by the contact notes other missionaries had left on their profiles. We think that since we took the time to actually talk to them in person and drop off a gift it made a very different impression than the other missionaries who would just call them to check up and so that they could try to schedule a lesson. Showing these people that we had no ulterior motives other than just to show these people love made a very big impact on them. We also had a couple fun moments today. One of the houses we went to had two MASSIVE dogs out front. These dogs were taller than the rearview mirror of our Chevy Malibu; Which we know because we almost hit the dog in the head as we were trying to back up (and he was not very inclined to move). Morse and I have both seen our share of diseased dogs and so he was pretty terrified of the idea of going up to the door with a giant, aggressive version of those diseased dogs following at his heels or trying to bite him, so he seemed relieved when I volunteered to drop the note off at the door. I felt like I was starring in a low budget remake of "Daniel and the Lions' Den" as I pacified those giant dogs to drop off the letter, but fortunately the worst thing that happened was getting dog snot all over my pants (although I didn't feel very fortunate at the time). That was a huge miracle since those dogs were ready to rip apart intruders, and undoubtedly the owners are going to be very puzzled as to how we got past their dogs to drop our letter off. Another fun thing was getting to be the navigator today-without a map to get us there. Google maps hasn't fully charted where we were driving today, so I made some educated guesses as to where we were going to get us to our destination. We successfully navigated the area, we even made it to the Utah border for some pictures. I also cut my hair this morning which was pretty fun. I didn't take any random chunks out of my hair, so I'm very happy with it, it's a good hair cut.

9/19/2020

Today was fun. We had a service project at 8:00 am, so we went to help out there, and then ran home very quickly afterwards to get clothes so that we could watch the training President was going to give. It was a pretty great training on inviting the members to invite their friends, although it felt a little redundant because of the frequent phrase, "do you know anyone who would benefit from our message?" I felt like Morse and I were doing a good job of helping people to want to invite friends, rather than just hitting them with that standard one-liner. We've been trying to help people start by inviting their member friends, then less actives (often their ministering assignments), and after that encouraging people to try to help their nonmember friends. We haven't gotten to that last step with anyone yet, but we felt like that was a much softer transition than is common for missionaries and beneficial for a couple of reasons: The more lessons we have before asking for nonmember referals, the more comfortable they feel with inviting friends. The more they practice inviting the more comfrotable they feel with inviting, especially important for nonmember referals. The more they invite members the more our teaching pool grows. The way all of these things come together is just awesome, so Morse and I were pretty proud of this plan. We also found out tonight that our area is getting merged back into one; The Sisters we share a ward with are splitting up and leaving. Today was a slower day but that was okay because it meant that Morse and I had some time for roleplays. Those roleplays are pretty much the only times that we ever get to practice teaching the big three lessons, so I was very grateful for the chance today.

9/20/2020

Today was great! We had a miracle with dinner: Morse asked me at like, 11:00, "should we text someone for dinner?" Which was unusual for him because he's 23 months in and has never last minute texted anyone for dinner before, so now would be a really weird time to start, and then I immediately replied with a ward member we had met once before and I had been thinking about that morning. Apparently, we texted asking if we could join them five minutes after another family that this member family hoped to have dinner with, cancelled on them. They were glad that they had the supplies to feed us, and their kids were very excited that the missionaries were coming over. We taught a lesson to our Priests' quorum today. We taught about the importance of the basics of the Gospel, but Morse and I really love the basics and so we taught quite the extended lesson. Well, I specifically taught a very extended lesson, Morse had to keep his message very short; I thought we were supposed to teach for a half hour, and he thought it was 15 minutes, so after I taught for 15 minutes, he shared a quick thought and a story and cut it off. It was a very good lesson though, despite the imbalance of us talking. The Priests seemed to like it a lot too, our personal stories seemed to really strike a chord with them. We had a district sacrament meeting today which was really good, although sad because we had one table less than normal, thanks to the recent disappearance of our Sisters. Other than that today was a lot of studies, which I was very happy for. Our schedule in this area is busy enough that I never can quite get all of my daily studies in, but I got enough in today that I got pretty caught up on what I wanted to be studying. It was a very successful Sunday.

