Chapter 39: Cedaredge

Elders Anderson and Gomez were companions for nearly 6 months!

Hello, Elder Aguirre and Cedaredge!

3/23/2021

Today was pretty heartbreaking. Ever since finding out that we would be transferred we’ve been running around as much as we can from household to household trying to say goodbye to everyone that we can. We made it through a good number of our members, but still have about half of them to finish visiting tomorrow, so we need to step up the pace. We were able to have a service project today where we got to split trees, so that was a nice break up from the routine of sadness we were going through. We also had a meeting with the Sisters today to pass off everyone that we were teaching, members and nonmembers. Seeing all the people we were letting go of listed out like that was hard all over again.

3/24/2021

Today was also incredibly heartbreaking. We finished up our tree splitting service that we started yesterday, and that was the only moment where we didn’t feel like our hearts were being ripped out. Time and time again we heard the phrase, “You Elders are an incredible team. We’re sad that you’re going but it might be even more sad that you’re being split up.” We made it through everyone that we needed to visit, though.

3/25/2021

Today I met my new companion, Elder Aguirre. Elder Aguirre is an incredible missionary, and I’ve already been so impressed by everything that he’s doing. He hasn’t been out too long, and yet he is incredibly refined in his ability to find and teach. I’ve been very impressed by his testimony and the perseverance he’s shown in what would normally be pretty difficult situations. We had a few lessons today which was very unusual because we were opening this area, and yet people wanted to get in contact with us and were ecstatic that there were Elders in the Ward again.

3/26/2021

Elder Aguirre and I made some pretty awesome plans for today, and none of them really went through. We got to do weekly planning, which was important, but then after that we ended up teaching a lot of lessons that we didn’t know that we would be teaching. It got to be about 4:40 (we usually eat dinner at 5:00) but because of our busy schedule combined with the lack of knowledge that comes from “whitewashing” (restarting an area, “whitewashing” is missionary slang for when you come into an area and there isn’t anyone to show you the ropes), because of those two things we had no idea how we were going to get food for the night (Cedaredge also has seven restaurants, we counted, and four of them are usually closed). Then a member gave us a call and asked if we had dinner for the night. We told them that we didn’t, and they immediately dropped what they were doing to get food for us. Being able to eat tonight was a nice miracle. We also got signed up for the COVID vaccine tonight, which we’re also very excited about.

3/27/2021

Today we picked someone up! The Sisters taught a girl and helped her to progress to the point of baptism, but the lessons were very difficult to do with the girl over Zoom because of her short attention span. Now that we can meet in person it seems to make a big difference. We had a lesson today on faith and it was incredible to see just how much she knew about the church. The Sisters really did do an incredible job of teaching her. Tonight we also got to be a part of youth activities, and this one was a lot of fun. We drove up the Grand Mesa (which I’ve heard is the largest or one of the largest mesas in the United States) and everything was beautiful. The drive up there was amazing, and the activity was to go out onto the frozen lake and send off the lanterns that we wrote our physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual goals for the year on. The send off didn’t go very well, there were probably about 25 kids there, and maybe seven of the lanterns successfully took off (two of which were Elder Aguirre’s and mine), but we all enjoyed watching the ones that worked well.

3/28/2021

Today was a lot of fun. Elder Aguirre and I got to go to Fast and Testimony meeting which was a really cool way to introduce ourselves to the Ward. Everyone seemed to range from confused to shocked that a couple of Elders were present after they had Sisters for so many years. After Fast and Testimony meeting we had a few lessons, and further got to introduce ourselves to members of the Ward. A Baptist minister we contacted also invited us to attend his evening service tonight so we got to go meet some of his congregation and pray with them. Elder Aguirre and I even spoke up a little when people were sharing personal study insights, and they were very welcoming of our ideas. The minister seemed a little nervous that we actually showed up, he looked at us every time that he cited a scripture as if he thought we were going to disagree with his knowledge, but he was very knowledgeable and it was cool to hear him teach.

This week I did a lot of reading from Jeremiah. Jeremiah dealt with an unrepentant people and, as such, learned powerful lessons about the truth of repentance. For various reasons, we often justify in not doing what God wants us to, the reasons for this can range from laziness to open rebellion against God, and Jeremiah succintly stated why it was so important that we not fall down this path:

13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

Yet the opposite is also true. As we seek to do good we build Christlike habits, habits that cannot be shaken. Even when we are faced with incredible opposition we can overcome because of Christ. These habits can be built by anyone at anytime.

