Week 21 - "THAT was a pret-ty good day."

Hello, everyone! This week's quote is from Groundhog Day. Again, it's going to be interesting to tally up at the end and find out which movies my quotes ended up being from the most.

So this week, to be honest, has been up and down. There were moments that were pretty difficult for me, and then there were moments that were awesome. On Saturday afternoon and evening I was really struggling and watched that video "The Hope of God's Light" that I shared on Facebook and decided that I wanted to fast that Sunday to ask for some help. So I did. And I think the wheels in heaven have been turning, because I've been pretty blessed. Most of it was centered around what happened yesterday, or at the very least that's the stuff that's the freshest in my mind. I don't have a lot of extra time this preparation day, so I'm just going to copy and paste my journal entry and make some slight adjustments for the sake of simplicity and privacy and put it here. Suffice it to say that yesterday was a really, really good day. It felt really good. The spirit was pretty strong and present throughout the whole day. One of the things I've learned as I've been out here on a mission is that my apprehensions don't mean anything. They don't mean squat. The reason I say that is that there have been a lot of moments when I've felt uneasy about doing something, like knocking on a door or talking to someone or going somewhere, and whenever we've ended up doing that thing anyway, we haven'y had anything bad happen. I'm learning that when I feel unsettled about something, that's not necessarily (and probably not) the spirit. If I had listened to those voices that told me something bad was going to happen, there were a fair amount of things that happened yesterday that probably wouldn't have taken place. So I just want to preface my account of the day with that. Here you go:

Today we went to see a woman (we'll call her Jane) who we had met a few days ago when looking for a woman named Shannon and a woman named India. She said she had forgotten that she had invited us to come over, and she was going to work, but she wanted us to come back that night. So we scheduled her for 6:30. That brought us back home, where we had lunch and companion study, and then we went out around 3 and had about 2 hours to kill before dinner. We went to a few places and knocked on a few doors of some potentials. We got an invitation back at one and no response at another. 

Later we went to go visit another person named Christine a few streets away, and as we were walking up we met a guy named Jason who lived at the house she lived in. We asked about her, and he sucked in his breath, like when you're trying to make a difficult decision or expressing empathy for a painful experience. He let us know she was dead. He talked about how he's living in the house with two of her sons, who are his brothers (he didn't say he was her son, though, so I'm not sure what that was about), and how he's sort of got to take care of them now. But he served in the military, and he's dealing with some physical difficulties as a result of some accidents and some mental challenges of the type you might expect for a veteran. He said he has a tough time cleaning up and even doing things like doing the dishes at the house because of his leg, and he recently got in a bike accident that caused him a lot of pain and screwed up his other leg. So he's really hurting right now. But he shared with us that he had a near-death experience where he prayed to God, and he said it was like he got "punched in the head with knowledge," and he was able to react to a potential accident in such a way that he didn't get crushed by a car. He's also got the transmutation circles on Roy Mustang's ignition gloves tattooed on the back of his hands, which is pretty wicked, and he's got a bunch of other tattoos, including one that says "Only God judges me" or something like that. He's got some crosses and a Bleach tattoo and some other things. He seems like a cool guy who's been through some really difficult experiences and dealt with some rough stuff, but also someone who our Heavenly Father is looking out for and trying to help. He seems like someone who's gone in the wrong direction because he's missing some important information, but he's also redeemable and has a chance to come back. He just needs to understand some things. He's asking the really important and deep questions, and I hope as he reads The Book of Mormon he's able to find answers. We gave him a copy at the end, by the way. And it was funny how we met him. He was very hospitable. He asked us to kind of just take a load off so we could relax a little bit, because he knew what we did was tough, and we could probably use a break, and then we can just go tell the people in charge of us that the person we were looking for wasn't there (which made me smile inside--we're not just following orders: We were there for whoever was willing to talk to us). He also said he was just on his way to go jam out, and I asked what he played. He said he plays guitar, and he plays metal. I told him I had a teacher in college who loved heavy metal and progressive metal (Brother Harrell). He later actually opened his door, turned on his amp (which was HUGE), and played for us a little. He's pretty good. He's played at a couple cool places, too, he said. He'd probably be offended by this, but he reminds me of what I've seen in trailers of the character Jesse Eisenhower plays in American Ultra, as far as his long hair and the semi-chill attitude he has. He said a lot of things about God that I think our gospel would help him to correct. There are a lot of things we understand about God that clarify life. He also indicated that he might want to come to church on Sunday.

After visiting with Jason and trying another person or two with no success, we headed to the library, where we saw a guy named Steve we've talked with before, and we talked to him for a while. We had a good conversation with him outside the library, and it got into our religion a little bit, and we were able to answer some questions he had about our behavior and beliefs, and he said he wouldn't be a good candidate for conversion because he has some beliefs he holds very strongly, but I think we'll see about that: He complimented us on some of our beliefs, and it may be that many of the things he believes are things we believe as well. I think perhaps he's just misunderstood by most people. I'd love to have a conversation with him in future about what some of those cherished beliefs of his are. After that we came in and talked to Keith, a security guard at the library, and we were able to share some of our beliefs and stuff with him as well. That was really good. I think Keith could be a really great member of the church if he ever decides he wants to learn more about what we believe. I also think, though, that we have to wait for him to come to us a little bit.

