Chapter 27: Starting The New Year With Christ

The ward mission plan that Elders Anderson and Gomez helped the Monument Ward to create.

Elder Anderson's district

Sorry that there are a few days missing, this ended up being a very busy week, we were working every night until it was pretty late and I didn't leave enough time for my journaling.

12/28/2020

Today was a really good Pday! It snowed a lot today, so we spent a lot of time driving at 10mph. When we went to Walmart today Elder Gomez got a bottle of steak sauce, and then as I loaded our groceries into the car the bottle must have fallen through a hole in the bag. The bottle hit the hard concrete and broke, leaving steak sauce all over my shoe. We went back to get another bottle, because we needed that steak sauce. We got to talk to our families today, and even got to do some lessons with the members of our ward which was a lot of fun. I was amazed at how smart some of our ward members are, whenever I talk to them I’m amazed at just how much they know, and I frequently feel like I’ve been taught instead of teaching a lesson to them. I guess that’s why they’re supposed to be called “discussions” instead of “lessons”.

1/1/2020

Today we had a combined District Council. We got to sit down with a lot of other missionaries, and I think this is the most friendly one that I’ve had in a long time. This was the first time in a long time that I really felt like I was in a room where everyone was my friend and knew everyone pretty well. Our Zone has been together for a long enough time that we’re all starting to know each other pretty well, and getting to be the Hype Specialists and work with others has only added to that ability. It was a lot of fun to sit down, especially with our District today, because this felt like our triumphant return. I have a very vivid new memory of Collins asking me what I was going to do to apply something that we had received and being surprised because I could feel his trust and the trust of my district that they wanted to hear what I was going to do. That was a cool moment that showed me how close we had all gotten as members of our District.

1/2/2020

Today we gave a short training on hyping up our members, and it went really well! We also had the coolest experience with Facebook tracting today. Collins and I had been talking about being faith filled missionaries, and how that includes working with hope. Preach My Gospel defines hope as being “confident, optimistic, enthusiastic, and patient” and I realized that my work hasn’t been very hopeful lately, so tonight I tried to hit all four of those points, and it made a big difference. I started talking to a woman in Spanish who had been practicing the language and mentioned that one time she attended a church service given in Spanish. I asked her if she understood a lot since teaching the Gospel in Portuguese was so different than conversational Portuguese. She confessed that she hadn’t understood much. I then told her that Elder Gomez is a Spanish expert, and that I understand biblical Spanish pretty well, although I struggle with speaking, which is her strong suit. We asked her if she would be interested in doing a study with Elder Gomez and I and she said that she was, so tomorrow we’re going to do something small and see what she thinks of it.

1/3/2020

And so the great story comes to an end: Collins, my old comp, my beloved District Leader, is getting emergency transferred out of our District tomorrow. This is it, it’s the end. We made our Ward Mission Plan official today, our Ward is getting very excited to work with us, in an incredible change of events we also have dinners planned every day through the 27th now, thanks to Sister Thompson. I don’t even know what to do with my cooking abilities if we have dinner every night. This is one of the first times in my mission this has happened. What a welcome surprise.

For a Spiritual thought today I wanted to share a powerful message from Revelations 3:19.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

To be zealous is to be earnest and sincere. It's not easy to accept correction when it comes to us, but it's important to remember the consequences of both ways that we can respond to correction. If we give in to the natural man and defend ourselves we'll gratify ourselves, we'll further cement our ways into our minds. If we listen to the counsel that's given us that comes from a place of love, if we humble ourselves, we're promised there will be no end to our progression and that the Savior stands with open arms to receive us.