Week 10 - "Don't forget your booties, 'cause It's COLD out there today!"

Hello, everyone!

This week's quote is from Groundhog Day, for hopefully obvious reasons (check your calendar). We were told not to be outside for more than 15 minutes on Wednesday and Thursday because I guess there's a polar vortex or something? But the weather has cleared up now. Now it's just rainy.

This week has been pretty good. I had my first zone conference this past week on Thursday, and I learned a lot of significant things. It was a very spiritually uplifting experience. There were a lot of things that came to my mind that I felt like I needed to record and implement, and later Elder Thomas and I  talked about our impressions from the conference and what we feel like we need to do. Some of the gems of wisdom that came from the conference were as follows:

President Stratford said that Satan lives in the past, and he wants to drag you and keep you there. Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, on the other hand, see you for who you can become. They see your potential. They live in the future.

President Stratford also said that one hour of personal study daily is NOT optional. I really appreciate that. (I've been learning why today, but I'll tell you about that in a bit.)

One of the messages I felt like I received was that if we received revelation we need to write it down and follow through on it. There's a reason we're getting it. I also testified about the spirit and how cool it is that it speaks to and teaches each of us individually.

There are some life experiences we have that we can hold on to for a period of time, and there are others that we must feel and experience and quickly let go of.

A missionary who was on his way out, Elder John (whom I had an exchange with a little while ago) said that if there's one thing he's learned, it's that he should love everyone. he said, "Take it from someone who's been here for 2 years: Love everyone."

A sister on her way out said that now, at the end of her mission, she feels she knows Christ.

There was a letter read from a former missionary from the mission, Elder Winland, who said he was struggling with obedience, and in his own words, he said he heard something as if an audible voice spoke to him, and the words he heard were, "If you don't choose me now, when will you?"

I learned that simplification is one way we can be more effective teachers of the gospel. Sometimes we don't realize that the words we use are unfamiliar to others, and putting into more accessible speech, the kind of words that everyone is familiar with, makes it easier for us to spread our message.

On the subject of receiving revelation, one of the thoughts I had in the MTC that I feel like I'm really understanding now came to me while I was trying to memorize D&C 4. The section compares missionary work to harvesting in a field of wheat, and verse 4 says, in part, "He that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul." I wondered about that. If we are working in the field, what are we laying up in store? I don't think it's necessarily the people we bring into the church, because not everyone has the opportunity to bring others to baptism. I thought about it for a bit, and at least one possible interpretation of the laying up in store occurred to me. When we harvest wheat and lay it up in store, why are we doing that? We're storing it for a time when we won't be able to harvest it, right? We're storing it for a time when we won't have food, and then we can draw on it. It occurred to me that one thing I can lay up in store on a mission is the experiences I have, and then I can go back to them and draw on them in times of spiritual need. I have had some really good spiritual experiences while I've been here, and I need to be faithfully recording them--I need to insist on spending time to record them and guard that time jealously--so that I can draw on them in the moments when I'm struggling. It's easy to forget things. It's harder to do when you write them down.

So back to zone conference. One of the things we learned at the conference was that the missionary rule of always staying within sight and sound of your companion also applies in your apartment. The only exception is if one of you is in the bathroom, and you have to stay on the same floor as your companion. I was pretty bugged about that, because it's been nice to have some freedom for each of us to do what we want to do. We've always stayed on the same floor, but we didn't insist on being within sight and sound of one another. So I grumbled a bit when we got back to the apartment, because it felt pretty restricting, but we did it. And guys, blessings for obedience are a thing. The next day it seemed like every interaction we had was a positive one. At the very least, none of them were negative. We shoveled the driveways of two potential investigators, and on the way to doing that, we had a good little conversation with a guy at a bus stop, helped employees at a car wash down the street push a car through the snow so it could get through the car wash, helped a woman named Beth (whom we'd never met) shovel her own driveway, and offered to help two other people shovel their driveways. We got to tell beth who we are and explain a little bit about how you become a missionary. Also, we took a bus back to our apartment, and a random guy taught us how to use the bus schedule and told us to "have a blessed day." In addition, that day we received three different referrals: two from the assistants, and one from some sisters in the zone. So far only one of those referrals has panned out, but it may be panning out in a big way. We'll see (I'll tell you about that in a bit, too). It was just a really great day. I felt like I was walking on air. And we were committing to be more obedient. I don't think that's a coincidence. Especially because the next day seemed really good as well, until I felt like I should knock on some doors on this one street, and I didn't want to, so we just passed them. I felt like I lost something because of my disobedience to that prompting, and it made it hard to teach a lesson later that night. I didn't feel like I was speaking by the spirit like I had been earlier in the week. So later in the week we went and knocked those doors. Nothing happened, but I felt like my conscience was cleared, to a degree. I'm trying to be better about following those promptings I get to knock on doors or talk to people, but it never seems like any of them go anywhere. Some missionaries say that's a way the Lord tests you to know if you'll be obedient, but I'm not sure about that. The only consolation I have is in the thought that somehow, knocking that door or leaving that card helped someone. But I don't know.

earlier in the week, before zone conference, on Tuesday, I went on exchanges with Elder Collier, one of the zone leaders. It was really good. I hope I have him as a companion before he leaves--he's pretty close to the end of his mission. One of the things we did was go watch a recent convert's son play basketball. We're trying to show him we care about him. Elder Collier loves watching sports, though, and the game was a nail-biter until the end (our team won by 1 point with a buzzer-beater), so I think it was good for him. He also said his brother plays keys in a band called Michael Barrow and the Tourists and has a solo project coming out soon called zachisatourist. The song his brother sent him recently was pretty good, too. You might want to check them out.

on a later day (I think Saturday or Sunday) we tried to visit one of our referrals, but no one answered when we knocked on the door. We texted her, too, and no luck. But we were with a member who actually served in this mission, and we talked to him about it and were feeling discouraged, and he said that the work we do isn't wasted, even if it doesn't lead to baptism. That's one thing I've been thinking about recently. I feel like if we can lift every person we come in contact with or bring them closer to Christ, we're doing our job. 

