Chapter 18: A Scary Week

10/26/2020

Today was a fun Pday. Fortunately, despite the heavy snows that we had last night it melted off the roads and sidewalks pretty fast, so we were able to get to Walmart without a problem. We had a fun time doing weekly shopping, and at 8am after a freak snowstorm, missionaries were pretty much the only people inside of that building, so we all got to converse about the transformations that happened to the landscape last night. It was the first time a couple Elders and Sisters had really been in snow, so we all had fun listening to the stories of them discovering this new world. I got to talk to my old comp, Elder Liljenquist for a while via Facebook Messenger which was pretty awesome, I was very, very excited to have an opportunity to use my Portuguese, and getting to speak with him was a lot of fun. We talked about the crazy different worlds that we were serving in, and talked about times when I was a horrible companion, and slept through the night while LilJ was violently vomiting. I also got to talk to some of my old friends from Manaus and hear how they were doing. My adopted parents from Manaus and I got to do a video call for a couple of minutes which we were all very excited about. We also got to teach a lesson to the Gebhards tonight. We didn't stay for dinner, but we did enjoy the food that they sent us with, and the chance we had to talk before we had to leave. Then we got to contact our members to finish up the night. It was a great Pday.

10/27/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We got to do a service project with Brother Lewis, and that was definitely the highlight of the day. We were tearing apart his house as quickly as we possibly could, because he had to have it cleared by tomorrow, so where we were sorting things into various different piles before, different groups of stuff to go to different people, tonight we just worked as fast as possible and used our best judgement to sort between "keep" and "trash". That was probably one of the most hectic hours of my life, we moved so quickly, but we did it, we managed to clear out his house in an hour. It was a lot of fun, too, though. He told us some more about his life, his brother's death, the tragedies that had affected his family, and at the end we just told him in a very brief testimony of God's love for Him. That final 30 seconds seemed to have an incredible impact on him, and he sent us some thank you messages later, telling us he wanted to set up a time for a lesson, and of his gratitude for what we had done. It was incredible to see the joy we left him with today, and the hope that was in his eyes.

10/28/2020

Today was the best day ever! I got to go on exchanges with Elder Collins again, and we had another awesome day of memory making missionary service. We did a couple of service projects today, one was at a Uhaul where we worked very fast playing Tetris. We moved everything out of the storage unit as fast as we could, and filled up that truck in the space of about fifteen minutes. The grandpa who was moving himself out was very impressed that we were able to do so much. It was good that we went so fast because we had a lot of lessons today. Collins and I got to teach someone over a phone call lesson and a zoom lesson which was a lot of fun. The phone call lesson had some awkward gaps where we weren't sure if the phone call had dropped or what, we would talk for a bit, wait, not hear anything back from her, and then ask, "are you still there, Sally" to which she'd respond, "oh yes! I was just looking through that scripture you shared again, it sure is a good one". So it wasn't very interactive, but it was still fun. The most fun part of today had to be the other service project we did, though. We went over to this man's house to help him blow out his sprinkler lines before they froze over for the winter, and as we were pulling up Collins said, "I love this dog they have, he's a smart dog, but he's also very dumb" I just looked at him quizzically before he pointed to where the dog was standing next to this pond. The dog started barking wildly as we were pulling up, and after about ten seconds, without any warning, jumped straight into the pond. It was like, 35 degrees outside, it was freezing, and Collins explained it with, "yeah, he recognizes our car, the missionaries were always telling him to jump in, so now he does it whenever he sees us. The dog realized pretty quickly that the pond was absolutely freezing, and so later he would run up like he was going to jump in and freeze there, refusing to jump. I thought he had learned, but the dog still jumped in a couple more times. The part that made today so great though was when Collins and I got to do comp study. We were able to teach each other so much, every time we do exchanges I end up very sad that Collins and I didn't get more time together.

