Week 28 - "Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won't you please, please help me?"

Hey, everyone.

Hoo boy, this week has been one heck of a week. It's been crazy. It's also been slightly longer than usual since my last email, since our preparation day was put off until today, because transfers are tomorrow. I feel like I'm cheating a little bit using the quote above, seeing as it's from a song, but it's from "Help!" the movie starring the "Fab Four," The Beatles. It's one of the lyrics from their song by the same name, which they sing near the beginning of the movie.

Man, where do I start? I guess we can start with transfers. So missionaries sometimes like to make predictions about what will happen during transfers, and they'll often share them in messenger groups, which we use to report goals, share miracles and spread other information throughout the district. So there were a lot of ideas floating around regarding what was going to happen to everyone this transfer. Elder Hall, our district leader, has been serving in Ashtabula for I think 5 transfers (that's about 7.5 months), but he's also just a transfer or two away from the end of his mission, so we wondered where he was going to go. Elder Anderson has been feeling like he was going to leave since last transfer, and this was his third transfer here, so he felt like he was likely to be sent elsewhere. People had all sorts of wild and crazy predictions about things like who was going to be training, who was going to be leaving, etc. But it turns out that the truth is stranger than fiction. 

Elder Hall is leaving to be a district leader in another district, Elder Anderson and Elder Carter (one of the zone leaders) have been paired together and will be working on OSU campus, Elder Lewis, who came north with me when I left Worthington, will be staying in Ashtabula and training, and I've been called as the new district leader and will be staying in Warren. My new companion will be an Elder Gallagher. 

We got the call about our area early yesterday morning. President called and let us know that Elder Anderson was going to be leaving and that I would be taking Elder Hall's assignment as district leader. I wasn't expecting that. I did feel like I might be training, which I didn't feel at all prepared for, but I never suspected that I would be put in a leadership position. And my new companion came out with Elder Anderson, but suddenly I've been assigned as the senior companion. That's definitely a title I hold only in name and something I'm going to have to grow into. I've learned a lot working with Elder Anderson, and I'm going to have to learn a lot more if I want to be effective as a missionary. But it's not all on my shoulders--one of the things I've realized in the past week is that I need to rely more on my companion. I've been trying to deal with a lot of struggles I've been having on my own, expecting that my companion wouldn't really understand, but I was reaching a breaking point yesterday and the day before. Circumstances combined to make Monday feel pretty difficult. It was the first day of our "preparation day drought," meaning that it was day 7 since we had a preparation day (because preparation day was scheduled for Wednesday), it was stormy and rainy, but not so much that we wouldn't be able to get out and knock on people's doors, and a couple appointments we originally had scheduled fell through. It was hard. (Side note, though: Someone always has it harder than you do--the sisters in our area were biking all that day and didn't have raincoats, so they were just getting drenched.) Anyhow, we had just finished a period of time being out knocking on doors. We had found a person or two that might be interested in the message, but no one that really felt like they were ready to receive the gospel. We also ran into a few people that made my spirits sink a little. 

I've noticed that it's not so much the rejection that gets me, but the way in which it's done sometimes. People are so dismissive, like you're not even a person. They don't want to tell you, "I'm comfortable in my beliefs, thank you," they just scowl and put up their hand and wave you away or roll their eyes at you or whatever. It's pretty disheartening to me to have those experiences, and I'm trying to figure out how to be able to respond to them internally in a positive way. We also met a woman who interrupted us mid-sentence and was like, "Do y'all approve of gays?" Elder Anderson was like, "Yeah," and she was like, "Since when?" And he said "We love the sinner, not the sin," and she was like, OK, y'all have a great day," and shut the door. Experiences like that really get under my skin, too, because they make me question my own values and beliefs. I start to ask whether I've got it wrong, and on a mission, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of time to spend shoring up your own testimony, even though it feels like it's attacked every day. So I was pretty down by the end of the afternoon, and we went to a Subway and sat down to eat dinner, and I prayed pretty hard silently to ask for help. And there was a thought that came to my mind over the next several hours. 

There was a young woman who finished her mission a few transfers ago who said she'd gotten to know Jesus Christ throughout her mission, and now she really had a relationship with him. I thought that was kind of weird, but then I looked at myself and realized that I don't know if I have a strong relationship with Christ. To be honest, I don't know if I really know him much at all. But then, over the course of that evening, we had some positive contacts with people, were able to find and talk to someone we've been dropping by and teaching every once in a while, and then found ourselves in an area that we had planned to be in but felt wrong about. I felt like we shouldn't really be there, and Elder Anderson felt like we needed to be somewhere else. So we got into the car, had a prayer, and then started looking in our area book. 

Earlier this week, after going to visit a family on the south side of town, we were street contacting and tracting, and we met a woman who expressed interested in reading The Book of Mormon and in hearing the message. Her name is Treasure. We scheduled a time to visit, but then when we got there she wasn't there--it didn't work out. But Monday evening as we sat there in the car trying to figure out what we should do, Elder Anderson suggested we go see Treasure, and I felt the most confident about that choice. So we went over there and knocked on her door, but no one answered, although the neighbors came out and said that she probably wasn't home, so we talked to them for a little while, and they said they want to hear the message we have to share. So we're going to go over there sometime and share a message with them. It felt really good to feel and be inspired to be in a place to find someone.  I want to do that more on my mission. 

That and some other experiences have taught me this week that I need to rely on the Savior Jesus Christ. I have to ask him for help. And when I do, I will see things happen in my life, and I will be able to have a greater relationship with him and a greater testimony of who he is and that he is real. I've been thinking a lot about how God gives us weakness that we may be humble, and if we humble ourselves before God and have faith in him, then our weaknesses become strengths. I've also been thinking a lot about how we don't grow when we're in places that are comfortable, and we don't gain a personal relationship with the Savior when we're in comfortable places either. We have to keep growing and improving and becoming if we want to come closer to the Savior, because if we're going to see his hand unmistakably in our lives, we have to get to that point where we need his help and then we have to ask for it. And then we see the arm of the Lord revealed. I believe that.

What else happened this week? We got to teach and then later serve a guy named Gabriel who wants us to come back for another lesson. 

We got to teach a lesson to a guy named Eric whom we've been trying to contact for probably 3 or 4 months. 

Earlier this week one of the people we're teaching had a friend over who had been taught from a very young age that "Mormons" were bad and that he should stay away from us. But Rick sat there and basically went to bat for us and taught and testified about truth. It was like he was our member present for the lesson. So we think he's making good progress, and we're hoping to get him to church soon.

That's basically the long and short of this week in Warren. The next six weeks are going to be very interesting. I'm going to have to learn more about the responsibilities of a district leader, and I'm going to have to become a much better missionary than I am. 

Prayers, as always, will be greatly appreciated. I'm grateful for the support that you've all expressed for my participation in the work. Know that your prayers are making a difference, and that your own missionary work in your part of the world is crucial. Love you!

Elder Davis