Chapter 52: A Brazilian Successes

6/21/2021

Today was our Pday, and it was incredible. We got to go to Black Canyon with a member, Brother Tullis took us over to Montrose to get to visit it briefly, and it was quite the sight to behold. Black Canyon is the deepest Canyon in North America, so getting to see it was a beautiful sight. We also got to see a lot of different people that I knew from Uncompahgre, and it was an amazing chance to reflect back on the different people I’ve gotten to connect with over the course of my mission.

6/22/2021

Today I got to go on exchanges with Elder Barstow. It was an awesome experience because I played a different role on exchanges than I normally do. Recently I’ve been trying to help the other missionaries around me to step up to getting to lead more themselves, and then give them tips later on what’s helped me in those situations as well. Elder Barstow really rose to the occasion, and we heard from a lot of members that they really needed to hear what he said, which hopefully helped him to gain more confidence more than anything else.

6/23/2021

Today I un-exchanged with Elder Barstow, we got to start teaching a 20 year old girl and arrange a very brief meeting to help her meet friends in the area. After our very brief meeting and the tour we gave her of the church building we started exchanges with the other companionship of Elders in our district. Elder Aguirre and I went with Elder Rhoten. Elder Rhoten is brand new on the mission so Elder Aguirre and I are excited to spend the day with him and get to learn more with him.

6/24/2021

Today we had a spiritually Earth-shaking lesson. We met Troy, Linda, and Julia, who live in a motel with some close family members. Troy was a baptized member of the Church, but we didn’t know that at the beginning of the lesson. We started talking to the family about the Plan of Salvation, and the father mentioned that he believed that this Earth was a time to learn to use our agency to prepare to meet God, a time to repent. I asked him how he knew that and Troy told us that it was just a feeling he had when he had thought about why he was here on Earth. I testified to him that he had been taught by the Spirit, he was like the prophets of old, God had taken it upon Himself to personally teach Troy, and he because he recognized the Spirit he knew truths that the wise often did not. When we shared that with him his countenance changed. He had been laughing the whole time, cracking jokes, and he said that felt like a spiritual slap in the face, the Spirit testified to Troy and he knew it was true. We extended a baptismal invitation to his family, invited them to church, to read from The Book of Mormon, and to pray, and they were excited to do it, they were so excited to read, they wanted us to come prepare them for church, they wanted to get baptized. They were so excited.

6/25/2021

Tonight we had a gun pulled on us. We were visiting the house of one of our potential investigators who we hadn’t had a lot of contact with, and showed up to her house pretty late. We were visiting a lot of other nonmembers in the area, and so we came by much later than we originally intended to. When we knocked on the door a woman called out on the other side asking what we wanted, I called back to her by “Sister” and her name, and then she immediately relaxed and opened the door, showing us the gun she was ready to shoot us with. I wasn’t as concerned about the gun as I was when she started waving it around carelessly saying that there were a lot of crazy people in the area, and started rambling so fast that I wasn’t completely sure whether she was as stable as she thought she was. 

6/26/2021

We spent all of today running around. Today was pretty hectic, we had a lot of people that we wanted to go and visit. In the process we got to meet some people on the road, and they were interested to talk to us since it had been so long since they had seen missionaries out on the road talking to people. We talked a lot about how the work was going now that COVID’s dying down here on the Western Slopes of Colorado, and we got a lot of “thank you”s for our efforts to bring the Gospel to the world. Everyone was very kind today.

6/27/2021

Today we had two of our friends come to church with us today! Deanie Papurt and Ashtian Turner came to church with us today. They had a great time, especially Ashtian. Ashtian had a lot of friends there in church from her high school, it was very convenient that so many were visiting that day, and having so many friends helped her to feel included, especially since that was her first time. We also got invited to a member’s dinner party for the Ward tonight, and they asked me to play music for them during it. I tried mixing up some of the songs I know like, “Families Can Be Together Forever”, and everyone loved it. 

Today the thought that I wanted to share comes from Jacob chapter 4 verse 13.

"The Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls. But behold, we are not witnesses alone in these things; for God also spake them unto prophets of old."

If we're willing to listen to the Spirit we can learn of that which has happened in the past as well as what will happen. The Spirit gives freely to all who ask. The commandment to ask combined with the promise that we will receive is one of the most repeated commandments in our recorded standard works. The righteous desires of our hearts are given us in accordance with our faith.

