Week 12 - "Martin! Telephone! It's! Your! Mother!"

Hello, everyone!

I'm sure you're all interested in hearing more details about the communication change (hence this week's quote, which is from Sneakers). Some of you have said you wanted to hear my reaction and my mission president's, and some have asked for more details about the change, so I'm going to discuss those here.

First, my mission president learned about the change when the rest of us did, by email. I heard he was quite surprised and went into his office and read over the email several times, probably praying about the change. I heard another leader was not very pleased with the change, but I guess we'll see how things go in the coming weeks. Several people have asked us about the change and said the church is going soft, but then conceded later that they wished they could have been able to call home every week.

Elder Thomas and I learned about the change standing at an intersection, waiting for the walk signal to turn. I mentioned a notification on my phone, and he pulled his out to check his email and then read the change out to me. He was pretty stunned about it. I was less so--I was kind of like, "Huh. That's interesting." I think the lack of shock came because of a conversation I had several months ago: Grant (Holyoak) reminded me in an email this week that we had discussed the current communication policies of the church, I think around November of last year, and he had said that considering the barriers to consistent communication (like expenses, limitation of technology) were mostly gone, he wouldn't be surprised if the policy changed soon. So it didn't catch me off-balance as much as I think it would have. As far as how we feel about it, I think I'm a little on the fence. One of my mantras since the MTC has been "Maintain momentum." An important lesson I've learned in the past year or so is that it's far easier for me to keep doing something than it is to start doing it, so I've been trying to just find my pace and my mission and run this race, and I don't want to stop or slow down. With that said, I'm a little concerned that consistently calling my family will make me trunky--will make me think about being home, and I'll have a long 21 months ahead of me if I do that. Still, Elder Thomas and I discussed some potential benefits of the change. One of the things we realized was that more consistent communication will allow families to get to know their children and siblings better as missionaries, which may mean that when they return home, they'll be treated as missionaries, at least in the sense that the spiritual insights and power they've had in the mission field will be understood and welcomed by the people back home. We think it will make the transition easier, and it will allow missionaries to hold on to the things they gained in the mission field for longer, as the way they've been living and what they've been doing will have become a part of them in the minds of their families.

Another potential benefit was expressed by President Stratford. He said in an email this morning, "The intent of the call is to allow your family to participate in lifting, edifying, and supporting you, and those people you are teaching, as you serve your mission. I invite you to exercise good judgement, and keep focused on your missionary purpose, as you talk to your families today." Elder Thomas and I also think this new communication policy will allow us to better serve and bless our families as missionaries.

As far as more details on the policy, part of President Stratford's email this morning included some clarification. It is as follows: "This morning I received some guidelines from our Area Presidency regarding the new communication policy recently announced.  The missionary department has defined the term 'Families' to mean immediate family living in the home. It does not include aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings not living at home, boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings away at school, or currently serving a mission." So it looks like my Mom and brother will be the only ones I can call. But if you happen to be there when I do, I don't see any reason why I can't talk to you, too. :)

Another interesting thing President Stratford said was that there was no stated communication time limit from the missionary department, and in an effort to fully follow the guidelines they've set forth, he's not giving us one either. That means the 90-minute limit I've had up to this point for emailing has also been abolished. But he, others and the Spirit have emphasized that we should be wise in the use of our time and make sure we get the essential things (laundry, grocery shopping, etc.) done on our P-days, because there isn't another time we can do them. So that's the scoop.

My plan for communicating with all of you is to continue to send a weekly email like this (so I can give you all a weekly update on what's going on in my mission), to continue to send a few emails to those of you who are emailing me directly every week, and to spend a little bit of time calling my family every week, either over video chat or just over the phone. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll answer them next week.

Now for the regular stuff. Mom: I'm glad Grace is OK! That absolutely breaks my heart that she dealt with that at her age. That's not fair. I wish she didn't have to, and I wish there was something I could do for her. I'll pray that she'll have comfort and be OK if the croup happens to her as much as it happened to me. The idea of her being scared makes me hurt in a very visceral way.

Among the lessons I've been learning this week in the field are that loving everyone really is the most important thing. For instance, we've been meeting with Nancy more frequently, and as we've just continued to care about her and show her that, she's practically been doing our planning for us. She told us she wanted to quit smoking, she told us she wanted to come to church with us, she's been reading the Book of Mormon every morning and evening, and she's seen a lot of improvement in her life. Her home has become far more organized, she's getting on top of the tasks that she needs to do, and she's seeing opportunities to help others that have sort of blown her away. Elder Thomas also noticed (I think I mentioned this in a previous email) that her countenance has changed since she started reading The Book of Mormon, and I think that's true. We just need to keep caring about her and showing her that we do.

