Week 20 - "No sacrifice, no victory!"

Hello, everybody.

I'm sorry for the fact that my quote this week comes from Transformers. I realize that's sort of a travesty, but it was the thing that came to mind and fit the best.

I've spent a LOT of time typing today because I was really, really behind on my journal (by about a week), and so I'm feeling just a little bit fried. I apologize if what follows is completely disjointed and makes absolutely no sense.

Basically this was a really eventful week. There were a lot of great things that happened, a lot of weird things that happened, and a few difficult things that happened. Narrowing them down to find a couple to put in this email is going to be hard. I guess we'll start with our mile allotment.

So the assistants sent a message to the zone leaders, who relayed the message to us, that after budgeting the miles up the mission found itself just under 3600 miles in the hole. In other words, the cars in the mission were scheduled to go 3600 miles more than they were supposed to. The assistants petitioned us to please see if there was any way each of us companionships with a car could sacrifice any o: amount of miles we had normally been given to try to make up for it. They sounded pretty desperate, but they promised blessings from it. Elder Anderson and I calculated our own mileage and figured that we could give up about 170 miles. We told the zone leaders as much, and then we went on with our day. I can't remember if it was that evening or the next day, but soon after we got a call from a sister at a referral center who said she had a Book of Mormon referral for us. She let us know they had just talked on the phone with him, and he was expecting local missionaries in his area (that's us) to call him. So we did, and we set up a time to meet with him. Later that evening, on our way to meet with him, we stopped and looked around for his address--we were having some trouble finding it. A car pulled up in the parking lot next to where we were standing, looking around, and the guy in it waved us over. We went over to talk to this guy, and he was like, "You Mormons?" I said, "We're members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yes." He said he wasn't there to bash us or anything, and then he talked about how he used to tell missionaries like us not to preach to people in his neighborhood because they were ignorant and didn't understand, but then he looked into the church and Joseph Smith and feels like Joseph Smith had the right idea, and what we taught was a good starting point, but... And then he launched into a long discussion about what he believes, a lot of which agrees with the deeper doctrine of the church, but a lot of which doesn't. He said things about how Jesus wasn't crucified, he was hung on a tree after being beaten in the square, and a cross was put over his grave that signified the four elements, which is where we get the cross from, and God is a title, and Jesus learned control over the elements and other things by studying in the East, like India and stuff, in the many years before he began his ministry, and he (this guy we were talking to) wanted to go beyond Jesus and do more than he did. There were many things he said that I felt like agreed with our doctrine, but then others that he said that I feel the spirit testify to me, "This is not correct." I also kept thinking about that verse in the scriptures that says, "Which blindness came by looking beyond the mark." I've thought since then about how there are certain things we are asked to do, and focusing on certain other things will pull us off track. Anyway, he talked to us for a very long time, and I was stressing a little bit, because we were late to our appointment for Bruce, and then someone else pulled up in the parking lot and whistled at us and waved us over (side note: It seems like people in Warren, or maybe it's just Ohio, have this very specific way of directing you to come over to them. They whistle at you, like you would for a cab, you look over to them, and then they wave you over with their hand--kind of like Neo does in The Matrix when he's challenging Mr. Smith--they just bend their knuckle joints two or three times. This is the third time it's happened in the last 2 weeks, and I don't know what it is about it, but I swear, it always feels so condescending). We told the first guy we had to leave because this other guy wanted to talk to us, but he told us where he lived and said we could come over anytime (I'm not sure how productive a visit like that would be, but whatever). We went over and talked to the other guy, and he was like, "Are you guys Mormon?" We told him we were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said he had been studying religions, recently studying with Jehovah's Witnesses, and he said he was always curious about what we believed. He was like, "So what do you believe?" And I took a deep breath, and I was like, "Well, there's a lot." He started asking us specific questions about our beliefs, and we found we had a lot of things in common. He found great importance in knowing the name of God (which he said was Jehovah, because there's a verse in the scriptures that says Jehovah is the most high god) and said that Jehovah was God, and Jesus was the son of God and was not himself Jehovah, and he showed us a bunch of scripture references and things and asked what we thought, and we talked about it, and he also talked about scripture passages about "the word," and took that to mean the Bible. He asked us some questions about the Bible, and I said, "Do you think the word of God is only found in the Bible?" That puzzled him, and he said he wasn't sure. He'd have to think about it. So we gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon and our number and a pamphlet, and then we took off to see John and Jeanne for a lesson. We actually didn't get time to go see Bruce. I was stressing about it, and so we called him, and he seemed chill about it--we just set up another appointment for the next day. We've actually got an additional appointment with him tonight, so I'm hoping it goes well. On our way back, a couple honked at us and pulled over, and they asked, "Are you Mormon?" Elder Anderson talked to them briefly and gave them our card, and we went off to John and Jeanne's. We had a good lesson with them, I think, and John bought us a meat lover's pizza to take home. He was talking to us about feeding us earlier in the day, but we had had a sort of light dinner before we went over there because we hadn't planned on eating dinner with them. We explained as much to John and told him not to buy too much, and he just responded with a text along the lines of, "The beauty with pizza is you can put it in the refrigerator." They're both great. He also said in his prayer at the end of the lesson that he'd never felt more alive with religion than he had the past few months. I thanked him for his prayer, and he just said, "It's how I feel." They're so cool. Anyway, he gave us the pizza and some drinks, and we headed back to the apartment with them on the bikes. Elder Anderson took a selfie on our way back (see below). Basically what I'm trying to say is that there was a correlation between those two events (sacrificing the miles and having all those people come to us instead of us to them) that I didn't notice until today, when Elder Anderson mentioned it to his family. Hence the Transformers quote.

