5/4/2021
Today was a good day. We had our District Council today, and a man wandered in thinking that we were members of another church. He walked into a church that was full of missionaries, and we found out about him because one Elder went off to use the bathroom at the same moment that he walked in, so we could hear them talking in the hall, and as soon as we realized he was a nonmember our District Leader signalled to Elder Eden and his companion to go talk to him and set up a time to meet. Both Elder Eden and his companion immediately stood up as soon as the DL motioned to them. It looked like our DL was running a small mafia or gang who were going to deal with the situation, but resulted in the man leaving feeling uplifted, so I suppose that’s the opposite of a mafia/gang interaction.
5/5/2021
Today we had a lot of lessons, we were very busy running back and forth all night, and once again ended up pushing our curfew a bit. We got back six minutes before our curfew, which was much tighter than we originally expected, but it felt good to be busy. We met a new family today, and they were very excited to get to help us out with missionary work, which is everything we could hope for as missionaries. We also got to do a roleplay in front of our whole mission today, aren’t the wonders of Zoom just amazing? It went well enough, and everyone seemed to think it was a pretty good example, so Elder Aguirre and I were grateful for the opportunity to help out.
5/6/2021
Today we also had a lot of lessons, two of which were with new families. Today was officially six weeks since Elder Aguirre and I got to Cedaredge, which was shocking and made meeting two new families a much bigger deal. We realized we needed to pick up the pace a little more if we wanted to really engage everyone since we weren’t even able to meet everyone in the last transfer we were here for. We’re really counting on our Zoom classes to pick up speed a bit, because otherwise we won’t have a way to engage the ward like we need to.
5/8/2021
Today we had a conversation with Brother Woolsey about Cybele’s baptism. We looked at the requirements for baptism and showed how Cybele met them, but Brother Woolsey wasn’t happy about it. His argument started off as, “She’s not ready”, then as we discussed it shifted to, “She and I aren’t ready”, until finally he confided, “I’m not ready”. We then gave him a plan of action moving forward and he seemed really happy about it. He had started off rather angry but by the end of our meeting he told Elder Aguirre and I, “You gentlemen are welcome here anytime,” which was a huge compliment. He had given us permission to baptize Cybele, but told us that he wouldn’t attend or help out, we told him that this wasn’t just about Cybele, it was about helping him to know that the Lord loves and trusts him as well. We could have compelled him to have Cybele baptized right then and undoubtedly would have walked away with the numbers our mission wanted. We were glad, though, for the opportunity to show that we weren’t as invested in the numbers as we were the lives of those we were serving.
5/9/2021
Today was Mother’s day. The highlight of my day was getting to call my mom for a few minutes. We spent the majority of our day running from lesson to lesson and delivering flowers to some of our widows on behalf of our Ward for Mother’s day. All of the recipients were very thankful, and we were glad to get to do some nice things for them. All of our lessons went really well today, they were all object lessons, and all of them were very engaging. My favorite one was one where we had a family construct a human table by having one person lay their back on another’s knees who was laying their back on another’s knees and so on. When they did it we asked them, “now, why are you doing this?” In a belittling tone, and they shouted back, “because you told us to!” We then read the Moses 5 account of Adam offering up sacrifices and not knowing why he was doing it and told everyone that they were on a good track.
Today I want to share a couple of verses from John that are really important for all of us:
John 4:37 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. 38 I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.
A lot of times as missionaries it feels like all we do is plant seeds and we get no success, but this is a beautiful thing that shows us all how needed we are in the kingdom of God. Is the reaper greater than the planter? What good does a planter do if there is no harvester? Likewise we are all needed in the kingdom of God. God knows how to use our specific talents the best, and we can be assure that we will always find success as we do.
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