Just as a random aside, Elder Thomas will be coming to our Groundhog Day party next year. I've been thinking about buying some Girl Scout cookies as a post-holiday celebration--I just need to figure out where to get them. There's a family in the ward whose daughter is a girl scout, I think.

So the next thing I want to talk about is this past Monday. Monday was an interesting day. It was the first time I felt like I was living a "typical" missionary day. We went around on bikes, biked in the rain, and knocked on some people's doors. That day we were mostly just trying to find people. There are several people in the Area book Planner who are marked as moved, so we've been checking each of the addresses to verify they've moved so the ward can move the records out. We also visited a few of those referrals. The first one was the "high" of the day. We visited a house, knocked on the door, and were writing a note to leave when the guy showed up in his car. We walked over to him and had a good little conversation. He says he's part of an interfaith group and probably not "convertable." We told him that was OK, and we'd love to talk to him about religion sometime (you take what you can get here in the way of any kind of missionary work). Later on in the conversation, he said his interfaith group sometimes will come and do a tour of different congregations' church buildings and then attend a service to understand more about what the faith is about. We were like, "Yeah, we can do that, if you're interested." We finished the conversation and left, and Elder Thomas was like, "That's all we need: To just get a whole group of people to tour the church and then attend a service!" So we're hoping that works out: Pray for us.

Later on in the day we had our low point. We knocked on a door, and a mid- to late-20s woman came out and asked how we got her address, and then she said that she has tried to stop getting visits and calls from people in the church, and said that she grew up in the religion but left because it's sexist and homophobic, and she was sorry this was what we were doing with our lives, and she was really going to have to start documenting these visits so she could get the harassment to stop. She took our pictures with our nametags, and we apologized and left. We couldn't really get a word in edgewise to explain what we were doing--that we weren't there to preach to her. So after we left we marked her as a Do Not Contact, and we're going to let bishop know about her on Sunday. But it was interesting: I wasn't super phased by that interaction. I felt like her objections about our visiting were coming from a pretty legitimate place. She was also trembling when she was talking with us. I've felt anger and frustration to that degree before, and I empathized with it. I felt like she must have had a really bad experience with the church in the past. It made me ponder on some really deep questions I have about what we're held responsible for at the day of judgment and how merciful God will be to us. I hesitate to paint this woman as misunderstanding the gospel, because I feel like that delegitimizes her feelings, but the interaction made me wonder whether our agency can be used to prevent us from acquiring truth even if we're not acquiring that truth based on our belief in a false principle. I also wonder whether God will hold us accountable for that.

Anyhow, I felt bad later that evening because I pulled out in front of a car on the road so I could make a turn. I guess it's a testament to the niceness of people in Ohio that when he yelled at me, he didn't use obscenities but just asked "Is that safe?!" I felt bad because I felt like I was misrepresenting the church by my behavior, if I did something wrong.

OK, I've got very little time, so I'm going to have to focus on the important bits. Yesterday, we met with a woman named Nancy (she's the one whose dog, Wilson, we walked). She initially told missionaries she didn't want to be evangelized to, but then later she left a note for Elder Thomas and I telling us to bring literature with us next time, and Mom, I think those tabbed copies of the Book of Mormon were for her. She's a bit scatterbrained, and it helps her to have stuff like that to stay on track, so we gave her a copy, and I'm really hoping it's helped her. She has also said she wants to come to church with us, but she said both of those desires are because she wants to know what we're all about so she can defend us to the people who say bad things about us. She's had some friends say they hate our church. It's interesting that she kept meeting with us. We're hopeful that she has a good experience with the Book of Mormon and a good experience at church.

Today we met with an older gentleman who missionaries have taught before who has said in the past that he thinks our missionaries and him don't see eye-to-eye on certain things. He's has a strong belief in the Bible, and he took us out to lunch today, and we talked about some of the doctrines of the church. We explained our understanding of the godhead, which I think he falls right in line with idealogically, but we also talked about the ideas of spirit paradise and spirit prison, and he feels like when we die, we simply sleep, as it were, and have no thoughts or anything like that. He cited some of the verses in the Bible to back it up, and we're going to look at them. So he disagrees with us on that point, but he also said that's not necessarily pertinent to our salvation, which is an attitude Elder Thomas has expressed in the past. After the interaction Elder Thomas and I talked about how we think missionaries should be required to read the Bible all the way through as well as the Book of Mormon before coming out. He also talked about how he believes we really are in the last days--like we're right on the cusp. It was an interesting interaction. I feel like there are a lot of things we agree on, but I'm not sure if he'd ever be interested in converting to the church.

That's all for now. Please, keep sending me emails. I think they're a good resource for me, your testimonies especially. They bolster me. And please, continue to pray for me.

Elder Davis