Chapter 55: The Two Year Mark

Ashtian's baptism!

7/13/2021

Today was the first day of three for our Zone Conference week. Typically we’ve only been having one day of Zone Conference a transfer, but this one was a special one because it’s going to go all week. Today we were supposed to be combined with our members, but it didn’t go very well. Our Ward Mission Leader doesn’t have an email and that was apparently how our Mission President asked the Ward Mission Leaders for each area to get members to these conferences, which we found out when we sat down for our Zone Conference and we had no members there. Zone Conference was still an awesome opportunity to learn more about how to work with members, though, and we were able to put what we learned into practice with the lessons we learned for the rest of the day.

7/14/2021

Zone Conference day two: Today we got to learn more about using Facebook to do missionary work it was good to talk about some of the areas that are considered weaker for our mission. We got to have a lesson with Ashtian today and talk about how she was feeling in preparation for her baptism. She had finished reading through The Book of Mormon up to 2 Nephi 1, so we read through 2 Nephi 2 with her tonight and it was an awesome experience to talk about how there was happiness and a punishment affixed to each law, and our agency allows us to choose which we will receive.

7/15/2021

Today was our last day of Zone Conference and the best one for Elder Aguirre, Elder Rindlisbacher and myself because we got to go in person and the other ones were just over Zoom. We got to see a lot of people from the neighboring Zones, like Elder Gomez. It was awesome to reunite with him for a while. We got to have a meal in person which I never thought would happen in my time serving as a missionary. I also got to give my departing testimony as a missionary today. We were told that a time range of two minutes would probably be a good time to aim for and I ended up speaking for eight. It was still good though.

7/16/2021

Today was an awesome, but very tiring day. When we were talking to Ashtian about her baptism tomorrow she was pretty excited, and started counting down the hours with us until she would be baptized. We also had a few pickup lessons. We started teaching two of our neighbors, as well as someone who we met at a gas station. The woman from the gas station told us at the start of our message that she had seen a vision of an angel, and that when we spoke to her that we said word for word the same message that the angel had delivered to her. She told us that she had been humbled and wanted to make the changes that we would invite her to do, so we invited her to be baptized, and she accepted. 

7/17/2021

Today was a great day. We found a lot of new people to teach, and we got to see Ashtian be baptized. We had a lot of people attend Ashtian’s baptism, including Sister Papurt, and she seemed to enjoy the baptism as well. Ashtian was very happy afterwards, and we’re excited for her confirmation tomorrow. The baptism was a really neat experience, and we were so proud to see Ashtian’s faith displayed so proudly. She’s been doing such a great job with reading from The Book of Mormon, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone more prepared to be baptized.

7/18/2021

Today Ashtian was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Ashtian received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and we got to participate in the ordinance. Elder Rindlisbacher and I also got to give talks today in church. I didn’t realize it but I accidentally spoke for twenty minutes instead of ten. It all worked out okay, though. Afterwards I heard from a couple of investigators that we had there, they told me, “Brother Anderson, I don’t care what you do for the rest of your life, but you need to continue with the preaching of the word”. So at least talking for twenty minutes didn’t scare our investigators away.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a verse that stuck out to me from 2 Nephi 20:27. This verse is one that talks about the spiritual liberation we can receive through Jesus Christ: And it shall come to pass in that day that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

Jesus Christ is no longer just "The Anointed One", or The Messiah, rather, He is The Anointing one and anoints us that we might be able to become joint-heirs with Him, as we jointly work to overcome the yoke of sin.

Chapter 54: The Plan of Salvation

7/6/2021

Today was a really busy day for us. We had a lot of meetings today. We had our District Council which I really enjoyed because Elder Rindlisbacher and I are the oldest ones there, and so we get to look really wise (even though we really aren’t) and pass on all the tips and knowledge we’ve learned to the new missionaries. We also got to have our departing interviews with President Rees today, so I got to finally sit down with him for a good amount of time and talk to him. That was definitely the best interview I’ve ever had with him. When we started he asked if there was anything that I wanted to know, and I’m sure my eyes got real big as I asked in disbelief, “anything?” President Rees smiled as he nodded and said, “anything.” So needless to say I really enjoyed our interview.

7/7/2021

Today we got to help out at a service that was unusual: We got to help a farmer with the process of thinning his apple orchard. The farmer hadn’t been able to get any help, and we only had about an hour, but we were able to make a pretty sizeable dent in the orchard between the three of us. We also went to pick up our Tacoma from the shop today, and it was in great condition, except that there seemed to be a malfunction between the car’s computer and the Mission’s computer tracking system in the car. The system gives us feedback on how we’re driving, and it was acting hypersensitive. It told me I was driving aggressively 20 times (we counted, it was comical). Getting two “aggressive” warnings is considered a felony in our mission, so we were a little nervous when we called our vehicle coordinator to tell him that the car was overreacting to our driving.