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite scriptures, it comes from the book of Acts and explains why it's so important that we have living prophets today. In Acts chapter 8 we read of the Apostle Philip who asked a young man he saw reading scriptures, "Understandest thou what thou readest?

31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus."

Because of the short exchange that Philip had with this young man, the young man's faith grew dramatically, so much so that he felt prepared to enter into the waters of baptism. We are so very blessed that in our lives today we have a prophet who teaches us the same way Philip taught the young man, and I know that just as the young man's faith miraculously grew by listening to the voice of a prophet, so too will our faith grow, miraculously more than we could ever have imagined, as we hearken to the Prophet's voice today.

Chapter 11: Houseburglars

9/7/2020

Today was a great Pday. We went to Walmart early in the morning and got our shopping done which was nice, then we headed off to play ultimate frisbee with our district. We had a blast playing, I was fast and quiet so no one seemed to notice when I would show up in the endzone and catch what had been thrown from one endzone to the other. I think short passes are generally better for that game, but no one could keep up with me so we did a lot of really great field-wide passes. Other than that we got to talk to our families, we finished our video and had dinner with a family, and that was our night. Everywhere we go for dinner blows me away, people give us their best here too, but my heart was filled with gratitude for the rice and beans families would sacrifice, as it was often the Widow's Mite, but here people's sacrifices are no less meaningful, even though they're better off. Their love to help the Lord's servants as they can is evident in their eyes, and they do all they can to make sure we're taken care of. These are some incredible families. Our video also did really well tonight, it was just a Come Follow Me video for our ward, but it turned out great, and got a good amount of publicity! At least now we know that some people are indeed watching them.

9/8/2020

Today was a great day. We spent a lot of time trying to contact members today. We only got a couple of responses, but hopefully we'll start getting more returned calls soon. We had a joint dinner with the Sisters tonight since it was raining for the first time ever since I'd been here. We're only allowed to eat outside, and our dinner appointment tonight asked if they could bring us all food instead of canceling like I was expecting, which was a huge blessing. We had an all mission meeting today where Morse and I got to do a roleplay, we were asked to set the example as... bad missionaries... We had such a good time, we got the call late last night about doing it so we were PREPARED. We did everything wrong imaginable, but truly there were too many bad things to count, I'll list some of them here, though:

We ate food throughout the whole lesson.

We called out to some imaginary friends to tell them we'd be done with our lesson in five minutes so we could play basketball with them, then cut our lesson short for an "important missionary meeting"

We talked about how annoying the rules were and how much we disliked them.

We were super distracting throughout the lesson (I was eating the whole time and taking my suit jacket off and putting it back on every ten seconds).

We had stalked the facebook profile of the "member" we were teaching and told her that we found a friend that we were going to message right then.

When the "member" expressed discomfort with the idea of us contacting their friend we were very pushy and said that we would follow up in a half hour to give her some time to think about it.

We also read some scriptures calling them to repentance to make them feel like they could be doing more.

We would cut each other off in the middle of talking.

We hit an incredible number of things in five minutes, and afterwards got so many praising remarks for having played the part so well. I don't know what they're talking about, we just taught a normal lesson... It was a lot of fun though, I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time. We also played pickleball with the Deacons tonight. It was a great chance to get to know some of the leaders and youth in our ward.

9/9/2020

Today we broke up the usual tradition of playing basketball to play pickleball. Apparently pickleball originated in Washington, so the Elders weren't very comfortable with the game, except for Elder Bott, who I got to really play against. It was a lot of fun, I was very glad that we got to do it, there's a good chance we'll get to do it another couple of times this week, too. We learned the cup song to participate in a ward activity, it took me forever to get the rhythm down, but now I can pretty reliably do it. We also had dinner with a Brasilian family tonight which meant that I got to spend a lot of time speaking Portuguese which was amazing. I especially loved that Irma because she knows a lot of Brazilian recipes, which means I have a lot to learn from her. Tonight she taught us how to make pastels which was awesome to learn, that was something I always wished I could do but was never good at, so to have this lady teach me so much was awesome.

