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.