7/8/2021

Today Elder Aguirre and I went on exchanges with Elder Hicks. We had a lot of lessons, and it was pretty cool to see Elder Hicks’ teaching style. It’s interesting to see that you never get to a point where you stop learning about being a missionary, working with new people always brings surprises, and today was no exception. We also got to see just how much our members love us today, it seemed like every lesson we left was with our arms full of goods to cook with and make our lives a little bit easier. Everyone in our Ward is very concerned for the well-being of the missionaries.

7/9/2021

Today we had a lesson with a man named Benjamin. Benjamin had recently moved to the area and was living next door to some of our other investigators. When we went by one evening and our appointment had fallen through we saw Benjamin outside and and stopped to talk to him for a few minutes. Our lesson tonight was really cool, because Benjamin would tell us something that he believed, and he was obviously listening to the Light of Christ, so we were able to show him in the scriptures where it said what he was talking about. He really liked the tour that we gave him through the scriptures and all that we taught him about the Gospel.

7/10/2021

Today was awesome. We taught a lesson on the plan of salvation to a couple of people who we had never met before. It took a little bit to set the lesson up (when we knocked the wife answered and her husband wasn’t home so we had to come back a couple of times to show up when he was there), once we set the lesson up though we were so glad we had gone through the effort for it, that lesson was really cool. We taught the plan of salvation like we never had before and it really connected to the people that we were teaching. It was awesome to see them latch on to such important doctrines.

7/11/2021

Today was great, we had a lesson with Coleman and finished up the message of the Restoration with him. When we talked to Coleman he was really engaged, he thought that it was really cool how The Book of Mormon fit into his knowledge of the history of the Americas. Everyone at church was also really excited today because Ashtian’s baptism was scheduled for next Saturday and announced over the pulpit. We were really glad that they announced it because a lot of people didn’t know who Ashtian was and this helped her to get some recognition from everyone in the Ward. Everyone in the Ward was also much more excited to get to know her once they found out about her baptism and that she would be a permanent member.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a couple of verses from a chapter I've been studying all week, these verses come from Alma 42:

21 And if there was no law given, if men sinned what could justice do, or mercy either, for they would have no claim upon the creature?

22 But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God.

These verses teach the entire plan of salvation. We were victims of the laws that we broke, we had no way to save ourselves, and no way to undo the damaging effects of sin, but there was One who would pay the price for us, Jesus Christ would answer the ends of justice and extend mercy to all who would accept Him as their lawgiver. He has answered the ends of the law for us so that we might not have to suffer as He did. I pray that we will all accept Him as our lawgiver, because I don't think there's anything more tragic than a twice paid-for punishment.

Chapter 53: Fishers of Men

P-day Fly Fishing Activity!

6/30/2021

Today we got to have another lesson with Ashtian. We went over a baptismal plan with her and were able to show her how much she had learned with us, which she seemed to really like. We got to teach about a lot of the commandments and explained the importance of prayer and scripture study, showing that these were tools God had given us to communicate with Him. On top of that, Ashtian said the closing prayer, and it was one of the most humble things I had ever heard; In her prayer she thanked God for sending the missionaries to teach her. Most people don’t like seeing us, a few 19-20 year old missionaries as teachers, but she was grateful for us.

7/1/2021

Today was a busy day. The only lessons that went through were with nonmembers, but those are the most important ones so I suppose everything worked out okay. Our Ward Mission Leader was absolutely amazing, we needed someone to come to one of our lessons with us and he told us, “give me an hour and I’ll be there”. He showed up true to his word and we were able to have our lesson right when we hoped we would be able to. 

7/2/2021

Today was a great day for lessons, but also for a lot of unusual events that showed us how much God is watching over us as missionaries. We passed by a yard sale today and I saw that there were a lot of fishing supplies laid out. These fishing supplies interested me because we’ve made plans to go fishing with our District on Pday, but I still didn’t have a rod, a reel, or any of the other numerous pieces of equipment that the professionals had. I asked the man running the yard sale about the rods and he took my companions and I to his shed where he loaded us up on supplies free of charge, everything that we could need alongside a handshake and a desire that we would keep helping others too. That was pretty heart-warming.

7/3/2021

Because Elder Rindlisbacher and I are approaching the end of our missions we had to work on a project called “My Plan” today, which is about our life after the Mission: Our goals, our hopes, dreams, desires, and plans to get us there. Well, because there isn’t a public computer in Cedaredge, we had to go to Brother Call to ask if he would be willing to let us use his computer. Fortunately he was quite willing, so we stopped by and got to talk to him for a bit. Brother Call is an incredible student of the scriptures, and shared a lot of powerful stuff with me. While Elder Rindlisbacher was working on his plan, I got to talk to Brother Call about some of what I had been learning on my mission and some of the questions that I still had, and having someone I could council with was awesome.