9/10/2020

The most exciting part of today was probably when I broke into our Sister's home by climbing through the window on their second floor so that we could search their stuff and take their car keys. Wow! That confession felt so good, I guess that means that I don't have to worry about repenting of that now. I'm just kidding, now that everyone thinks that I'm a terrible person, I should probably explain our motives. It all started this morning when we were coming back from playing basketball. We were driving up the hill that leads to our house, and our neighbor's house, the Sisters. At about 7:40, Elders Bott, Davenport, Morse, and I were on that hill to our house, and saw the Sisters walking down the hill. After dropping us off, the Elders started back down the hill to go to their house when they passed the Sisters running back up the hill to their house. One of the Sisters had an existing knee injury, having sprained her knee two weeks prior. At about 7:50 We get a call from the Sister who hadn't sprained her knee, freaking out. She quickly hung up on us, panicked, and it wasn't until an hour later that we found out the knee injury Sister had re-hurt her knee, and was taken by paramedics to the hospital, where she's now going to have surgery. Those Sisters share a car with two other Sisters, and because the ones who got sent to the hospital had the keys, Morse and I were tasked with retrieving the car from their house and taking it to the other Sisters so that they wouldn't spend the next week biking in the rain. Easy task, right? We thought so too. We get to the house of the Sisters who are in the hospital, and the front door that they always leave unlocked (which breaks mission rules and is just a generally bad idea), is locked. Morse being ready for an adventure, suggests that he boosts me up to the second story so we could check to see if their windows were unlocked (very bad idea (climbing their roof to check their windows, not Morse boosting me)). He couldn't quite get me up, but we found a step ladder in their garage which was slightly taller and just barely enough to get me up onto the roof. I checked their room window which was not unlocked, and then saw their bathroom one. Missionary houses, for some reason, don't have fans in the bathroom, which means if you take a shower that the moisture will damage the walls, so we just leave the window open when we shower. That window, for good privacy reasons, is pretty high up and a maximum of one foot wide by two feet tall. Fortunately, that's the perfect size for me to squeeze through. using that window I was able to leave  lots of muddy footprints in their bathtub that's sure to confuse them when they get back, but more importantly, get inside the house and unlock the door to let Morse in. Then we began the search for the car key. Eventually we found their spare, but it didn't have a key fob, and since the cars don't use a physical key, just the presence of a fob to start, that didn't get us anywhere, so tomorrow we'll have to go get the fob from the Sisters. It wasn't a complete bust, we got the house key to make reentry easy, and the excitement of being houseburglars for a night.

9/11/2020

The only really good thing that happened today was that our Sisters came home from the hospital. They found some mystery muddy tracks going down the wall from the window in their bathroom into their bathtub which confused them, and a toilet seat that was left up by a couple of not-so-careful burglars who decided to use the bathroom of the house they had broken into. We got to be a part of our nightly devotional, and we got another person to start actively using our ward page, which were very good things.

9/12/2020

Today was an eventful day. We had a service project after basketball today where we pulled weeds that were bigger than I thought could possibly exist. The family made us an incredible breakfast afterwards, which I was very grateful for. Afterwards we booked it over to the church to show up for a training with the mission over Zoom. Morse and I had to do that thing where we just threw our white shirts and ties over our service clothes. We sat very still for the whole meeting so that we wouldn't ruin the facade by showing our shorts or how otherwise unprepared we were. Because the other Elders we share a car with had service after us, we ended up not showering and getting ready for the day until 2:00. By the time that we had finished lunch and were back on the road, we were just about ready to have dinner. After dinner we had to drop off a couple of member lists to people who had agreed to help us identify the less actives in our ward. When we swung by one of the families they also gave us a lot of eggs which was very kind of them. They taught us that eggs didn't actually have to be refrigerated, doing so just neutralizes the already low chances of an egg going rotten. I should say, they would have like to teach us that, but Morse and I both came from serving in third world countries where eggs were never refrigerated because fridge space was significantly less than what we have here and too precious to use on eggs, so Morse and I just smiled and nodded and looked at each other while  they informed us about these great revelations.

