Week 31 - "May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out."

Hey, everyone.

The quote this week is from Galadriel in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

I was struggling earlier this week and trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it. There's a manual we're given as missionaries called Adjusting to Missionary Life that addresses common issues missionaries experience and gives potential ways to remediate those issues. One of the things it has is a helpful little chart that gives you the characteristics of a missionary in different zones of physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional health. One of the most helpful things, in my mind, about that chart, is that it acknowledges that we can be less prone to feel the spirit when we are more stressed, to the point that we may have trouble feeling the spirit at all. As someone who has struggled with mental health issues, I think that's an important thing to acknowledge--some people think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can solve all our problems, and if we have an eternal perspective, we realize that it solves all the ones that really matter in the long term, but it doesn't always provide relief from the problems we experience in the short term (i.e. in life). Another thing I've noticed is that sometimes when we're experiencing something hard and praying to God for help and not getting it, we need to start looking around for ways to solve our problems. Often if we aren't getting heavenly help, the solution to our problem is at hand, and we can find it. If we're hungry, and we have food nearby, and we pray to God to ease our hunger pains or put food in our stomachs, he's probably just going to let us find the solution to our problem on our own, because the resources we need are at hand. I've noticed that you tend not to see miracles in the scriptures when the people who need something are capable of getting that thing for themselves, and that's a principle that has helped me find relief from the problems I deal with. The reason I bring that up is that I was able to turn to the manual to find some solutions to the problems I'm experiencing, and it's inspired. I think sometimes we can think that the people who put these things together are out of touch or don't understand us, but I have a testimony that whoever put that manual together understands what missionaries go through and the ways they can get help. So that was my light in a dark place this week.

What else has happened this week? Oh! The zone focus this transfer (our zone leaders and sister training leaders collaborate to figure out a thing we should focus on as missionaries during the transfer) is church attendance. I think I mentioned it in my last email, but there's a document we've been asked to consult to know how to help the people we're teaching overcome their obstacles and concerns and get to church. This week we got two people to church through our limited use of the guidance in that document (I'm excited to see how it works as we follow all the advice it gives us later on this week), and then we had two other individuals come as well: There was someone the sisters contacted named Brian who attended and enjoyed church, and then on Saturday night we got a call from a sister who works in a referral center and got us in touch with a man named David who has a family and is looking to have God in his life more. We were able to call him soon after he got off the phone with the referral sister (I'm noticing prompt contact of referrals is crucial--the good feeling of the Holy Ghost people feel when they are in contact with members of the church and hear the words of Christ doesn't always stay with them, and so getting in touch with them as soon as possible allows them to continue to feel that uplifting feeling and follow it to make the decisions that will bring them closer to Christ), and he had said he wanted to come to church and meet with us, so he was one of the people who came. We should be meeting with him later tonight, along with another person we're teaching named Gabriel. I'm really hoping both of those appointments go well, but I'm also learning that the Lord plays the long game in missionary work. He may have us go and teach someone just a few principles, knowing that they'll soon drop off the face of the earth, because he's laying a foundation with them, and he's going to give them the chance to hear the gospel again in the future. There's a scripture that has really stuck with me since I read it (which was either in the MTC or here in the field)... aaand I just spent 10 or 15 minutes looking for it in Gospel Library and can't find it, so maybe I'm imagining things, but the sense I got from it was that being able to baptize people is a blessing, and whether a missionary is able to experience that is really the Lord's prerogative--we're just here to do the work he needs us to do. Anyhow, we have been seeing many people progress toward baptism, so that's great. Also, there were some members who didn't like the member meal change a couple weeks ago, and the Sisters led a lesson/discussion about missionary work for the second hour of the fifth Sunday, and they were followed by a member of the bishopric and the bishop himself, and when the bishop spoke, he was like, "We were asked to give up member meals, but there was a second part to that. Does anyone remember what the second part was?" No one could answer, and he was like, "Maybe that's part of our problem here. We were promised that we would see more people who were ready to come into the waters of baptism and join the church and contribute to and strengthen our wards" (by the way, I'm really just paraphrasing here, so these aren't direct quotes). He then pointed out that over the last several months, the caliber of people who have come into the ward has been incredible (Like John and Jean and a guy named Dave who the Sisters baptized). He was like, "We like feeding the missionaries, but we gave that up to see these blessings. So which is better? Which is better?" All through his talk I felt like standing and clapping. He threw down. It was awesome. So hopefully we'll be seeing less resistance to that and more excitement for that change in the future. It felt really good to see the bishop bearing his testimony of the effect the sacrifices we've made have had on the work.

We'll be meeting with training specialists again this Wednesday, which I'm pretty excited for, because one of the missionaries we'll be with is Elder Collier, who was one of my zone leaders in Worthington.

This week we also finally got to meet with David (that trapper guy) again, and we should start teaching him again pretty soon.

The work's been moving forward, and we've learned a lot of good things at zone conference this past week that we're applying that are making a big difference. Things are looking up right now.

I love you all!

Elder Davis