7/4/2021

Today was our fast and testimony meeting, and I got to share my testimony today. We had an investigator there, and while everyone is always incredibly kind to those who bear their testimonies, our investigator’s compliment stood out the most to me, she told me, “this is the worst day ever”, and when I quizzically asked her, “why?” she said, “because your testimony made me cry.” That response was over dramatic and characteristic of her, but a valued compliment nonetheless that she felt The Spirit so strongly while I was bearing my testimony.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a verse that comes from 2nd Nephi 25 verse 13: Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name. 

This verse is such a profound one to me because this last week I learned a lot more about Jesus Christ's crucifixion. A lot of what I learned about was how horrible crucifixion was as a form of death, and how wrong it is that we often picture Christ hanging gracefully on the cross when in reality the cross caused a constant writhing motion from its victim. Despite all of this, I love this verse so much because it points out that Jesus Christ bore the most painful of all deaths which made his Resurrection all the more glorious--and victorious.

Christ lives, and I know that to be true with all my heart.

Chapter 52: A Brazilian Successes

6/21/2021

Today was our Pday, and it was incredible. We got to go to Black Canyon with a member, Brother Tullis took us over to Montrose to get to visit it briefly, and it was quite the sight to behold. Black Canyon is the deepest Canyon in North America, so getting to see it was a beautiful sight. We also got to see a lot of different people that I knew from Uncompahgre, and it was an amazing chance to reflect back on the different people I’ve gotten to connect with over the course of my mission.

6/22/2021

Today I got to go on exchanges with Elder Barstow. It was an awesome experience because I played a different role on exchanges than I normally do. Recently I’ve been trying to help the other missionaries around me to step up to getting to lead more themselves, and then give them tips later on what’s helped me in those situations as well. Elder Barstow really rose to the occasion, and we heard from a lot of members that they really needed to hear what he said, which hopefully helped him to gain more confidence more than anything else.

6/23/2021

Today I un-exchanged with Elder Barstow, we got to start teaching a 20 year old girl and arrange a very brief meeting to help her meet friends in the area. After our very brief meeting and the tour we gave her of the church building we started exchanges with the other companionship of Elders in our district. Elder Aguirre and I went with Elder Rhoten. Elder Rhoten is brand new on the mission so Elder Aguirre and I are excited to spend the day with him and get to learn more with him.

6/24/2021

Today we had a spiritually Earth-shaking lesson. We met Troy, Linda, and Julia, who live in a motel with some close family members. Troy was a baptized member of the Church, but we didn’t know that at the beginning of the lesson. We started talking to the family about the Plan of Salvation, and the father mentioned that he believed that this Earth was a time to learn to use our agency to prepare to meet God, a time to repent. I asked him how he knew that and Troy told us that it was just a feeling he had when he had thought about why he was here on Earth. I testified to him that he had been taught by the Spirit, he was like the prophets of old, God had taken it upon Himself to personally teach Troy, and he because he recognized the Spirit he knew truths that the wise often did not. When we shared that with him his countenance changed. He had been laughing the whole time, cracking jokes, and he said that felt like a spiritual slap in the face, the Spirit testified to Troy and he knew it was true. We extended a baptismal invitation to his family, invited them to church, to read from The Book of Mormon, and to pray, and they were excited to do it, they were so excited to read, they wanted us to come prepare them for church, they wanted to get baptized. They were so excited.

6/25/2021

Tonight we had a gun pulled on us. We were visiting the house of one of our potential investigators who we hadn’t had a lot of contact with, and showed up to her house pretty late. We were visiting a lot of other nonmembers in the area, and so we came by much later than we originally intended to. When we knocked on the door a woman called out on the other side asking what we wanted, I called back to her by “Sister” and her name, and then she immediately relaxed and opened the door, showing us the gun she was ready to shoot us with. I wasn’t as concerned about the gun as I was when she started waving it around carelessly saying that there were a lot of crazy people in the area, and started rambling so fast that I wasn’t completely sure whether she was as stable as she thought she was. 

6/26/2021

We spent all of today running around. Today was pretty hectic, we had a lot of people that we wanted to go and visit. In the process we got to meet some people on the road, and they were interested to talk to us since it had been so long since they had seen missionaries out on the road talking to people. We talked a lot about how the work was going now that COVID’s dying down here on the Western Slopes of Colorado, and we got a lot of “thank you”s for our efforts to bring the Gospel to the world. Everyone was very kind today.