After that we went back to the apartment and had dinner, and then we went to see that person whose door we knocked on this morning, "Jane." She's awesome. We sat there, and she told us basically her life story. That's what we had hoped to learn about her, but we didn't need to do anything to prompt it--she just did it. We'll be meeting with her again on Thursday. She grew up in a religious home, and she was really popular and well-liked in high school as a cheerleader and a person at the top of the food chain. She gave us the sense that she was at the top of the social order and wasn't necessarily kind to those "beneath" her (she described herself in more colorful terms), and that she's done some bad things since high school (she's 21) that she felt really bad about and that her family sort of just continually judges her for. It maybe feels a little bit like she's the black sheep of the family, I might say. She says she feels sort of uncomfortable praying because she's cursed God and talked bad about God, and she feels two-faced looking to him and asking him for help now. We tried to encourage her and let her know that we can always pray, and that he always wants us to pray. We may have to cover that a little bit more in further lessons. We'll try to prepare for that as well as we can before the next lesson. She wanted to know if we did daily Bible Studies or anything like that. She's really trying to turn her life around and establish herself. She expressed the sentiment that she doesn't really know who she is now, and she's having to rediscover all that. She was very open with us, too. She told us some of the things she's done, and I feel like you normally wouldn't tell a stranger about those things. Anyway, I'm excited for her, to teach her and meet with her. She could benefit a lot from what the gospel has to offer. I told her that, too. There were a lot of moments during our conversation that I was like, "This doctrine would help you out so much!" in my head, but it was a whole big can of worms that we were going to have to get into. She's dealing with some of the same kinds of things I deal with, too, as far as mental health, and it makes life difficult for her. But she's getting on her feet and getting things in order. She also said several times that she was going to come to church with us on Sunday. So we're pretty excited about that. I'm hoping and praying that she benefits from that. We also gave her a copy of The Book of Mormon and told her a little about what it is. We'll get to more of it the next time we meet with her. We didn't have a super huge amount of time to teach, even though we were there for about an hour and a half, because we were mostly listening to her share her life experiences and trying to let her know we understand her. But we've got an appointment scheduled with her and her number and so forth, and it seems like this is the beginning of a long and helpful relationship with the missionaries for her. I hope we can let her know the importance of what we have and the significance and the confirmation of the spirit that comes with the ordinances that we perform, and what that means for this church and its divine origin.

After meeting with "Jane" we went and visited Bruce and got to meet Bobby officially. Bobby is a friend of Bruce's he considered inviting to church. I blasted through the Restoration in about 5 minutes with him (I didn't really give Elder Anderson time to talk, and probably should have--I apologized later), and we gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon. He said he would come to church and told us he would see us there on Sunday. We're excited to have him come, and we're excited that Bruce will come again. Bruce, by the way, is near the end of the index of The Book of Mormon. He burned through the actual Book of Mormon in about a week, and now he's scanning through the index. I think we'll want to talk to him about some of the questions he has and the answers he's looking for in the scriptures and help him find the answers to those questions in the scriptures. Anyway, I felt bad, and I apologized to Bobby for just condensing all that information and basically vomiting it on him, but he objected to that a little and said, "No, no: Thank you," or something along those lines. I also told him that I know The Book of Mormon has blessed my life and will bless his as well. After that we came home and reported what had happened and everything. It was a really good day.

In other news, I went to Kirtland today with Elder Anderson! He's never been before, and he was in the Columbus Mission before the boundary reassignments, so he never got the opportunity to go to kirtland at the beginning of his mission (it wasn't in the mission then). All those missionaries who didn't get that opportunity are now allowed to go to Kirtland once during their mission, and Elder Anderson wanted to go while he was up here in Warren, so today we went. John Nicholas took us, and it was a really great experience. The tour of the sites owned by the church was really cool, but the Kirtland Temple tour was even cooler: The guy who took us through, his name is Tom, and he's got "EX LIBRIS" tattooed on his right arm and "M. P. C." tattooed on his left arm and has long, salt-and-pepper hair. I wasn't sure what to make of him when we first came into the Community of Christ visitor's center. As the tour went on, we learned that he's a member of the church who grew up in Utah and has several kids who have been on missions, but he was recruited to come out and is volunteering his time and holding a full-time job near Kirtland to work doing temple tours for the Community of Christ. He also has a number of ancestral relationships to historic members of the church who lived in the Kirtland area, including many who worked on the temple. It's a very special and sacred place to him, more so than it is to many members of the church, and perhaps more so than it is even to members of the Community of Christ. He talked to us a lot while we were there about the rift that formed and divded the Community of Christ church from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he talked about how as of late we have been able to try to recreate a good relationship between us, and though we have doctrinal and historical differences that are irreconcilable, we can still respect and honor one another. After the tour we were in the gift shop, and wouldn't you know it, after I had just talked to Elder Anderson the day before about one of my teachers at BYU-Idaho, Jack Harrell, I saw his book, "A Sense of Order and Other Stories" in the gift shop. I said to Elder Anderson, "You know how I was just talking about Jack Harrell?" Tom was there in the store, and he said, "You know Jack Harrell?" I was like, "Yeah!" And he was like, "He and I are good friends. I was the publicist for that book." It's a small world in the church, but that surprised me. I didn't expect to meet someone in Kirtland who knew one of my teachers at BYU-Idaho. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since I met someone in Worthington who was also an English major at BYU-Idaho and knew many of the teachers I took classes from. But I thought that was super cool. Anyway, that was the awesome thing that happened to me today. Also, I have a bunch of pictures from Kirtland and a video of a storm we were in last weeks but the video is too big, and I took the pictures with Emma's camera, so I won't be able to send them until next week, which is transfers, and therefore preparation day will be on Wednesday again.

I love you all. Keep the faith. When you feel too weak to stand, find the strength to fall to your knees. Then get up and carry on, and you will see miracles.

Elder Davis