9/13/2020

Today was great! This was the first week we were able to go to church since I got here since the wards are on a three week rotation. It was wonderful to get to meet so many people, our interactions at church instantly doubled the number of people I knew, and gave us a lot of new options for working. A guy gave a talk today about the importance of doing missionary work by taking care of the missionaries. He painted us as all just being a bunch of struggling missionaries, which some are more than others, but the ward was way more outgoing to us afterwards, so maybe trying to get their pity was the right way to go. We did a practice lesson with Elder Whitesides in Spanish, but it was kind of sad because he's leaving for Salt Lake on Tuesday, so this was the last time we got to see him. We practiced the plan of salvation so I made sure to ask all the important questions like, "Who was Lilian?", "What's the difference between spirit paradise and prison?" and, "Do 'Mormons' believe in hell?". I shared all the great questions that I had received in Brazil, and while I asked these Elder Morse just smiled while Elder Whitesides looked confused. Elder Morse very masterfully responded to all of my questions, and we were able to prep Elder Whitesides for some of the more difficult questions that he was going to get in the field.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a verse that had gained new meaning for me, in Helaman 3:28 we read: Yea, thus we see that the gate of heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God.

The great event that inspired this verse was when the prophet Helaman witnessed tens of thousands of people uniting themselves under the banner that is Jesus Christ. Alongside Helaman I testify that heaven's gate truly is open to all, to access heaven, blessings, and God's love all we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ. As we exercise our faith, we will always have access to heaven's help.

Chapter 10: The Mission Wants To Kill My Comp

8/31/2020

Today was an awesome Pday! We got to play basketball with the other Elders for a few hours which is apparently a tradition in this district, so we're going to have a lot of very fun Pdays in the near future. The games of basketball we played today were pretty awesome, I did a lot better than I thought I would  that I'd never really competitively played before. I ended up not being a detriment to our team, and had a couple great plays which was fun. We also filmed a video tonight, which was fun. Some of the material was stuff that Johnson and I made but never used, so tonight we assembled it so that we could make use of it in our video. The funniest part of the day was when Elder Morse got a charlie horse during the prayer in our missionwide devotional, he started crying out in pain in the middle of the prayer and begged for "the sweet release of death" which kind of ruined the prayer, but it was a pretty hilarious experience. 

9/1/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We had a service project this morning where we learned to channel our inner gardner as we went about the work of removing "deadheads". We gave this guy's yard a complete makeover, alongside the Sisters who we share an area with. The family was really grateful, and we made another connection which was awesome. We taught a couple of lessons today, and restarted our testimony video project in this area, which I'm really excited about. The lessons we shared were really powerful, there were not many dry eyes when we gave our message, it was really cool to see that we could still make some meaningful impact on those members, even if we don't have a ton of investigators to teach. After one of our lessons tonight, we had an  old guy call out to us from across the street as we were walking back to our car. As we approached, we started talking to him about the neighborhood, before I saw in his garage a mountain of paintings. Well, it didn't take long for us to form a bond as we began to discuss the painting world, and when I showed him my paintings, he took even more interest in us. He pointed at my heart and said "don't give up painting, I can see you still have a lot of undone work in there". Which was a nice comment, my work felt very inferior to his, but it was nice of him to be so encouraging of me. After our lessons, we had about 15 spare minutes, so we went and dunked on the 7 foot hoops at the local children's park. It must have been quite a sight to see the missionaries at a park, slamming balls through the hoop over and over, but we had a fun time.