Chapter 38: The End of Monument

 

3/16/2021

Today was a lot of fun! We had an unusual treat for dinner tonight: A child made us our dinner, and it turned out really well! Well, it was actually pretty burnt, but the kid was really cute, so anytime anyone said anything about the burn marks on the food, the rest of the missionaries told them to be quiet and stop being ungrateful because this was the best dinner they were ever going to get. We also had activities at the church tonight, and Elder Gomez and I were very needed. We went around the whole night bouncing from one group to another as leaders asked that we share a quick thought, or participate with their group, or help them get their activities up and running. It was very busy, but one of the most effective nights we’ve had in a long time.

3/17/2021

Today we had a mission meeting and got to talk in our Zones about recent miracles that we’ve witnessed. We then had the opportunity to go do service for Sister Thompson. We cut her bushes back a bit and then pulled a lot of weeds from her garden and cut her grass back as well. We talked to her and decided that we would go over for a funeral service for Anabelle tomorrow. We had a couple of lessons tonight and got to have Ward Correlation with our Ward Mission Leader, so today just had a lot of meetings. The sun has finally started to come out more in Colorado, though, so at least it doesn’t feel like we’re sitting in a dreary office all day.

3/18/2021

Today we had a funeral for Sister Thompson’s dog, Anabelle. We listened to a hymn, went for a walk with Eli, her remaining dog, for a bit, and then we buried Anabelle’s ashes. I presented Sister Thompson with a drawing of Anabelle’s reception into heaven and it made a great impact on her. We then had a lesson about the beasts seen in Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel 1 and the vision of John the Divine from Revelations 4 to talk about the Celestialization of animals. This also seemed to bring her a lot of comfort.

3/19/2021

Today we met a man who served in Manaus from 2000-2002. He was so happy to meet Elder Gomez and myself that he brought us Cafe Rio, and we ended up talking for the better part of an hour. We felt bad that we took up so much of his time, but it was a lot of fun to reminisce about all the fun and dangerous things that there were in Manaus. It was also fun to hear how similar our experiences even 20 years apart were. He stated that it was nice but sad that so little had changed. Nice to know that he could always return exactly to the mission that he served, but sad to see that different stories of politics and poverty were playing their course with different puppets who were doing nothing but setting up future generations for more of the same. Brazil has so much potential, and we both hope a lot that one day people will start to want more for themselves and their children.

3/20/2021

Today Elder Gomez and I had a couple of lessons. One of the lessons was really fun because right away afterwards we got to walk to the church (man, I miss walking everywhere, but all our lessons are too spread out now to walk in person, you can only make it from one appointment to another by car). Because we were walking, naturally we ran into a lot of people that we knew. One family was out flying kites, and we told them that we needed them to think about their favorite verses from the Book of Mormon for our lesson with them tomorrow. One girl immediately volunteered her favorite verse, she said it was from the book of Judges, and Elder Gomez and I immediately raised our eyebrows and looked at each other in concern, because we know what the book of Judges contains. Sure enough, the girl recounted that her favorite verses were those describing the murder of a very fat man (Judges 3:12-22). I’m glad that these children remember what’s important from the Bible

3/21/2021

Well, today was a major letdown. We got transfer news and I’m being transferred. Since I only have a few transfers left it’s likely that wherever I’m going is going to be the area that I end my mission in. The area I’m being transferred to is called Cedaredge. I was heartbroken when we found out transfer news, as was our Ward. They have really loved having two sets of missionaries here, and they’re now only going to have one; No one is being sent to replace us. Of the nine months that Monument 2 was open for, I got to be here for seven and a half of them. We had what we realized would be our final lessons for a lot of families, and when we told them they were more sad than we were. We got a lot of nice compliments tonight, and it was really moving to feel everyone’s love for us.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a truth that's been very important to me in this past week about the nature of God. One of God's many titles is "Heavenly Father", the father of our spirits. Nature teaches us an incredible lesson about offspring: They always grow up to become like their parents. Seedlings becoming great trees, the puppy becoming a dog, and the baby becoming an adult. We don't just have a physical seed within us waiting to grow, though, we have a spiritual child within each of us as well. Everything in this world grows to be like the parent, and the reason why "Heavenly Father" is our God's greatest title is because that Fatherhood, our sonship and daughtership enable us to become like Him.

Chapter 37: Bible Bash

 Working on the farm

Beautiful hike in Monument.

3/9/2021

Today we had Zone Conference. The conference wasn’t too eventful, but at the end Elder Gomez and I received an unusual request. A woman who’s moving into our ward showed us a bunch of paintings that looked like they had been done by five year olds, and apparently fell into the category of “contemporary art”, and she had paid a ridiculous amount for them. She pointed out one color blotch that she didn’t like, and asked if I could fix it. I told her, “technically yes, but these are rather… simplistic”, and recommended that we make some other changes as well. She is a woman of unusual tastes. We also had a few lessons today, and all of them went really well, but we were behind schedule on all of them because we accidentally stayed too long at our youth activities. Oh well. 