6/27/2021

Today we had two of our friends come to church with us today! Deanie Papurt and Ashtian Turner came to church with us today. They had a great time, especially Ashtian. Ashtian had a lot of friends there in church from her high school, it was very convenient that so many were visiting that day, and having so many friends helped her to feel included, especially since that was her first time. We also got invited to a member’s dinner party for the Ward tonight, and they asked me to play music for them during it. I tried mixing up some of the songs I know like, “Families Can Be Together Forever”, and everyone loved it. 

Today the thought that I wanted to share comes from Jacob chapter 4 verse 13.

"The Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls. But behold, we are not witnesses alone in these things; for God also spake them unto prophets of old."

If we're willing to listen to the Spirit we can learn of that which has happened in the past as well as what will happen. The Spirit gives freely to all who ask. The commandment to ask combined with the promise that we will receive is one of the most repeated commandments in our recorded standard works. The righteous desires of our hearts are given us in accordance with our faith.

Chapter 51: "My Children Think They Are Smart, But They Are Stupid" -My New Favorite Member

 Elder Aguirre, Anderson, and Elder Eden with his companion

Elder A with Brother Hightower, a beloved ward member from a former area

Elder A with Sister Thompson, another special ward member from a former area

Elder Pope, Elder A, and Elder Eden - all formerly from the Bothell Washington Stake

Hike at the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park on Pday with a family from Cedaredge

6/15/2021

Today we had a discussion with some of the Pastors who were there when Jake wanted to bash with us last week. I say that we discussed because this was the first reasonable conversation I’ve had with people who don’t like what we teach. When we listened to them talk we were amazed. They didn’t believe in an afterlife which we thought was a part of Christianity 101. We talked about the Resurrection, Judgement, Heaven, Hell, they didn’t believe in any of it. They believed everything, like the Resurrection, was to happen temporally here on Earth. We talked about the kingdom God was building up and how it was one that was prophesied to “never be destroyed” and I pointed out that in thousands/millions of years that the sun was going to explode and consume the Earth, the promised kingdom couldn’t be a temporal one. His response was, “people say that kind of stuff all the time, that’s never going to happen”. The most important part though was that we invited them to pray about what we discussed and they were unwilling to, so we won’t be going back. Just some crazy stuff.

6/16/2021

Today we had a service project with a woman who told us that she had about 700 pounds of aluminum cans and dog droppings she needed shoveled. When she told us that I was imagining a 50/50 split between the two groups of items to shovel, but fortunately it was really only aluminum cans and plastic bottles. We spent about an hour picking out all the bottles from the cans and then shoveled the massive number of cans into every garbage bag we could get our hands on. When she told us that she had 700 pounds of cans I thought she was likely overestimating, but after carrying the number of heavy bags of cans that we did I think she might not have guessed high enough.

6/17/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We got to pick up the new companion that we’ll be staying with for the next six weeks, Elder Rinlisbacher. It’s fun to be in a trio, this is an experience that I never thought that I’d have, so even if it’s only for a little bit it’s still fun to get to be a part of. We got to have a lesson with Deanie today where we invited her to church. Her friend passed away this past week so understandably she’ll be at the funeral this Sunday but she expressed interest in coming this next week.

6/18/2021

Today was a great day. We got to do weekly planning and it was so much more enjoyable with a trio than it usually is with only two people. When you only have a couple of people it can be very easy to get into a routine of sharing the same ideas. Having a new companion, having a third, experienced missionary to work alongside us made our planning today a much more spectacular experience.

6/19/2021

Today was one of the busiest days of my mission. We found another person today through our in person contacting efforts, and it was cool because  it was someone that we had been talking to over Facebook a few weeks ago. Because we had been talking to her over Facebook she was really excited once we started talking to her in person, and we got her to commit to coming to church tomorrow. That happened before 10:00. At about 10:10 the woman who was interested in coming to church tomorrow told us it might not work out after all because she didn’t even have a place to stay the night. Our amazing Ward Mission Leader and his wife told us we could invite her to their house to spend the night. They just acted out the song, “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief”, and have a special spot in heaven reserved for them after what they did.

6/20/2021

Today was a great day. Unfortunately we didn’t have anyone come to church with us, but we did find someone new. We had set up a lesson with one of our new members, Sister Parker, and her friend Coleman stopped by while we were there. We invited him in for the lesson, and he consented to stay. Coleman told us that he had some really hard questions for us, and asked us about the trinity. We told him it was a false doctrine, and he was amazed, and listened to everything we taught, and loved it. We did feel bad though because at 7:40 he asked if he could tell us a story. At 7:45 we had another lesson, but he had just listened to us and we didn’t want him to feel like we didn’t care about what he had to say, so we consented figuring that if we were a couple minutes late to a lesson with one of our members that they would understand. At 8:28 he finished telling us his life story, and I was amazed that he had out-talked the three of us. We apologized profusely to the member who we had completely flaked on.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share Malachi 3:3. This verse is one that applies to each of us as we bring the sacrifice of our hearts to the Savior.