9/2/2020

Today was pretty good. We had another service project this morning where we got to help a lady move. We're all getting pretty good at tetris because this is the third (I think?) person we've helped move in the last week. I'm not so sure how I feel about these service projects, you feel good while serving these people for a bit, but your numbers gradually shrink leaving you with fewer and fewer interested members. I guess the real long term "service" would be to scare away the families who are trying to buy the houses of our ward members so that we always have lots of people to teach. Other than service, we didn't make a ton of progress. We tried to work on Facebook, I reached out on a Portuguese speaking group in Colorado, but Facebook has been a little bit dangerous for missionaries lately, so our President told us to back off a bit. We would like to work with our ward members more, but we've called through the entire list twice already, and we're starting to run the risk of bothering them. We had a meeting with our Bishop tonight, but it wasn't everything that we were hoping for, he's struggling with ward-wide communication too, and doesn't have a lot of tips for us. We got some news that the mission is starting to relax COVID rules a bit, though, so that's nice.

9/3/2020

Today was fun. We taught a lesson to a family who, according to Elder Morse, is one of our "three solid families". So we don't have the biggest teaching  pools yet, but we do have some incredible members. We printed off the photos of Morse and I today to pass out to our less active members and got the notes all ready, so all that's left to do is address them and pass them out tomorrow. We really hope this goes a long way with connecting us with the less active members of our ward, because this is the last idea I have for getting in touch with them. Tomorrow will probably determine the way that the rest of our transfer goes. If we have a lot of success, the rest of our transfer will be very successful. If we don't have a lot of success, we're going to have a very difficult next few weeks. Today I prayed that we would have dinner, and food randomly showed up at our door, which was nothing short of a miracle.

9/4/2020

Today was a very exciting day, I discovered that my happiness is directly proportional to how many dinners we have, because tonight we had two (I love State-side missions), and I'm twice as happy as normal. Just kidding, we did have two dinners, but I'm happy because of how well everything went today. We got to teach a couple of lessons, and meet with our ward mission leader. When we met with the ward mission leader's family we made some awesome connections with their six kids. The oldest likes to paint, and the youngest is one of the most adorable kids you'll ever meet. Then, later tonight, Sister Whitesides posted her testimony on the ward page! We didn't even follow up yet, and yet she still posted an incredible testimony. We were super excited and made sure to thank her profusely. The Sisters took notice of our success and felt bad that they hadn't had some of the same ideas as us, so we also went over tonight to try to give them some pointers and find ways that they could be creative in their work too. We're going to start to try to practice teaching with them to better our teaching skills and help them with theirs as well. Elder Morse and I tactfully presented our help behind a couple of smoothies Elder Morse had made, and once they accepted the Morse's smoothie trojan horse, they were stuck with the rest of our help as well. We also did a service project today and I pulled out the weirdest weeds, they grew out of these bulbs that were riddled with holes. Those weeds actually looked pretty freaky.

9/5/2020

Today was pretty fun. I got to do a lot of studies today since Elder Morse is preparing to return home and has to do a study called "My Plan". "My Plan" is  essentially the mission's way of making sure that everyone goes home trunky, I keep hearing muttering from Morse about pictures of missionaries with babies in their arms. Weird. I also had a prodigal son feast today where, even though I'm wicked, I got to have some awesome food because of a package mix-up where food got delivered to our house, and the owner told us to keep it because it wasn't worth their effort. That was pretty much the modern day equivalent of killing the 'fatted calf'. We also had a really cool lesson and dinner with the Whitesides tonight. The lesson was cool, Elder Morse thanked Sister Whitesides for her testimony while roasting Brother Whitesides and Elder Whitesides for not sharing their testimonies. At dinner I found out Bryan Whitesides grew up in Federal Way, Washington, same as my dad, knew my dad's family, and dated my Aunt Alydia, which was pretty awesome. That was pretty much all we talked about all dinner. They knew my entire family which was pretty freaky/awesome (I haven't decided which yet). We had a great district counsel over Zoom today, since we only listen to them and don't interact much with them the other three Elders and I made some copies of Alma and Amulek coloring pages and colored them in. I drew Alma and Amulek fighting demons, and Alma was super buff. It was a very fun night.