3/10/2021

Today we did service for Brother Vargo, one of the people we’re teaching. We enjoyed getting to help Brother Vargo, but it took slightly longer than we originally thought it would. We raked the bases of trees for about an hour and a half, it was cleanup from pruning and the dead stuff from Winter, but it ended up being a good use of our time. Supposedly Brother Vargo sent a picture from the service to my mom, Elder Gomez’s mom, and us, but we haven’t gotten a picture yet so I’m not sure it went through. We also ended up preemptively saying goodbye to a couple of families today. I had them mark their favorite verses in my Portuguese copy of The Book of Mormon, and everyone loudly complained that I anticipated the possibility of leaving. I wasn’t enthusiastic about that chance either.

3/11/2021

Tonight we did a lesson where we taught Jacob 5. This was the end of the multi-part lesson that we did where we went in depth with every verse and helped everyone present to get a feel for what was going on in what can be a pretty confusing chapter. The read through went really well, and we had some grateful testimonies from those who were thankful for everything we were doing both to strengthen their testimonies and their ability to be Spiritually self-reliant and understand these scriptures.

3/12/2021

Today we had a few service projects. We got to help Sister Thompson as well as the Christensen family. Brother Christensen invited us over to his house for grilled cheese sandwiches in addition to our service project. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the caliber of a sandwich that he presented to us. I feel like an entire new realm of sandwiches has been opened to me. We also had a District meeting today, and met a new member of our Ward. The family we met wasn’t new to the ward, but we assumed that they were part of another Ward because we had never seen them before. I referenced a service project that we did next to their house when I first got here, and their eyes ogled, they were amazed that I had been here for more than seven months and we had never crossed paths with them.

3/13/2021

Today we had a Bible bash. Elder Gomez recorded the whole thing. The meeting consisted of us, the Redlands Elders who we invited, and a man named Curtis. Curtis has had a lot of experience with missionaries, and unfortunately he wasn’t interested in much more than seeking to tear down our belief in God. I reached out to him over Facebook and he immediately sent the following:

“Did Joseph Smith actually see God in his first vision and live?

Exodus 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

I told him that we didn’t have a lot of time to write out lengthy responses but that we could set up a time to talk and chat face to face, mostly because that puts an end to any of these pre-written questions designed to tear down faith. After pressuring me for a response I eventually replied to him:

“Alright, to answer your question I would recommend looking at the following:

John 20:11-18

Luke 24:36-43

John 20:24-29

Luke 24:13-34

1 Corinthians 15:6

Acts 9:3-9

All of these are accounts of the resurrected Christ appearing to people face to face, the same way that He did with Joseph Smith.

Also Exodus 33:11 which talks about the Lord speaking face to face with man.”

That was a good summary of how our whole visit went. He asked his questions, and Elder Douglass and I who are quite well versed in the bible tried to steer him in the right direction. Unfortunately he didn’t like our responses very much, although we felt the Spirit work through us a lot when we bore testimony of what we knew to be true. We gave him answers to his questions, but he rejected everything that we said under the blanket statement that the LDS church is false, and so we and everything we said as an extension was also false. That was the second major Bible bash I’ve ever had, but that one went significantly better than the first. After my first one I was mortified, I could feel that we had driven out the Spirit and that it had no place in us. That was a hellish feeling, but this time we bore testimony and it wasn’t so scary, we did what we were called to do, and still had the Spirit with us after our encounter. The full file is kind of long, so I’ll write up what some of the main questions and responses to make it easier to dissect if anyone is interested in listening to it. The discussion has already been shortened down a lot since originally it lasted about an hour.

The discussion can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iUl2gewd7BLN4jH6KwB8SXwKPjc1cca/view?usp=drivesdk

Question 1: How do we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost? (The scriptures he used were Acts 10:45-48)

Missionary Answer 1: The gift of the Holy Ghost is received through the laying on of hands and in no other way.

Elder Douglass stands up for Elder Anderson: 7:36

Testimony of Missionary Answer 1: 8:41

At this point he switched topics and started talking about the definition of Gospel for a bit, it wasn’t until 18:01 that we started to point our discussion in a better path.