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

We can do a lot of good on our own, but the Savior takes us as we are and makes us even better. When we let Him purify our hearts and our sacrifices, we'll find that we're capable of offering a lot more than we ever could on our own.

Chapter 50: Taxation by Cinnamon Rolls

6/8/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We had a district council and I offered to play one of the hymns that I know pretty well so that we could sing a new song instead of only cycling through the same four hymns that our other piano player knows. I wish I could say that I did an amazing job, but it turns out that playing with people singing is harder in just about every way than I thought possible. I played through “We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet” completely as a refresher and I did it really fast and played perfectly the first time. Then when everyone joined in I realized I was going too fast so I slowed down and did a horrible job of playing, I made so many mistakes. Oh well, good thing I only have to live with my embarrassment for one more week since next week is the last time that I’ll see some of them.

6/9/2021

Today was a great day, we ended up getting to be a part of a service project today. We talked to the family we were doing service for afterwards, they invited us to sit down and we had a mini lesson outside of our service. The family was really surprised to hear that we weren’t getting paid at all to help out, but were in fact paying to be able to serve them. We had a lot of fun with our lessons and were able to stop by the young men’s activity tonight. They made cinnamon rolls, and so we got to eat cinnamon rolls for our “missionary activity” tonight. This form of taxation is great, we need to hang around the young men more often.

6/10/2021

Today we had a bible bash with three different pastors at the same time. Obviously that was not the ideal situation to be in, that’s the type of situation that you avoid at all costs, but looking back it was pretty funny. We had a member come along with us, which might be why that pastor invited other pastors as well. Jake was the person who we were really there to meet with, and I think he felt like he had to put on a show for the other pastors at how good at defending his faith he was. Unfortunately he wasn’t very good at it. He threw old questions we had already answered with him at us and so we just re-gave him the answers. We were pretty disappointed afterwards because Jake had been progressing a lot, but it was obvious after that meeting that we would not be going back.

6/11/2021

Today we had another lesson with Deanie. We talked about the first vision and gave her a copy of the Restoration 

Proclamation which she seemed to really like. The whole situation was pretty awesome because we were able to invite her to the church and we held our meeting there. We took her on a tour around the church building and she seemed to really love it. We had our meeting with two different couples as well: The Klines returned for another meeting and our Ward Mission Leader and his wife joined in as well. The lesson was a little difficult to guide, but we got to the end, which is all that matters.

6/12/2021

Tonight we had an activity called Ward Fun Night. It was an activity that was meant to be a social opportunity for the families, especially the younger families in the Ward. Unfortunately we only have a couple of “younger families” in this ward and only one of them showed up, which wasn’t great, but that one family is having a baptism tomorrow so they brought all of their friends from out of state which made the activity much bigger, in the end, than it normally would have been. Our lessons today went very well, and we had a lot of people asking for help with doing missionary work which was really cool.

6/13/2021

Today we had Ward council, and Ward correlation. The goal of one meeting was to talk about how the missionaries can help the Ward, and the goal of the other was to talk about how the Ward can help the missionaries. There was a baptism that happened today for one of the little boys in the Ward, and otherwise we spent most of our time with Bishop. Bishop was teaching the lesson which we attended, and we spent a longer amount of time at his house than usual. Bishop’s kids were gone and trying to maintain attention with them is always a struggle since there are a couple of youth who really don’t want to be there, but Bishop and his wife have incredible testimonies, and so we got to have a meeting tonight that was unhindered by anyone who might not want to be there.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a verse from 2nd Nephi 31:

7 Know ye not that he was holy? But notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of men that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnesseth unto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments.

One of the ultimate attributes of Christ was his humility. His humility is shown in every aspect of His life, and especially during His Atonement. One of the greatest ways we can learn humility is by obeying the commandments as we strive to become more like Christ. The commandments, combined with Christ's Atonement, are our stepping stones to perfection.

Chapter 49: I Can't Tell You How Much God Loves Me Because Numbers Don't Go That High

6/1/2021

Today was a fun day, but not for missionary work. We had to take our car into the shop today and did so this afternoon expecting to have our car back within a hour or two. Well, we got a call that our car was unsafe to drive, and that they planned on keeping it a lot longer than we originally planned for, perhaps for weeks. We called our district leader and he said that we would be staying in Delta for the night with Uncompahgre with Elder Eden and Elder Bunker. That was a fun opportunity to see Elder Eden.

