Week 44 - "I'm an ugly, horrible, grumpy, old man!"

Hey, everyone!

This week's quote is supposed to be from Merlin in The Sword in the Stone, though I may not have gotten all the adjectives right. It's because of something that happened on Tuesday this week.

So our zone leaders, who live and serve in Gahanna, had us up for a training visit Tuesday. We actually spent most of the day doing service, which seemed odd to me, but it was all right. We all helped their assistant ward mission leader take care of his yard and then later went individually as companionships to a member's house to help her with some landscaping. In the afternoon Elder Blake and I worked at this member's house while our companions were doing other things, and we were going to level out this dirt area, but we saw a stump in the ground that we would need to remove first. So we started digging around it and trying to get below it, and there were a lot of roots, and some of them were really, really thick. We ended up getting dirt dug up around the roots and then just going at the roots with an ax. I volunteered to do a lot of that: It felt pretty good to just whack away at some wood as hard as I could for a while, though I couldn't do it all on my own--I needed to tap out with Elder Blake a few times (I didn't realize you could get a cardio workout from chopping wood). So we kept plugging away at this stump and trying to yank it out after chopping off more roots, but it just wouldn't budge. As we got further down, we started to see chunks of "quickrete" and some gravel, and the assistant ward mission leader, Brother Poole, surmised that the builders of the house or of nearby houses might have dumped those spare materials there. So we kept chopping away with the shovels at the more stubborn dirt and clay and pulled out several chunks of concrete. Then we tried to push the stump out again. Elder Blake was sort of getting into the hole a little bit and trying to leg-press the stump to get it to move, but it wasn't moving much. He was too far away from anything super solid to put his back on to really get a good try at the stump, so Brother Poole suggested that if we went back to back, and I did a leg press against the house, I could be the object Elder Blake could push against to try to get some leverage on the stump. So we tried that a couple times, and I got to learn firsthand how strong Elder Blake is. There were two or three times I was pushing against the wall as hard as I could, trying to use everything I had in my core and legs and trying to keep my knees down with my arms, and I could feel myself shifting forward and getting kind of crushed--I could feel my knees buckling as Elder Blake did all he could to try to move the stump on his end. When we were finished giving it a good couple tries, but to no avail, we got up and kept digging and chopping. The thought, "That's going to hurt in the morning," flitted into my head, but we had more work to do, so I brushed it off. I followed a pair of roots about 4 or 5 feet from the stump and dug and yanked them up and then started to dig at the stump from that side and get below it. After moving a lot of dirt, clay and gravel, we saw it beginning to move. Elder Blake got into the hole, grabbed one of the root stumps and just pulled up and yanked it out. It felt like quite the accomplishment. 

Later that night we visited two referrals who seemed super solid and very interested in what we had to share. I'll have to ask the zone leaders about them when we do training visits there again tomorrow. Anyhow, when we got back to the apartment that night I was pretty worn out, and Elder Smith and Elder Gibson made a cake for Elder Blake (it was his birthday) and gave it to him when he called his family, and then we went to bed. 

The next morning and during zone conference I started to feel sore, but it probably wasn't until that evening or the following morning that it got really bad. It hurt to laugh, my stride got really short (I didn't feel like I could move my legs very much), and I was struggling to get up out of the car when we went places and up out of chairs. I'm the oldest male, full-time proselyting missionary in the mission, as far as I know, so sometimes I joke that I'm an old man, but that felt pretty real for the first 4 or 5 days after that training visit. I was kind of shuffling around, making grunting noises when I got up, trying to decide whether I wanted to sit down because it would mean I would have to get back up again... it was pretty bad. I don't want to get old. Anyway, I was a horrible, grumpy, old man for a few days.

Zone conference on Wednesday was awesome. Once we got into the conference in earnest and past the administrative stuff, I don't know if I ever stopped writing because it seemed like every second there was something insightful someone was saying. We talked a lot about how the mission has been getting better with finding, but hasn't been good at taking care of the people we find. Hopefully the emphasis in the coming months will be on making sure that we aren't just spending all our time meeting new people and are actually focusing on teaching the people we have and doing all that is necessary for them so they don't just get baptized into inactivity. It seems like that may be an issue in the area I'm currently serving in. We're trying to reach out to the members of the ward who are less active and let them know how much they're wanted and needed and make sure we're meeting their needs.

