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.