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.
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