Anyhow, I wanted to share a cool experience I had at zone conference. So there's usually some kind of activity that we do, and this conference someone was chosen to represent Jesus Christ for the activity, though he didn't know what he was going to be getting himself into. His name is Elder Mathews. We all went into the gym, and there were chairs for nearly everyone arranged in a semi circle facing and surrounding four chairs in the middle. President and Sister Stratford and the assistants sat there. President had a box of York Peppermint Patties and said that the candy was going to represent salvation. When he started explaining the activity, I looked to Elder Mathews, who was standing near the four chairs, and his face sort of fell, and he looked down: He realized what was coming. Elder Mathews would be asked to do a certain amount of push-ups so that each person in the room could have a mint. So President started by asking someone in the semi-circle, "Would you like a mint of salvation?" They said yes,,. and he turned to Elder Mathews and said, "Elder Mathews, would you do four push-ups so Sister ____ can have a mint of salvation?" He did, and then President went on. It got harder and harder for Elder Mathews to keep going, and President dropped the price down to three push-ups, and then to two. He reached one missionary who said he didn't want a mint, after which he turned to Elder Mathews and said, "Elder Mathews, would you do three push-ups so Sister _______ can have the mint she does not want?" Later, he got to an Elder who said he did want a mint, but asked if there was anything he could do to share the pain. "Unfortunately not," President Stratford said. Elder Mathews did the push-ups. After a few more mints were given and push-ups were paid, that Elder, Elder Coon, couldn't take it anymore and just got up, went over near the chairs, and started doing the push-ups along with Elder Mathews as he was asked to do them. Pretty soon, 12 or 15 other elders got up and went by Elder Mathews and did the same. It was powerful. It made me wonder how much we can really do to help Christ share the load of his burden. We really can't do anything--there's nothing we can do for him--but we can be involved. We can participate. And I think that can mean something to him, if we're by his side, pulling along with him, not leaving him to bear the burdens he's trying to bear alone. Obviously there's nothing we can do to atone for the mistakes of anyone else, but we can work to accomplish what Christ wants to have accomplished. 

One of the testimonies I've gained as I've served a mission is the testimony that the Lord is able to do his own work--that what we do is simply offer ourselves as willing instruments who want to participate, try to listen to the direction he gives us, and try to follow it. That's all we really can do to have an impact on the work of salvation, and we aren't even a necessary part of it. We're just there to participate in the work as well as we can, to help and show we're willing. Anyhow, President Stratford got to me, and I was feeling pretty devastated. I was near the end, and I wasn't going to not take the mint, because it wouldn't change anything, but it hurt me that Elder Mathews had to suffer for something I didn't ask for. It also struck me how personal the exchange was between me and President: "Elder Davis, would you like a mint of salvation?" "Yes." "Elder Mathews, will you do two push-ups for Elder Davis?" I felt pretty put on the spot. As he approached me, I thought about those other missionaries doing push-ups, and I wasn't sure if I should join them. I don't have a lot of upper body strength, so I wasn't sure if I could do it or if I should, so I just stayed in my chair until we got to the end. At the end Elder Coon stood up and grabbed the box from President Stratford and said, "President Stratford, would you like a mint of salvation?" He said he would, and Elder Coon asked Elder Mathews to do the push-ups and got back down with the rest of the elders to do them alongside him. Then it was over, and we were asked to get back into the chapel. 

The elders who were doing the push-ups stood up and all gathered around Elder Mathews and gave him a hug. I felt like that was something I could do, to say thanks. So I sort of got in line, walked up to Elder Mathews, and went to give him a hug, and something came over me, and I just gave him a big, solid bear hug, and he hugged me back, after doing all those push-ups. It reminded me of what my family says about hugs: "Hugs give strength." That was when my eyes welled up and I started to cry. I felt something pretty powerful in that moment, and I think I learned that I'm not going to fully understand everything it cost and the extent of everything Jesus Christ did for me until we're face to face. I don't think I'm going to comprehend all that he gave until I'm with him, and then I'll know, and I'll know he gave it all for me. That experience served as a powerful analogy to help me understand a lot of things about the Savior and his atonement. It was a great zone conference.

After the conference we drove through Riverside to grab a package for me that was there and briefly saw Elder McVey and Elder Barnes, which was cool. As we were driving around there I felt a desire to go back and help with the work there. But alas, we had to return home.

Those are the highlights. It's been a pretty good week. I appreciate all your emails and everything. Keep doing good!

Elder Davis

I took a picture of the stump before we pulled it out, but apparently my phone didn't save it, so that's a bummer. As a consolation, here's a picture of me and Elder Smith at a Raising Cane's this week.