6/2/2021

Today we spent the morning with Uncompahgre until they took us back up to our apartment. We’ll be getting a car tomorrow from one of our other District companionships, but until then we’re pretty much stranded at our house. Fortunately we were able to walk to the church for youth activities tonight, but the 40 minutes it took us to walk there made me grateful for all the times that we’ve been able to make the drive in five minutes in a car.

6/3/2021

Today we had an awesome combined district council meeting. We got to see all of the Elders and Sisters in our Zone, and we spent a lot less time talking about technique and what it was that we could do than we spent talking about the “why” of what we were doing. There was an opportunity for missionaries who wanted to to share a brief testimony, but I told myself I wasn’t going to get up unless they asked me to since I had (as usual) an excessive amount of preparation and would have talked for no less than 15 minutes. We also got to start exchanges today, and so I got to spend the day with Elder Edwards. Our time together was very enjoyable, I’m going to miss him a lot when he goes home.

6/4/2021

This morning Elder Aguirre and I switched back. We got to do an abbreviated weekly planning session, which I just remembered that we didn’t finish, so we’ll get to wrap it up tomorrow. We got to do a lot of service today, and a lot of work over Facebook. The lessons that we had today also went really well. We found out today that our member meals are officially going away; We will no longer be eating with anyone. This is an opportunity for us to focus less on having our temporal needs taken care of, and making more time for members to be able to focus on missionary work and the more important work of gathering Israel.

6/5/2021

We had another lesson with Deanie today, and it was amazing. We brought fellowship along, Brother and Sister Kline, and they worked flawlessly together with us as we taught the Plan of Salvation to Deanie. We were so proud of Deanie because she kept the commitment we left with her, she read The Book of Mormon! We were so proud of Brother Kline because he’s a recent convert, and he was teaching as if he had been a life-long missionary. His testimony was amazing, and he closed out our meeting today by promising blessings in the name of Jesus Christ. Brother and Sister Kline are working to get to the point to be able to go to the temple, and it is amazing to see them doing missionary work alongside us. I was so proud of Brother Kline, and Sister Kline was too. 

6/6/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We had a youth fireside in our ward that we got to go to. The Bishop asked me to play introduction music as everyone was walking into the chapel, which went pretty well. He then asked if I could play an opening hymn which went… less well. Fortunately it didn’t ruin the fireside too much. I need to practice reading music more, most of the stuff that I play has been by ear, not off a sheet of paper, and so that was a little out of my comfort zone. I also shared a personal experience tonight with a family that we were teaching which is rare for me. I don’t usually share those experiences with others because I feel like it dominates the conversation and makes it impossible to teach in unity with my companion since he doesn’t know those stories like I do. I did recognize afterwards the importance of sharing my testimony and witness, though. My witness is unique, it needs to be shared.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share the transition shown for those who become converted to the Gospel as recorded in Alma 26:15 

Yea, [we] were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought [us] into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and [we] are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work.

The reason why I changed these words to include us is because it doesn't matter how long we've been members of Christ's church for. Until we do the things He asks us to, until we act on them the Gospel will just be a nice idea, it has no power to bring life and joy into our lives until we act on our faith and put it to the test. We can choose to live the Gospel at any time, and as soon as we do we will be brought into Christ's marvellous light.

Chapter 48: New Leads

 

5/26/2021

Today we had lessons all day. It felt good to be busy, and made it easier to feel the Spirit since we were constantly teaching which I was very grateful for.  

5/27/2021

Today was a fun day. We got to help out at a few service projects, one was the food bank that we go to and they were very grateful for our help since they were especially short-staffed today. We didn’t even notice a difference in our efficiency, though. Elder Aguirre and I managed very well ourselves what normally took many other workers to do. We also got to help Sister Dearmond paint her concrete today. She was very grateful for our help, although we were expecting to have a lesson with her so we went over in our normal clothes instead of service clothes. We must have been a sight to behold: Painting in white shirts and ties, fortunately no accidents with clothing happened.

5/28/2021

Today was a good day. We tripled the recommended number of Facebook contacting that our Mission suggests, which was not a great thing to try because those numbers are supposed to help keep us from getting banned by Facebook. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this though, I used to do the same thing and did get banned, but we’re generating a lot more traction on group pages now than we used to, and Facebook is becoming much more lenient with us as a result since we’re obviously not robots.

5/29/2021

Today we picked someone up and the lesson was amazing! Oh my goodness, the person who we met up with was a nonmember with a lengthy teaching record, and on their record was recorded several times that this person was doing well with reading The Book of Mormon. Elder Aguirre and I prayed about our lesson and felt that for some reason we needed to only focus on The Book of Mormon, instead of talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ or Plan of Salvation with her which would have been the logical next steps. When we sat down for our lesson we said that we would briefly summarize the information she likely already knew about The Book of Mormon, but she urged us to go on. We found out that she had never read from the Book of Mormon before, and so we asked her if we could read through a section with her. She agreed and we read through 3rd Nephi 11 with her and she loved it. She solidly committed to reading through The Book of Mormon, and now we’re going to be regularly studying it with her. We’re very excited.