9/6/2020

Today was a blast. Our ward didn't meet today so we got to take the Sacrament with our District. Because today was a fast Sunday I got to devote a lot more time to studying than usual, which was awesome. Fast Sundays are pretty much my favorite days in the mission, these are the days when I learn the most. We had a lot of fun getting to talk to the other missionaries, which was good because I hadn't really connected with them yet, so to start to find some common ground with them was good. We had another incredibly Spiritual dinner where Morse and I gave a thought that blew anything I've ever done before out of the water. Morse and I both have a lot of experience which makes it a lot easier to be confident and speak with the Spirit. Usually a weak missionary is paired with a strong one, but I feel like both Morse and I are pretty strong, and it makes for some awesome moments, and incredible connections with the members. Because we really bring the Spirit in with the messages we share, the members want to hear from us and they want us to be in their homes. Tonight we got told from the Brother we had dinner with that we better start making plans to stop by if something ever falls through. He made us promise multiple times which was really cool, it's a good feeling to be wanted. We also recorded a Come Follow Me video for our ward which was a lot of fun, and we invited the Sisters to star in it too. I don't think they've recorded their part yet, but its okay, they've got a little bit more time until tomorrow night when we post.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a miracle that happened this week that shows just how much God is watching out for all of us. We have been strapped for cash these past few weeks and didn't have enough for food in our house. I said a prayer that we would have food to eat, and a box showed up at our house, a misdelivery, of food. We contacted the owner, and they said that there was no way for us to get it to them and told us to enjoy it. That was nothing short of a miracle. God really is watching over all of us, prayers of faith have true power, and as you pray with faith this week, your prayers will be answered as well.

Chapter 9: Transferred! ...Again...

8/24/2020

Today I found out that I'm going to be transferred to the Grand Junction West zone to serve in the Monument 2 area.

8/25/2020

Today we had to say a lot of goodbyes, it was heartbreaking. This is why I struggle with transfers so much. We did a goodbye lesson with Brother Hightower who at the end said, "come give me a hug, Brian (he never quite got the "Elder" thing) and then he gave me the best pep-talk ever because he knew that I was pretty disappointed to be leaving this area after only five weeks. I also went and talked to the Vincents who have taught me so much about the Gospel while I've been here, that was another hard goodbye. We also talked to Brother Beutler and he started telling me about some of the spiritual gifts he'd seen in me, and I just about lost it, I love these people so much, it's horrible to think about leaving them.

8/26/2020

Today went up in flames. We spent all day trying to work on a video for our Facebook post on Friday. We really wanted to show how one testimony, or one light, can make a difference. We essentially made the fire equivalent of dominos. We tied string to candle wicks and hoped that by placing a small candle at the bottom of the course we wanted the fire to consume, it would nicely go along the string and the connecting candles and be a powerful object lesson. Well, what we really illustrated was that there was a good reason for the rules that Elders couldn't use open flames, we had permission to light the candles, but definitely not the bonfire that resulted from a single small flame... I was always cursed because I was too good at building large fires, so today when we needed a nice, small orderly one, that didn't go very well. We got a pretty funny video of it, though, complete with Johnson screaming in the background as we tried to put out flaming alcohol with a water bottle. It was interesting, and definitely the weirdest "last day" I've ever had.

8/27/2020

Today was pretty awesome! We woke up this morning and immediately started our task list for our busy day. The first item was to clean up the charred remains of yesterday's filming project from the garage. I then finished packing, and then we headed off to Uncompaghre 1 to pay a goodbye visit to Pack and Fisher. We were all really sad to part, but the rest of the day was very happy. We walked up to transfers, and my whole district from melody lane was there, I walked up to them as they cheered, and we were reunited. Collins made a comment about the "prodigal son" and that was definitely the way I felt, it was so good to see those Elders and Sisters again. Eventually my comp came, and then we set off to our beloved new area, Monument 2 in Grand Junction West. I was pretty excited to be off and to come to this new area. This new area is so cool, we have a couple of missionaries who just finished the online MTC and are awaiting their opportunity to go out to the field, and tonight I got to meet one of them at dinner. He was a really cool Elder, and it sounds like he'll get to tag along for some of our activities which we're pretty excited about. My new companion, Elder Morse, is amazing! This is his last transfer, but he's not trunky or tired at all, which is incredible, I could not be more excited to work with him. Our area is definitely struggling... but we're still excited to be here and to be able to make a difference.

