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.