Chapter 51: "My Children Think They Are Smart, But They Are Stupid" -My New Favorite Member

 Elder Aguirre, Anderson, and Elder Eden with his companion

Elder A with Brother Hightower, a beloved ward member from a former area

Elder A with Sister Thompson, another special ward member from a former area

Elder Pope, Elder A, and Elder Eden - all formerly from the Bothell Washington Stake

Hike at the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park on Pday with a family from Cedaredge

6/15/2021

Today we had a discussion with some of the Pastors who were there when Jake wanted to bash with us last week. I say that we discussed because this was the first reasonable conversation I’ve had with people who don’t like what we teach. When we listened to them talk we were amazed. They didn’t believe in an afterlife which we thought was a part of Christianity 101. We talked about the Resurrection, Judgement, Heaven, Hell, they didn’t believe in any of it. They believed everything, like the Resurrection, was to happen temporally here on Earth. We talked about the kingdom God was building up and how it was one that was prophesied to “never be destroyed” and I pointed out that in thousands/millions of years that the sun was going to explode and consume the Earth, the promised kingdom couldn’t be a temporal one. His response was, “people say that kind of stuff all the time, that’s never going to happen”. The most important part though was that we invited them to pray about what we discussed and they were unwilling to, so we won’t be going back. Just some crazy stuff.

6/16/2021

Today we had a service project with a woman who told us that she had about 700 pounds of aluminum cans and dog droppings she needed shoveled. When she told us that I was imagining a 50/50 split between the two groups of items to shovel, but fortunately it was really only aluminum cans and plastic bottles. We spent about an hour picking out all the bottles from the cans and then shoveled the massive number of cans into every garbage bag we could get our hands on. When she told us that she had 700 pounds of cans I thought she was likely overestimating, but after carrying the number of heavy bags of cans that we did I think she might not have guessed high enough.

6/17/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We got to pick up the new companion that we’ll be staying with for the next six weeks, Elder Rinlisbacher. It’s fun to be in a trio, this is an experience that I never thought that I’d have, so even if it’s only for a little bit it’s still fun to get to be a part of. We got to have a lesson with Deanie today where we invited her to church. Her friend passed away this past week so understandably she’ll be at the funeral this Sunday but she expressed interest in coming this next week.

6/18/2021

Today was a great day. We got to do weekly planning and it was so much more enjoyable with a trio than it usually is with only two people. When you only have a couple of people it can be very easy to get into a routine of sharing the same ideas. Having a new companion, having a third, experienced missionary to work alongside us made our planning today a much more spectacular experience.

6/19/2021

Today was one of the busiest days of my mission. We found another person today through our in person contacting efforts, and it was cool because  it was someone that we had been talking to over Facebook a few weeks ago. Because we had been talking to her over Facebook she was really excited once we started talking to her in person, and we got her to commit to coming to church tomorrow. That happened before 10:00. At about 10:10 the woman who was interested in coming to church tomorrow told us it might not work out after all because she didn’t even have a place to stay the night. Our amazing Ward Mission Leader and his wife told us we could invite her to their house to spend the night. They just acted out the song, “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief”, and have a special spot in heaven reserved for them after what they did.

6/20/2021

Today was a great day. Unfortunately we didn’t have anyone come to church with us, but we did find someone new. We had set up a lesson with one of our new members, Sister Parker, and her friend Coleman stopped by while we were there. We invited him in for the lesson, and he consented to stay. Coleman told us that he had some really hard questions for us, and asked us about the trinity. We told him it was a false doctrine, and he was amazed, and listened to everything we taught, and loved it. We did feel bad though because at 7:40 he asked if he could tell us a story. At 7:45 we had another lesson, but he had just listened to us and we didn’t want him to feel like we didn’t care about what he had to say, so we consented figuring that if we were a couple minutes late to a lesson with one of our members that they would understand. At 8:28 he finished telling us his life story, and I was amazed that he had out-talked the three of us. We apologized profusely to the member who we had completely flaked on.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share Malachi 3:3. This verse is one that applies to each of us as we bring the sacrifice of our hearts to the Savior.

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

We can do a lot of good on our own, but the Savior takes us as we are and makes us even better. When we let Him purify our hearts and our sacrifices, we'll find that we're capable of offering a lot more than we ever could on our own.

Chapter 50: Taxation by Cinnamon Rolls

6/8/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We had a district council and I offered to play one of the hymns that I know pretty well so that we could sing a new song instead of only cycling through the same four hymns that our other piano player knows. I wish I could say that I did an amazing job, but it turns out that playing with people singing is harder in just about every way than I thought possible. I played through “We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet” completely as a refresher and I did it really fast and played perfectly the first time. Then when everyone joined in I realized I was going too fast so I slowed down and did a horrible job of playing, I made so many mistakes. Oh well, good thing I only have to live with my embarrassment for one more week since next week is the last time that I’ll see some of them.

