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.