That was probably the most eventful day. On Thursday we doubled in to Ashtabula (that's when you have an exchange, but you stay in the same area with the elders you're exchanging with), and it surprised me how cold it got driving just an hour or so north. It's right on the shore of Lake Erie, so the humidity makes sense, and further north than we are, so the cold makes sense, but I guess I just didn't plan it would be quite as cold as it was. I like Ashtabula, though. It seems like a good place to work as a missionary, and I wonder if I'll ever be assigned there. The exchange was good--I worked with my district leader, Elder Hall, and he's an awesome guy. ERHT readers: We ran into a woman who's originally from Italy, about 10 minutes away from Rome, and she goes back and visits there often! I got to talk to her about the tour I went on and connect with her on that level, and we showed her pictures of the Rome Temple and encouraged her to go see the visitor's center the next time she goes, which should be in a few months! It was awesome. Who would have thought, way out here in Ohio.

Another awesome thing that happened was Bruce. We got to meet him the day after, during the second appointment we scheduled with him, and he's had a really rough life, but he's seen miracles. It's clear the Lord has protected and preserved him. And now we get to teach him. We brought him the Book of Mormon he asked for, learned a little more about his history, and taught him part of the first lesson. We asked if he would read The Book of Mormon, and he said he would, and invited him to church, and he said he would come. The following is from my journal:

"Guess what? Bruce came! He was in a bright, hunter-orange polo, and he asked how long we thought services would be, and we said it would be 2 hours and asked if he needed to be somewhere by a certain time, and he said he had to be out by 1, so we told him he'd be fine. We came into the chapel with him and sat next to the Nicholases, and while Elder Anderson was talking to them I was talking to Bruce, and I asked him how his Book of Mormon reading was coming, and he said he was about halfway through. In my head, I was like, 'What?' He said he's been reading whenever he gets a spare moment. I thought that was awesome. We'll need to make sure he's understanding everything and talk to him about Moroni's promise at the end of the book and ask him if he'll do it, but it seems like things are going really well. The Sacrament meeting ended up being a fast and testimony meeting, so before we went in I explained what was going to happen, what normally happened during Sacrament meetings and how this one was different. The usual stuff all happened during the meeting ... and then Sacrament came, and I wondered what it must be like for Bruce to see people bringing communion around and delivering it to the congregation. ... Then the bishop got up and explained fast and testimony meeting, which I feel like he did because of the people we had attending church who normally wouldn't be (like Bruce), so I wondered if the members were a little confused by his detailed explanation, but I think it was very helpful for Bruce to be able to hear all that. Then the testimonies came. I was just thinking the whole time, "What does Bruce think about this? What does Bruce think about this?" And every person who got up did perfectly, like it was choreographed. The only thing I feel like we're going to have to explain to him as far as what it is was General Conference. Everything else as far as the doctrine that was discussed I feel like was clarified--one speaker would say some things, and then natural questions that might arise from what they said would be answered by a later speaker. It was awesome. And Bruce said 'amen' with a touch of conviction when a couple of people finished their testimonies, and I noticed him listening intently and reacting to what some of the speakers said like he related to it. Then we sang the closing hymn, which I think was 'How Firm a Foundation,' and the meeting closed. I told him next was priesthood, and we went into priesthood meeting and had an AWESOME discussion about repentance that, again, I felt like was just for him. There were just a lot of things that were said that I feel like were probably really helpful for him. ... When we got the end of the priesthood meeting I apologized to Bruce and said it must have felt like drinking out of a fire hose ... but he seemed alert and aware and stuff. He seemed like he had been able to take it all in. I asked him when we had scheduled our next appointment for (we weren't sure and needed clarification), and he said "Monday," like he couldn't wait for it and was really looking forward to it. He also seemed like he was lingering in the building a little. That may just be my imagination, but I wonder if he was feeling something there that he liked and didn't want to leave."

That's about all I have time for. Except for yesterday. The long and short of it is that through what was definitely the direction of the spirit, we got back to our apartment just in time before a major thunder and rain storm started pouring down. I'll include a video below.

I love you all!

Pictures

Stop sign: Unoriginal and grammatically incorrect, but still fun.

Book: A book we saw on the sale shelf at the library. I'm not sure if the author is a member or not.

Calendar: I don't know if I ever talked about the calendar I got at the food pantry in Worthington on Smoky Row, but it's super cool. The information is taken from a book called "Atlas Obscura" that I want to read when I get back that's about little-known places in the world. This is the image and caption for the month of April. I just thought it was cool.

Salsa: Mom, we made the salsa, and Elder Anderson is a fan. But I didn't realize you were sending all the ingredients, and so I bought the rest at the store today, and then the Mexicorn and the oil came in the mail. It seems like Amazon is determined to send me the items in as many individual packages as possible. I've gotten 3 so far, each one with a different ingredient, and then one with the wok oil. I also got the LEGO. Thank you!