6/9/2021

Today was a great day, we ended up getting to be a part of a service project today. We talked to the family we were doing service for afterwards, they invited us to sit down and we had a mini lesson outside of our service. The family was really surprised to hear that we weren’t getting paid at all to help out, but were in fact paying to be able to serve them. We had a lot of fun with our lessons and were able to stop by the young men’s activity tonight. They made cinnamon rolls, and so we got to eat cinnamon rolls for our “missionary activity” tonight. This form of taxation is great, we need to hang around the young men more often.

6/10/2021

Today we had a bible bash with three different pastors at the same time. Obviously that was not the ideal situation to be in, that’s the type of situation that you avoid at all costs, but looking back it was pretty funny. We had a member come along with us, which might be why that pastor invited other pastors as well. Jake was the person who we were really there to meet with, and I think he felt like he had to put on a show for the other pastors at how good at defending his faith he was. Unfortunately he wasn’t very good at it. He threw old questions we had already answered with him at us and so we just re-gave him the answers. We were pretty disappointed afterwards because Jake had been progressing a lot, but it was obvious after that meeting that we would not be going back.

6/11/2021

Today we had another lesson with Deanie. We talked about the first vision and gave her a copy of the Restoration 

Proclamation which she seemed to really like. The whole situation was pretty awesome because we were able to invite her to the church and we held our meeting there. We took her on a tour around the church building and she seemed to really love it. We had our meeting with two different couples as well: The Klines returned for another meeting and our Ward Mission Leader and his wife joined in as well. The lesson was a little difficult to guide, but we got to the end, which is all that matters.

6/12/2021

Tonight we had an activity called Ward Fun Night. It was an activity that was meant to be a social opportunity for the families, especially the younger families in the Ward. Unfortunately we only have a couple of “younger families” in this ward and only one of them showed up, which wasn’t great, but that one family is having a baptism tomorrow so they brought all of their friends from out of state which made the activity much bigger, in the end, than it normally would have been. Our lessons today went very well, and we had a lot of people asking for help with doing missionary work which was really cool.

6/13/2021

Today we had Ward council, and Ward correlation. The goal of one meeting was to talk about how the missionaries can help the Ward, and the goal of the other was to talk about how the Ward can help the missionaries. There was a baptism that happened today for one of the little boys in the Ward, and otherwise we spent most of our time with Bishop. Bishop was teaching the lesson which we attended, and we spent a longer amount of time at his house than usual. Bishop’s kids were gone and trying to maintain attention with them is always a struggle since there are a couple of youth who really don’t want to be there, but Bishop and his wife have incredible testimonies, and so we got to have a meeting tonight that was unhindered by anyone who might not want to be there.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a verse from 2nd Nephi 31:

7 Know ye not that he was holy? But notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of men that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnesseth unto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments.

One of the ultimate attributes of Christ was his humility. His humility is shown in every aspect of His life, and especially during His Atonement. One of the greatest ways we can learn humility is by obeying the commandments as we strive to become more like Christ. The commandments, combined with Christ's Atonement, are our stepping stones to perfection.

Chapter 49: I Can't Tell You How Much God Loves Me Because Numbers Don't Go That High

6/1/2021

Today was a fun day, but not for missionary work. We had to take our car into the shop today and did so this afternoon expecting to have our car back within a hour or two. Well, we got a call that our car was unsafe to drive, and that they planned on keeping it a lot longer than we originally planned for, perhaps for weeks. We called our district leader and he said that we would be staying in Delta for the night with Uncompahgre with Elder Eden and Elder Bunker. That was a fun opportunity to see Elder Eden.

6/2/2021

Today we spent the morning with Uncompahgre until they took us back up to our apartment. We’ll be getting a car tomorrow from one of our other District companionships, but until then we’re pretty much stranded at our house. Fortunately we were able to walk to the church for youth activities tonight, but the 40 minutes it took us to walk there made me grateful for all the times that we’ve been able to make the drive in five minutes in a car.

6/3/2021

Today we had an awesome combined district council meeting. We got to see all of the Elders and Sisters in our Zone, and we spent a lot less time talking about technique and what it was that we could do than we spent talking about the “why” of what we were doing. There was an opportunity for missionaries who wanted to to share a brief testimony, but I told myself I wasn’t going to get up unless they asked me to since I had (as usual) an excessive amount of preparation and would have talked for no less than 15 minutes. We also got to start exchanges today, and so I got to spend the day with Elder Edwards. Our time together was very enjoyable, I’m going to miss him a lot when he goes home.

6/4/2021

This morning Elder Aguirre and I switched back. We got to do an abbreviated weekly planning session, which I just remembered that we didn’t finish, so we’ll get to wrap it up tomorrow. We got to do a lot of service today, and a lot of work over Facebook. The lessons that we had today also went really well. We found out today that our member meals are officially going away; We will no longer be eating with anyone. This is an opportunity for us to focus less on having our temporal needs taken care of, and making more time for members to be able to focus on missionary work and the more important work of gathering Israel.