8/28/2020

Today was pretty awesome. Elder Morse and I got to exercise with the Elders that we share a car with which I was pretty excited about, it had been a long time since I'd gotten to play sports with other Elders. We had a quick breakfast afterwards, and then district counsel where I got to meet everyone else in our district. There were a lot of familiar faces, but the one I was most excited about was my District Leader, Elder Collins. It was pretty great to see him and to know that he was doing well. We got to do some Facebook work here, but it's almost dead, people here are less connected than people in Olathe were, and I thought Olathe was as bad as it gets, so this area is really struggling for finding new people. Thankfully, today President announced that we were going to try to switch from a primary focus on Facebook to a primary focus on members, which was much needed, especially for us, given that our area has very little potential for Facebook. We had dinner with the Bowens, one of the counselors in our mission President's presidency. It was a great dinner, and great to get to meet that family. We did have a lot of success in calling members today, we're going to have to start doing more of that, working with the members is definitely going to be the key to our success in this area.

8/29/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We went and did a couple of service projects this morning. The first service project was helping a family move, and they were all very kind to us, thankfully they're not moving out of our area, just the area of the Elders that we share a car with. Is it bad that I'm happy that it isn't our members that are moving? Oh well, our ward is already pretty small, so we couldn't handle our active members moving. The other service project was one for President Bowen; He thought he had a leaky sprinkler system (we Elders are pretty sure it's just runoff water from his hill) that's causing his ground to slowly erode away and sink in a bit, so today we went through and dug up his grass and pipes, looking for a break in them. No break was found, but we did get sufficiently muddy. I was very happy, I couldn't believe digging up someone's grass qualified as service. We wrote notes to our members today, it went so well in Uncompahgre that we decided to give it a try here as well. We wrote the master note up, and then realized that we had a copier at the church and decided to expedite the process. Within the hour we had all of our notes done, which was a huge improvement over the hours that I had previously spent on this project. We went to an Italian Sister's home for dinner tonight. She made pizza (Italian pizza is not the same as American pizza), and so I got to try hotdog, tuna, onion, and unbaked cheese and tomato pizzas. They were all pretty great, I was especially surprised about the hotdog one, I did not have high expectations for that pizza. We shared a message with them afterwards, partially in Italian (we had one of their kids read our verse in Italian), which was cool because it was similar enough to Portuguese that it was pretty easy to understand. We also went out onto the rocks around our house after work tonight, it was awesome to see the constellations amidst all the Colorado mountain scenery.

8/30/2020

Today was a lot of fun. The other Elders had church today, and because the church was occupied (the church is where we do all of our work), and because the Elders had the car, we were stranded at our house. We did all of our studies in the morning to try to make good use of our time, and it worked out really well! I even made some bread during it, and having hot bread made the studies even better. The best part of today was probably the lesson that we got to do with an Elder who's in the MTC right now, he's a Spanish speaking elder, so today we practiced our lessons in Spanish. People were very surprised at how much I could speak (it surprised me too, but they don't need to know that). Reading El Libro De Mormon has taught me an incredible amount. We had an awesome district sacrament, an awesome dinner, and a great devotional tonight, and all of it made for a very spiritual Sunday.

The thought that I wanted to share today comes from the Book of Moses. In his writings we read: And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten, that it was not good that the man should be alone; wherefore, I will make an help meet for him. (Moses 3:18) God always intended for us to walk hard roads, to overcome trials and do difficult things, but He never intended for us to do it alone. We're here to help and guide others in their lives, as well as to be helped in our own. This path of discipleship is not a lonely one, none of us are ever as solitary as we sometimes feel, rather we are always surrounded by angels, on our right hand and on our left, with God Himself being our rearward. With our family, friends, and all of the hosts in heaven, we can stand comforted knowing they that are with us are far greater than they that are against us.