Question 2 (Book of Mormon): Who is the church of the Lamb of God, and who is the church of abominations? 26:46

Missionary Answer 2: The church of God references all churches who teach of Him, the church of abominations references all who fight against Jesus Christ. 26:52

3/14/2021

Today was daylight savings, and that was the most noteworthy thing that happened all day, not because nothing good happened today, but because it felt like I got hit by a ton of bricks when I woke up this morning. I forgot very quickly just how much easier the sun makes it to wake up. We had a lot of lessons today, and all of the discussions went very well. We went pretty in depth in our discussions today, and everyone did a great job with it! We could see that even though a lot of what we were saying was really difficult to understand, that people were making a strong conscious effort to understand it, and that meant that the Spirit was able to impress on these people what they really needed to learn.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a scripture that I used during our Bible bash, in Matthew 23:23 Christ gives the warning: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Over the course of my mission I've learned a lot from the Scriptures. I had gotten to the point that I had confidence I could intellectually prove the validity of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to anyone. I haven't ever heard a testimony though that someone came to love the Gospel because it was intellectually learned. Judgement, mercy, and faith are all meant to be felt, not just understood, because the Gospel isn't learned in our heads, but in our hearts. No small point of doctrinal knowledge bears more significance than the lessons that can only be learned with our hearts. My invitation to you today is to seek to learn the Gospel in your heart, for who can comprehend the depth of love involved in Christ's sacrifice? The love we're given was never meant to remain solely in our head, the depth of it can only be felt in our hearts.

Chapter 36: Half Melted Phones

Chair Challenge

3/2/2021

Today was a good day. We had district council this morning and it was a lot of fun. I played the piano for my district, and that was the first time I had ever played for others in person before, so my hands were shaking pretty bad. Despite the fact I was playing songs I knew really well, I could barely get the tunes out because of how nervous I was to be playing in front of others. Those people were all my friends, too, but my brain didn’t care, I guess it just decided that was the correct time to shut down. We had a lot of fun activities today, including youth activities. We got to bounce back and forth between the Deacons (12 and 13 year old young men) who were playing around with deep-frying whatever they could find, and the Priests (16-18 year olds) who were doing mission prep. Mission prep went especially well, and I was really glad that we got to be a part of it. We got to share a couple of our stories, and I think it meant a lot to the teacher that we were there and participating.

3/3/2021

I can now add “bighorn sheep steaks” to the list of cool things that I’ve eaten. Sister Barnhurst made us food tonight and her cooking is on par with my mom’s cooking. We had a lesson with them on Sunday where Sister Barnhurst asked if there was anything that we were missing (talking about foods). I quickly replied, “your cooking” and made sure to clarify that I wasn’t being facetious. Well, that must have earned us some extra brownie points because this meat was as good as any meat I ever had in a churrasco from Brazil. Who would have guessed that the mission foods I would eat would range from bighorn sheep to the fish of the Amazon. What a weird time to be alive.

3/4/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We got to do some service for Sister Thompson where we cut her bushes back. Now, there’s a very popular LDS video called “The Will of God” that talks about the similarities between the way that a gardener cut a bush back and the way that God cuts us back to shape us into what He wants us to become. There’s a powerful line from that where the gardener says something along the lines of, “look, little currant bush, I know what I want you to be, I don’t want you to be a tree that gives shade, I want you to be a currant bush, and one day when you’re laden with fruit you’ll say, ‘thank you Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down’”. Now, as Elder Gomez and I were cutting bushes today he quoted that line but changed it up a bit, “look, little current bush, I know what I want you to be. I want you to be Spider Man”, and that was so random that it took me completely by surprise and left me crying from laughing so hard for the next ten minutes. We’ve probably quoted that line a dozen times over the course of our time together, but wow, that was an awesome substitution.

3/5/2021

Today we had interviews with our mission President. He informed me that I had been permanently reassigned to the Colorado Denver South Mission, so I would be finishing up my mission here. There are a lot of pros and cons to this, so I was excited and disappointed, but happy nonetheless to be able to continue working here. I am so grateful that I’ve gotten to be in Monument for as long as I have, and wouldn’t want to trade that for anything, and who knows what miracles are still waiting to be done here in this area and in this mission. The Lord knows what’s best for my development and for the development of those around me, and has guided me to be able to finish out my mission here.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share what happened for that last couple days this week:

My phone screen blew up this week but I did have a tender mercy associated with it. The model of phone that I have isn't very common, so the screen replacement would have taken a while to get here if I hadn't called until yesterday when it ceased functioning. However, I had recognized a couple weeks ago that the screen wasn't working as it should be and called in a while ago to get a replacement. The replacement came this week, so I was already planning on going today to get my screen repaired. I also had a prompting while I was sitting in Sacrament meeting. I remembered that my phone screen was covered by warranty and that as proof of purchase I was going to be required to show the receipt that I had taken a picture of on my phone. That picture was the only copy of the receipt that I had, and my screen was now about 2/3rds of the way covered in black, nonfunctioning pixels. Because of the timing of that prompting I was able to find the picture and share it to another phone before I completely lost the ability to use my phone, which would have happened a half hour later. This brought me an incredible amount of peace, knowing God would prompt me so as to help everything work out according to His plans. Sometimes we fear that our intentions aren't completely aligned with God's and forget to recognize that He wants to bless us in every way that He can. In this seemingly small moment I saw just how eager God was to bless me in every way that He could, despite the trial of patience I was going to be going through.