6/5/2021

We had another lesson with Deanie today, and it was amazing. We brought fellowship along, Brother and Sister Kline, and they worked flawlessly together with us as we taught the Plan of Salvation to Deanie. We were so proud of Deanie because she kept the commitment we left with her, she read The Book of Mormon! We were so proud of Brother Kline because he’s a recent convert, and he was teaching as if he had been a life-long missionary. His testimony was amazing, and he closed out our meeting today by promising blessings in the name of Jesus Christ. Brother and Sister Kline are working to get to the point to be able to go to the temple, and it is amazing to see them doing missionary work alongside us. I was so proud of Brother Kline, and Sister Kline was too. 

6/6/2021

Today was a lot of fun. We had a youth fireside in our ward that we got to go to. The Bishop asked me to play introduction music as everyone was walking into the chapel, which went pretty well. He then asked if I could play an opening hymn which went… less well. Fortunately it didn’t ruin the fireside too much. I need to practice reading music more, most of the stuff that I play has been by ear, not off a sheet of paper, and so that was a little out of my comfort zone. I also shared a personal experience tonight with a family that we were teaching which is rare for me. I don’t usually share those experiences with others because I feel like it dominates the conversation and makes it impossible to teach in unity with my companion since he doesn’t know those stories like I do. I did recognize afterwards the importance of sharing my testimony and witness, though. My witness is unique, it needs to be shared.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share the transition shown for those who become converted to the Gospel as recorded in Alma 26:15 

Yea, [we] were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought [us] into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and [we] are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work.

The reason why I changed these words to include us is because it doesn't matter how long we've been members of Christ's church for. Until we do the things He asks us to, until we act on them the Gospel will just be a nice idea, it has no power to bring life and joy into our lives until we act on our faith and put it to the test. We can choose to live the Gospel at any time, and as soon as we do we will be brought into Christ's marvellous light.

Chapter 48: New Leads

 

5/26/2021

Today we had lessons all day. It felt good to be busy, and made it easier to feel the Spirit since we were constantly teaching which I was very grateful for.  

5/27/2021

Today was a fun day. We got to help out at a few service projects, one was the food bank that we go to and they were very grateful for our help since they were especially short-staffed today. We didn’t even notice a difference in our efficiency, though. Elder Aguirre and I managed very well ourselves what normally took many other workers to do. We also got to help Sister Dearmond paint her concrete today. She was very grateful for our help, although we were expecting to have a lesson with her so we went over in our normal clothes instead of service clothes. We must have been a sight to behold: Painting in white shirts and ties, fortunately no accidents with clothing happened.

5/28/2021

Today was a good day. We tripled the recommended number of Facebook contacting that our Mission suggests, which was not a great thing to try because those numbers are supposed to help keep us from getting banned by Facebook. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this though, I used to do the same thing and did get banned, but we’re generating a lot more traction on group pages now than we used to, and Facebook is becoming much more lenient with us as a result since we’re obviously not robots.

5/29/2021

Today we picked someone up and the lesson was amazing! Oh my goodness, the person who we met up with was a nonmember with a lengthy teaching record, and on their record was recorded several times that this person was doing well with reading The Book of Mormon. Elder Aguirre and I prayed about our lesson and felt that for some reason we needed to only focus on The Book of Mormon, instead of talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ or Plan of Salvation with her which would have been the logical next steps. When we sat down for our lesson we said that we would briefly summarize the information she likely already knew about The Book of Mormon, but she urged us to go on. We found out that she had never read from the Book of Mormon before, and so we asked her if we could read through a section with her. She agreed and we read through 3rd Nephi 11 with her and she loved it. She solidly committed to reading through The Book of Mormon, and now we’re going to be regularly studying it with her. We’re very excited.

5/30/2021

Our Sacrament meeting today was awesome! We had some really good speakers and I really enjoyed getting to hear from those people. We had been working with the speakers for the last several weeks through some of their difficulties and getting to hear their messages today and ways that they had been overcoming their difficulties and achieving their goals was incredible. I was so proud of them. Elder Aguirre and I also got to teach for our fifth Sunday combined lesson. We talked about missionary work and how we could better participate in it, and the presentation went really well. There was more excitement about missionary work afterwards than I’d ever seen before.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a verse that I was very impressed by this week from Job 13:15

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him."

A willingness to be faithful even in the face of immense persecution and trials is exactly the kind of faith that I want to have, faith to be faithful though the entire world should conspire against me and though I feel abandoned even by God. That is the type of faith that Christ had, that great faith that has been immortalized through Job's words. A complete willingness to humbly submit to Heavenly Father's will is the only way that we can develop that kind of immense faith.