10/29/2020

Today was a good day. Elder Gomez and I got our hopes up that we would have a couple of lessons, but they both fell through. It was kind of disappointing, but at least we got some extra time to try to contact more of our members. We got through like, 20 families tonight, which was probably like, a third of our ward. We also had a combined district counsel today, and I invested a lot more into this one than normal. I talked a lot more about our difficulties, and was much more helpful in answering other's questions than I've been in past times. I'm kind of a rogue missionary, and so I was very surprised of how supportive others were of my answers. I don't know why I thought they wouldn't like what I had to say, I guess I'm just not used to missionaries being so supportive.

10/30/2020

Today we had interviews with President. this was probably the fastest interview I've ever had (ten minutes) but one of the most effective ones, because of how much we were able to get through. I've had a couple of really cool experiences with personal revelation: When I first came out, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I felt months behind where everyone was at, I had no idea what our mission's goals were or what all of the plans that everyone so frequently referenced were. Everything seemed very complicated to me, and I was unsure how I would catch up to everyone. Instead of focusing on everything I didn't have, though, I tried to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, and those promptings led me to work effectively in my area. The things Collins and I would focus on were then the things that the mission would move onto. It was incredible to see that the Spirit would guide us on how to work in our area despite all of our weaknesses. Because of the Spirit, we were able to work harmoniously with our mission. A couple of weeks ago, I felt like it was important to record a video for my Mission President focusing on helping Elders and Sisters to teach with power. It seemed like a weird prompting to follow, but I did it. Then, a couple of days ago, we got the release of what our mission was going to be focusing on for the month of November. It was exactly what I'd talked about. Maybe that exercise was just to strengthen myself, but I asked my President to watch the video I recorded and see if it's something he believes to be equally important for our mission. I might have just signed myself up for a talk in front of ~300 Elders and Sisters. The interview I had with President was also very sweet today. I got a lot more out of it than most other Elders and Sisters were afforded. I was very grateful for the time that President took to talk to me.

10/31/2020

Happy Halloween! We ran around today doing as many service projects as we could. We got to help rake leaves, spear them with pitchforks, take apart tree limbs that fell because of the snowstorm, and clean the bigger pieces to be used as firewood. We also got to teach a lesson to the Hillan family today, they gave us acai, which was an incredible treat. We were told to be home by 6:00 tonight, so at about seven we opened up our garage door, sat their doing studies, and set up a bowl of candy in our driveway for trick-or-treaters to enjoy. Elder Gomez did his studies in the dinosaur costume Brother Lewis gave to us, and that costume was like the lighthouse for trick-or-treaters, they seemed to flock to him. Probably only like, 15 kids showed up, but it was still pretty cool. We also had an opportunity to talk to our neighbors, they thought it was so cool that we as missionaries were trying to do stuff to support the neighborhood, and so we earned a lot of friends tonight. We also got to do a call with our District tonight, which was a fun way to end the spooky day.

11/1/2020

We had a great church meeting today. We actually had a lot of meetings today, and the most important one was probably our Ward Council meeting. We presented a Ward Mission Plan of how we wanted to work better in the area. Generally it's better if the Ward creates this plan, than if the missionaries do, so I tried to do a really good job of having the Ward pick the goals, and then we just helped them make plans about how to do it. Our plans ended up being centered around weekly lessons with the missionaries where the families we're meeting with invite one other family, an active family, less active, or nonmember family. We wanted to focus on maximizing our effort as families in small and simple ways that would push our families, but were still achievable. We got to teach Sunday school to the 12-14 year old class, and a couple lessons to families. One of the families we taught ended up inviting too many people, which was a good problem to have. We gave our district leader a call because the number of people who were there broke COVID rules, but it worked out because the kids left and we were able to do it outside. We also got to walk back from our dinner tonight which ended up being an hour long walk, and brought me a lot of solace, feeling like I wasn't missing out on too much from Brazil.

Today I wanted to share a message that comes from 1 Samuel 16:7, "the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart". Jesus Christ is our perfect exemplar, He teaches us how to see others. It's my promise that as we seek to see others in a more Christlike way, looking on their hearts and seeing them as God does, we'll be blessed to come to know those around us as they really are: Sons and daughters of the most high God.