Another lesson in the importance of loving everyone came last night. There's a less active family that we've been visiting, and they keep saying they're going to come to church, but they don't, and twice now it's reallly frustrated me. I've started to wonder: Are they just putting on an act? Are they just blowing us off? And I could see how I could very easily and angrily ask them those questions directly, but I haven't. Whenever we've gone over we haven't even been the ones to bring it up or address it. We just keep trying to help and love them, and last night when we did that, without us even bringing up church attendance, the mother of the family told me how several years ago they just sort of stopped coming, and she said there's really no good reason for it. I realized that if I had come into that conversation angry and accusatory she never would have come to that realization on her own, and she certainly wouldn't have confided in us. I guess what I'm saying is that as much as it's been frustrating me to see a lack of progress on the part of some individuals that we're meeting with and teaching, I've found that they begin to make their own progress when you love them and are ready to help them when they ask for your help. It doesn't necessarily hurt to bring up the topic of spirituality, like to ask them about what their spiritual goals are, but I think when we try to push people for the wrong reasons, like because we're impatient or want numbers, their progress stops. It's also hugely helpful to discuss individuals and their needs and try to address them. Elder Thomas and I had a long discussion about the less-active family before we visited with them last night, and we discussed some things we can do and talk about with them to help them meet their needs, and I was able to hit a couple of those talking points with the mom of the family in a very natural way. I think when we share our revelation and invite the Spirit to be a part of our discussion about a family or individual, we begin to understand them far more clearly, and that helps us understand what we can do for them.

We had an experience like that this week with a man named George. George has sort of been on the backburner for the missionaries because we's willing to meet but not as willing to make a commitment. When we met with him a few weeks ago, he said he wanted to be a part of the church but felt like it was very strict, and he wasn't sure he was ready to join because he wasn't ready to live up to all the rules. I explained that none of us is perfect, and that we continue to repent and grow and improve after we make the covenants we do. We all make mistakes and fall short of the glory of God, but as we learn more about the gospel and continue to try to follow it, we can get better. Anyway, on Saturday we met with him, and it was kind of like Nancy--it was like he was in weekly planning with us, discussing his needs, taking charge of his own conversion. We asked him what he wanted, what his spiritual goals were, and he said he wanted to be a part of the church. We asked him what we could do to help him with that, and he said, "More contact." We were like, "We can do that." He's going out of the country for a month for a funeral, though, so significant steps may have to wait until he gets back, but it sounded like he wanted to be baptized and become a member, but needed more help from us. Please pray for him. I hope that while he is gone, he will continue to stay true to what he knows and still be interested in meeting with us when he returns. (Side note: After we met with George a man drove up to us at his apartment complex and was like, "I see you guys around here a lot. I'm curious what you do." He had a bunch of questions and thoughts that we felt the gospel could address perfectly--he wondered why there are so many churches and whether the Bible was perfect, considering it had passed through so many hands. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and some pamphlets, and we're hoping and praying he calls.

Another testimony of the importance of discussing our investigators, planning and involving the spirit came when we visited with a young man named Dwayne. We've been teaching Dwayne for a while now, but we sat down adn talked about what his needs are and what we can do for him, decided on how we could help him and what we needed to talk about at our next meeting, and when we taught him next, the conversation steered and flowed perfectly so that we could discuss what we needed to. It's been amazing to see the support we've had from the Spirit as we've loved our investigators and involved the spirit in our discussions about them.

Well, I feel like this is getting pretty long, so I'll finish with just a few other thoughts.

We haven't been seeing a lot of measurable progress recently, and it's been kind of hard. Our mission has a written culture, sort of like a mission statement, and one of the culture points mentions that we are urgent. I know I talked about loving earlier on in the email, but it can be hard to find a balance between loving someone and being urgent. It's also disappointing to report bad numbers (or numbers that don't reach the standards of excellence, which are 5 new people being taught, 2 people coming to church, 2 on date for baptism, and 1 being baptized each week). We've had "bad numbers" this whole time, basically, but we've been retaining most of our people and continuing to teach them. I guess I just worry because with one or two of them we're not getting to much actual discussion of the gospel, especially of the 42 points we need to teach them before baptism. It's rough.

I don't want to finish on a downer, so I'll just say that I've got a goal this transfer to finish the first two books of Moses, and it's been really interesting to read Genesis. I've had a lot of insights that have really helped me. For instance, Elder Thomas and I were talking about how Abram and Sarai were given new names, Abraham and Sarah, and when we read the Come, Follow Me for this upcoming week I realized that "Peter" was a name Christ gave to Simon--it was not his name initially. I've wondered sometimes about how much of the things we do in the church are based in scripture, and it's been cool to see little nuggets in the scriptures that show that they are (thanks, by the way, Mom, for sending that email from Ross Baron. That was cool).

Just as a final note, we have a zone conference this week, on Thursday, which Elder Bennett, a seventy, will be attending. I'll let you all know how it goes.

I love you all! Keep turning to prayer and the understanding that comes from reading the scriptures, and do all you can to invite the Spirit in your life. Those small and simple things will allow great things to be brought to pass--they'll help you make it through.

Elder Davis