Chapter 35: If God Only Wanted Us To Go Through Trials For Two Weeks We Would Have Been Born As Butterflies

 

2/23/2021

Well, Elder Gomez put a permanent end to our member relations. Tonight we decided that the best way to connect with the youth (which in six months of being here I haven’t really done) was to engage in their activities with them. Well, we decided to do that before we heard what the activity was, so when they announced that it was dodgeball, we were very excited for the opportunity to build relationships with the youth. Unfortunately, Elder Gomez doesn’t know how to take it easy, though, and threw his 90mph baseball pitches straight into the faces of these Deacons. So we’re never going to get to talk to our youth again, but we had a fun time, and the adults seemed to enjoy watching it as well.

2/24/2021

Today I went on exchanges with Elder Garrard. Elder Garrard reminds me a lot of myself, especially when I was six months out on my mission, and so I really enjoyed getting to spend the day with him. We did a really good job of helping out their area, and I got to run into some old acquaintances from when I did exchanges in this ward in the past. One of the families that we met with tonight Elder Garrard had never met before, so when we showed up I think they were a little surprised about the two new Elders who were sitting in front of them. That was one of the most normal conversations I’d had in a while, though. I was in Garrard’s area, so he was acting as Senior companion. I didn’t have to worry about progressing our lesson along or time limits or any of that, my job was to love these people as much as I could, and I did just that. When we showed up they were all kind-of avoiding eye contact and didn’t really want to talk to us, and by the end it was obvious that they had a huge amount of love for us and wanted us to come back soon. Our lesson with them was incredibly powerful. It was only a few minutes long, but we talked about being spiritually self reliant, and the Spirit in the room was incredible. The dad started to tear up and so did I, and we had more than a nice spiritual thought, we gave the vital words of life to that family. I really loved working with Elder Garrard today.

2/25/2021

Today was a lot of fun. Elder Garrard and I got to teach seminary with Brother Redd. Brother Redd was a model teacher, and we really enjoyed getting to see the way that he ran his class and the way that everything worked. Some of the youth from Monument attend that seminary class, so it was a great joy to get to be a part of those lessons and teach them in such an unusual setting. We then ended our exchanges as we returned to a combined district council. Elder Gomez and I had a few lessons tonight and were able to pick someone up, which we were really excited about.

2/26/2021

Today was very stressful. I just had some repairs made to my phone and they were rather costly, but I have good spending habits so it didn’t end up causing me any problems, but unfortunately today my phone developed other problems. It was a problem with the charging port, my phone stopped accepting charge, so at about 2:00 I called our mission Secretary and told him that my phone would last until the end of the night, and then we would be cut off from the digital world since Elder Gomez’s phone doesn’t accept our SIM card. We were very nervous about what would happen, but fortunately a couple hours later my phone suddenly started accepting charge again, which was nothing less than a miracle. Unfortunately, the miracle came after I had put a down-payment on the new phone part that I would need to get this phone working as soon as possible again, but again, because I’ve had good spending habits I’ll be fine.

2/27/2021

Today was a good day for bonding for our district. We’ve all been here for quite some time, but we took some extra time today to get to know each other which ended up being a nice switch up from our regular rut. Today was also a lot of fun in other ways: Elder Gomez and I watched “The Testaments” between our lunch and dinner breaks. I was never a big fan of watching movies on the mission in Brazil, but that’s probably because people wanted to watch “The Avengers”. This movie had a lot of really tender moments that it testified of Christ, it was an incredible work of art complete with powerful testimony. The lessons that we taught today also went really well.

2/28/2021

Today we had all our lessons for the week. We were busy all day in meetings and lessons and even managed to make a Facebook video in the few free moments that we had.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a message that we learn from D&C 46:26. D&C 46 talks about several gifts from God. All of these gifts come from the same faith, and while that faith is manifest in several ways, through many different gifts, we can be assured, "And all these gifts come from God, for the benefit of the children of God." These gifts that we have aren't meant to be contained to ourselves, we're meant to share them with everyone around us, so look for a way this week to share your gifts.