Week 5 - "I must point out that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds!"

Hey, everyone!

So this week has been pretty interesting, and also not very interesting at all. It's the holidays, and street contacting hasn't been very effective, nor has tracting, and we haven't really been able to teach lessons to investigators--either our appointments have fallen through or we haven't been able to schedule any. Suffice it to say that the week has been somewhat slow. But there have been some good experiences interspersed throughout. I think the work will pick up this week as people arrive back from the holidays and we are able to start talking to people again.

The day after Christmas I had my first exchange. I went with Elder Barnson, our district leader, to Marysville, and it was interesting -- it felt so different as far as people's attitudes. I felt like people we talked to were going to be more open, and nearly everyone seemed pretty OK with speaking with us and at least having a conversation. My experiences up to that point, with Elder Thomas in Worthington, had been that people were either very receptive or very unreceptive. So it was interesting to feel something so different in a different area. I finally got my bike, and at district council we got a car -- we're in a car share with some sisters, so we get a car on and off throughout the month -- so when we have to give the car back to those sisters later this week, we'll be able to move around a bit more quickly.

My companion is super wise, and throughout the week we've had these great conversations. On Thursday we talked about playing to our strengths, and how we can use who we are to be effective missionaries. We've discussed in the past how I've been able to reach certain people differently than other missionaries might have been able to and how Elder Thomas is able to connect with certain people in a unique way because of his own personality, and we talked about that idea of "playing your class" to use a D&D term. It occurred to me that maybe that's part of why missionaries are moved around to different areas -- sometimes we need different missionaries for different people. Later that day, in response to a potential investigator texting us to tell us he was no longer interested, I prepared a super long text to send him to address concerns he had about the church, and then Elder Thomas talked to me about how we don't have to prove things to people, and sometimes trying to prove things to people is not the most effective method. It changed the way I approached the conversation, and I made it much simpler and testified about the impact the Book of Mormon had in my life, and I invited him to read it. We have yet to hear back, so it may not have been very effective, but it changed the way I've been thinking about presenting the gospel to people, I think in a good way.

Later that day, I met a woman named Nancy that Elder Thomas and his previous companion had contacted. He felt like we needed to talk to her, and when we reached out, she seemed in need of help, so we dropped by her place and talked on her back patio. She sort of unloaded some of the stresses she's been experiencing at work, and I feel like we were able to help her. Then she talked about how weird things happen in her home when there's evil or contention (things start breaking/malfunctioning/needing repairs, etc.), and Elder Thomas offered that we could bless her home. She invited us over to watch her dog while she grabbed some dinner because she hadn't eaten all day, so then she left, and we blessed her home while she was gone. She said it felt more peaceful. So far she hasn't been interested in talking about the gospel, so we're hoping she recognizes that there's something significantly different about us and our church, and we hope the blessing helped with that. Later that night Elder Thomas and I had a discussion about how trusting some people are with missionaries. Nancy left us alone in her home (which, by the way, was full of interesting antiques and things with personal meaning to her), and trusted us not to steal from her or anything like that. When I was on exchanges with Elder Barnson, he asked a guy in front of us in line at Chipotle when we were getting dinner if he was going to OSU, because he was wearing an OSU hoodie, and the guy looked back and shook his head in a "why are you talking to me" sort of way, and we thought that was the end of that, and then 30 seconds later he turned around and started telling us about his life and his concerns, and we had a conversation until we got to the front of the line. It was interesting to see that suddenly he was so open when 30 seconds before he had been so closed off. I think there's something about being a missionary that makes certain people more open with us.

On Friday Elder Thomas, who signs ASL, got to help give a church tour to a woman who's been a complete miracle. She contacted the elders over the Dublin 2nd Ward and told them that she had been looking for the church for 25 years. Her father had taught her some doctrines when she was young, and that was all she had to work off of, because she was later separated from him and went with her mom and other siblings, who hate the church. She knew that the doctrines resonated with her, but it's difficult to find the doctrines of a church unless you investigate it pretty deeply. Later she was doing family history and found out she's related to pioneers who were members of the church, and then she realized the church they were a part of was the church she was looking for. So Elder Thomas got to help take her through the church and interpret as the elders from Dublin 2 taught her about the building. We're all hoping she comes to church next week. She couldn't come this week because of her schedule.

I gave a talk on repentance in Sacrament meeting, and people seemed to like it (also, read the Ensign article "The Best is Yet to Be" from Elder Holland. I think it's from 2010 or thereabouts. It's amazing, and it was part of what I was asked to study for my talk).

So as far as the subject line for this email, Elder Thomas and I have talked a lot this week, and a little in the previous week, about how we need to be willing to do missionary work differently than it has been done in the past. He showed me a video from the church that basically talks about how we who are doing missionary work now are doing it differently, and he's talked a lot about how he doesn't want to train me in the "traditions of our fathers," as it were. He wants me to be willing to think outside the box for missionary work. We've talked about how certain methods aren't very effective, and how there are better uses of our time. One of the things we've decided about our area is that we need to make sure the recent converts and members (including the less active members) of our ward are strong, because some of them are in need of help, and we haven't been giving them the kind of help they need. I've also been thinking about how we can rethink our methods for finding. I'm hoping that during our companion study tomorrow we'll be able to talk about different ways of approaching finding. One of the things I strongly believe is that the Lord wants us to learn to do certain things with less of his help. If eternal progression is our goal, we need to grow into the kind of people who act as he acts, think as he thinks, and do as he does. The Lord wants to teach us to do certain things better. At District Council we talked a little about how the Lord honors our efforts and blesses us for them, even if our efforts don't lead directly to the blessings. Like, you might tract all day, and nothing comes of it, but then a miracle investigator just falls into your lap. That happens to missionaries, and that's wonderful, but I also think we can do things more effectively, and as we are inspired by the Lord our effort can lead to results as well. So I'm hoping to learn to work better, more effectively, so our efforts have results. Elder Thomas has sometimes used the analogy of cutting down trees. Trees are the work or the investigators, the Lord is the lumberjack, and we are the axe. We don't work and produce results of ourselves, but that doesn't mean we can't do things to make ourselves sharper. I'm hoping to learn how to be a better missionary over the course of this training, to become the sharpest axe I can be.

I love you all, and I feel like there was something else I wanted to say, but now it's slipped my mind. If it comes to me, I'll send it in next week's email.

Elder Davis