5/30/2021

Our Sacrament meeting today was awesome! We had some really good speakers and I really enjoyed getting to hear from those people. We had been working with the speakers for the last several weeks through some of their difficulties and getting to hear their messages today and ways that they had been overcoming their difficulties and achieving their goals was incredible. I was so proud of them. Elder Aguirre and I also got to teach for our fifth Sunday combined lesson. We talked about missionary work and how we could better participate in it, and the presentation went really well. There was more excitement about missionary work afterwards than I’d ever seen before.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a verse that I was very impressed by this week from Job 13:15

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him."

A willingness to be faithful even in the face of immense persecution and trials is exactly the kind of faith that I want to have, faith to be faithful though the entire world should conspire against me and though I feel abandoned even by God. That is the type of faith that Christ had, that great faith that has been immortalized through Job's words. A complete willingness to humbly submit to Heavenly Father's will is the only way that we can develop that kind of immense faith.

Chapter 47: Victories

 Video about how Satan can deceive

Sister and President Rees with Elder Anderson

The Montrose District (Elder Carter Eden, formerly of the 

Bothell Washington Stake, is also in this picture!)

5/19/2021

Today was a great day. We had an opportunity to meet with a few member families today. The highlight of our lessons was probably when one of the families wasn’t there, and in the process of checking to see if they were in their barn we came across their cows and got to feed and pet their cows for a bit. We also got to pick up a couple of new people through service today. The project went really well and we shared a short thought afterwards on the sacred nature of Christ’s sacrifice that seemed to strike a chord with them.

5/20/2021

Today was great. We had a service project with a nonmember family; we sprayed weeds for them, but since everyone has massive yards and live out in the middle of the country the project was a little daunting and took us a couple of hours. We shared a scripture with them at the end and they seemed to enjoy it and all our help, which we count as a big success. 

5/21/2021

Today was a pretty busy day. We had some service work to do and a lot of lessons. Today was also our day to plan out the rest of our week, which always makes our day busier than normal. We were assigned to make a Facebook post for our area page tomorrow, and ended up making a beautiful 15 second video. This definitely makes my top 5 list for videos that I’ve made on the mission. We also met a new family today and they had a picture perfect yard for painting, so I made sure to take some pictures. They were very friendly with us, so we’ll have to go back and take some more pictures soon.

5/22/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We got to help Sister Dearmond paint her house, and she made us an amazing pizza in return, which was an awesome exchange for us. That saved both of us a lot of time, and we thoroughly enjoyed her superior cooking skills. We also had a power outage happen today and it made for some interesting situations for us, since most of our teaching is happening over Zoom. We ended up driving to a couple different church buildings to find internet access.

5/23/2021

Today we had our church services and a Ward Council meeting. Our meeting went really well, and we were able to discuss the Ward’s plans for reactivation. Today it really felt like we were all on the same page, which was amazing since we were falling short for so long. Today our whole Ward decided to step up, and that we were going to do even better things together. We also discussed as a Mission about ways that we were going to move forward, principally in what sounded like the permanent abolishment of our dinners with members. During COVID members have been providing meals-to-go instead of us eating with them, and tonight our Mission discussed about the very real possibility of permanently taking meals to go rather than eating in homes. While good for friendship, our Mission President worries that meals may take away from the spirit of short, frequent, and powerful interactions, and asked us to consider whether or not that was something that we would be permanently willing to give up.

5/24/2021

Today was our Zone Conference, it was amazing. Definitely one of my favorite Zone Conferences because what we talked about felt really relevant to what we were struggling with and how we would improve.

The scripture that I wanted to share today comes from an account of when the Sacrament was administered to a congregation, as recorded in 3rd Nephi 18:9 And it came to pass that they did so, and did drink of it and were filled; and they gave unto the multitude, and they did drink, and they were filled.

Somehow I doubt that the "filling" spoken of here was signifying that they were physically filled, I think that much more likely what is being spoken of here is the spiritual filling that accompanies those who use the Sacrament as a time to reflect on Christ's sacrifice. That reflection leads us to perfection; That reflection completes us, it fills us.

Chapter 46: Losses

This week was a semi-disappointing one. My phone screen broke, which is the reason for my short weekly today, my broken phone screen makes journaling a lot more difficult. We also lost an investigator this week. Cybele's grandparents felt pressured by the commitments that we were making with them, and decided that we would no longer be meeting to teach Cybele. We have increased our focus with the rest of the people we have moving forward though, and are looking forward to seeing the additional people who are put in our path.

