Christ Healing the Woman With the Issue of Blood
1/25/2021
The most interesting thing that happened today happened in the last five minutes of our night before we left: Elder Bott has been terrorizing my companion (although they both seem to be having fun, so I don’t know if it’s really an issue), and tonight he messaged us, “I’m coming”, so Elder Gomez went and hid in a closet, locked the door, and I barricaded the entrances to our classroom with rows of chairs set with their legs pointed up towards the entrance so as to stop any efforts to run into the classroom. I then flipped our desks over, “building a fort” about 5 steps away, and loaded it up with paper newspaper balls that I crumpled up. All of this happened in about 30 seconds, and Captain Moroni would have been proud. Bott threw the door open, saw that he was blocked, and then got pelted by crumpled up paper balls. He tried to return a few, but the desk-fort did its trick, and Bott quite obviously lost that round. We also painted during our pday today as a district Bob Ross activity, and I used oils for the first time.
1/26/2021
Today we had a Zone Conference. It was really cool to get to see our Mission President, and our meeting today was a lot funnier than they have been in the past. At the start of the meeting our President asked all the new people to introduce themselves, and they were given a few basic questions to answer. Then our President added his own question to the end, “And: The last four digits of your social security number”. That was pretty funny to hear from him. Our conference was really good, and I think one of my favorite parts was when Sister Rees gave her training where she talked about different types and symbols of Jesus Christ. She’s a really smart lady and I really enjoy getting to hear all of her thoughts, because they’re always so in depth.
1/27/2021
Today was a really good day. The most significant part of today was probably when we prepared with our Ward Mission Leader tonight for the lesson that he’s going to be giving on Sunday. We originally intended to teach the lesson with him and didn’t mean for this responsibility to fall solely on him, but he was very gracious in accepting of the opportunity to teach and in being willing to help us out. He’s an incredible ward Mission Leader to be willing to take on such demanding responsibilities on top of the business that he runs and his duties as a husband and father of six.
1/28/2021
Today was a great day. We were very busy with the number of lessons that we had, which is always a good thing, but it made for a very stressful night. We had so many lessons and I accidentally double booked some of the appointments so our dinner ended up being 10 minutes at 8:30. Our members are very patient with us, which I really appreciate, I changed our dinner appointment time like, four times, and the poor lady was so kind to us when we showed up. I began apologizing profusely as soon as we saw her, and instead of accepting it, she turned it into an opportunity to compliment us and tell us how much their family loved us as their missionaries. They said, “this really isn’t good on our part, but before COVID we couldn’t have told you the names of our missionaries, but we’re never going to forget yours”. That was heart melting, and made our night.
1/29/2021
Today was a great day. The lessons that we had were really good, but the most notable thing that happened was probably a roleplay that Gomez and I did. We roleplay lessons sometimes to continue practicing teaching Gospel lessons, this act is an act of faith that we’re going to find someone to teach and that they’re going to need their missionaries to bring their “A-game” when we do find them. Anyways, roleplaying lessons with Elder Gomez can be a real challenge sometimes. He usually acts like the least interested investigator in the world, which gives me terrible flashbacks to my time in Brazil (although I would LOVE to teach Brazilians again with the knowledge that I have now). Today our roleplay was especially painful. Our lesson was upwards of a half hour, and he fundamentally opposed every single one of the points that I brought up, and I frequently got frustrated. I think one of my favorite lines that came from our roleplay today was when Gomez cut me off and said, “Why is Jesus white in the picture that you’re using, shouldn’t He look more Jewish than European?” To which I promptly had to remind him that his question was way above the knowledge level of the person that he was playing as because of the other questions he had put me through, “you haven’t even read the Bible, you’re not allowed to ask that”, I told him. So yes, Gomez knows how to frustrate me, opposing every point that I talk about is frustrating. It was a good frustration, though, it was edifying and a lot of fun.
1/30/2021
Today we got to do service in an orchard. The orchard belonged to a member and as we started gathering up the prunings near him he started asking us Gospel questions, as a test of our knowledge. Elder Gomez and I completely blew the test out of the water, he was incredibly impressed, and said, “boy you’re sharper than a whit!” I don’t know what a “whit” is, so maybe it’s actually something very dull, and wasn’t much of a compliment, but we were on cloud-9 afterwards because after we passed his knowledge test, he told us he wanted us to help him teach a family he had been focusing on with him. Getting a referral from him and feeling of his confidence in us was pretty awesome.
1/31/2021
We picked someone up! We picked up two people, which is the second time this has happened in my time in Monument. Even better, these people are already confirmed to live in our ward. Now, we’re really excited, because our Mission President promised us that we would baptize in February. He’s our Heavenly Father’s representative for missionary work, and so if he promised us that there was someone to be found in our area this month who was prepared to enter the waters of baptism, we know that this promise was one that came from Heavenly Father, not just the man He works through. To get someone baptized they need to attend church three times; That’s one of the biggest restrictions to baptism, because it’s a time requirement, it takes three weeks to fulfill that requirement. However, this family is now on track for baptism in February, this is fulfillment of the promise our Mission President gave us.
Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share (I originally wrote "we" instead of "I", I'm getting too much into companion mindset) a verse from John. I'm not sure if this is my Sister Lily's favorite verse or not, but she frequently quoted it to us, and had it memorized. She would probably give a better explanation of why this verse is so meaningful than I can, but since we used it so much in our teaching this week, I'm going to give it a shot anyways:
John 3:16 ¶ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The message of the restored Gospel is built around the Atonement. I'm so grateful for our understanding of the Atonement, the most important of all the acts that ever occurred. Without the Book of Mormon, we would be limited to the handful of times this word appears in Leviticus, in my readings of the Bible I believe that's the only place we ever see the word Atonement used, and it's used as a part of the preparatory gospel, or the law of Moses. If not for the Book of Mormon we would have no idea the expanse of God's love, because our knowledge of that word would be limited to one of the books of Moses, and let's be honest, who really studies Leviticus anyways? Indeed, the reason why the Book of Mormon is so powerful, the reason why a man can drawer closer to God by abiding its precepts than those of any other book is because it contains the doctrine of all doctrines, even the Atonement, the reason that all of us can have everlasting life.
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