One funny story came late Friday night: We were walking back to our apartment and were stopped by a lady asking if we were "Mormons", we corrected her with "Members of the Church of Jesus Christ" and she stared at us blankly. We conceded that "Mormon" was a nickname that the church was known by and she told us, "I knew it! I can spot you Mormons a mile away!" My companion and I looked at each other, dressed in white shirts, ties, and dress slacks, complete with black nametags, wondering what in our appearance could have given away the fact that we were missionaries.

For a Spiritual thought I want to share a verse that we find in the book of 2nd Nephi, as well as Isaiah:

9 Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?

10 Art thou not he who hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a away for the ransomed to pass over?

The strength that Isaiah and Jacob were talking about here was the strength of the Lord, His power: Compassion, mercy, longsuffering, and patience. This power is what gives us the ability to conquer dragons and move the sea, this power is the power that ransoms you and me.

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Chapter 45: Building Up Zion

 5/4/2021

Today was a good day. We had our District Council today, and a man wandered in thinking that we were members of another church. He walked into a church that was full of missionaries, and we found out about him because one Elder went off to use the bathroom at the same moment that he walked in, so we could hear them talking in the hall, and as soon as we realized he was a nonmember our District Leader signalled to Elder Eden and his companion to go talk to him and set up a time to meet. Both Elder Eden and his companion immediately stood up as soon as the DL motioned to them. It looked like our DL was running a small mafia or gang who were going to deal with the situation, but resulted in the man leaving feeling uplifted, so I suppose that’s the opposite of a mafia/gang interaction.

5/5/2021

Today we had a lot of lessons, we were very busy running back and forth all night, and once again ended up pushing our curfew a bit. We got back six minutes before our curfew, which was much tighter than we originally expected, but it felt good to be busy. We met a new family today, and they were very excited to get to help us out with missionary work, which is everything we could hope for as missionaries. We also got to do a roleplay in front of our whole mission today, aren’t the wonders of Zoom just amazing? It went well enough, and everyone seemed to think it was a pretty good example, so Elder Aguirre and I were grateful for the opportunity to help out.

5/6/2021

Today we also had a lot of lessons, two of which were with new families. Today was officially six weeks since Elder Aguirre and I got to Cedaredge, which was shocking and made meeting two new families a much bigger deal. We realized we needed to pick up the pace a little more if we wanted to really engage everyone since we weren’t even able to meet everyone in the last transfer we were here for. We’re really counting on our Zoom classes to pick up speed a bit, because otherwise we won’t have a way to engage the ward like we need to.

5/8/2021

Today we had a conversation with Brother Woolsey about Cybele’s baptism. We looked at the requirements for baptism and showed how Cybele met them, but Brother Woolsey wasn’t happy about it. His argument started off as, “She’s not ready”, then as we discussed it shifted to, “She and I aren’t ready”, until finally he confided, “I’m not ready”. We then gave him a plan of action moving forward and he seemed really happy about it. He had started off rather angry but by the end of our meeting he told Elder Aguirre and I, “You gentlemen are welcome here anytime,” which was a huge compliment. He had given us permission to baptize Cybele, but told us that he wouldn’t attend or help out, we told him that this wasn’t just about Cybele, it was about helping him to know that the Lord loves and trusts him as well. We could have compelled him to have Cybele baptized right then and undoubtedly would have walked away with the numbers our mission wanted. We were glad, though, for the opportunity to show that we weren’t as invested in the numbers as we were the lives of those we were serving.

5/9/2021

Today was Mother’s day. The highlight of my day was getting to call my mom for a few minutes. We spent the majority of our day running from lesson to lesson and delivering flowers to some of our widows on behalf of our Ward for Mother’s day. All of the recipients were very thankful, and we were glad to get to do some nice things for them. All of our lessons went really well today, they were all object lessons, and all of them were very engaging. My favorite one was one where we had a family construct a human table by having one person lay their back on another’s knees who was laying their back on another’s knees and so on. When they did it we asked them, “now, why are you doing this?” In a belittling tone, and they shouted back, “because you told us to!” We then read the Moses 5 account of Adam offering up sacrifices and not knowing why he was doing it and told everyone that they were on a good track.

Today I want to share a couple of verses from John that are really important for all of us:

John 4:37 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. 38 I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

A lot of times as missionaries it feels like all we do is plant seeds and we get no success, but this is a beautiful thing that shows us all how needed we are in the kingdom of God. Is the reaper greater than the planter? What good does a planter do if there is no harvester? Likewise we are all needed in the kingdom of God. God knows how to use our specific talents the best, and we can be assure that we will always find success as we do.

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