Week 50 - "Don't do anything I would do. And definitely don't do anything I wouldn't do. ...There's a little, gray area in there, and that's where you operate."
Hi, everyone!
The quote this week is from Tony Stark in Spider-man: Homecoming.
It's been an interesting week, as the weeks usually are. Every Tuesday night we hold coordination as the elders, the sisters and our ward mission leader. Our ward mission leader was called just before we got here, and so the first few meetings were more like mini-devotionals: We really got a sense for Brother Cain's testimony and his passion for the work of the gospel, but planning-wise and coordination-wise they were a little lacking. But I think we're starting to get our feet under us now.
So the reason for the quote is that as a missionary you find yourself in a tough situation a lot of them time regarding work with your ward. Because of your position in the org chart, as it were, you're not in a place to receive any kind of inspiration or revelation for those in ward leadership, and yet we are taught in Preach My Gospel by President Gordon B. Hinckley that "There is absolutely no point in doing missionary work unless we hold on to the fruits of that effort. The two must be inseparable." We also learn in The Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi 31:14, that if a person repents, is baptized by water and by the Holy Ghost, and then turns away, they would have been better off not knowing Christ in the first place. This principle was emphasized by Joseph Smith, which I learned while I was listening to one of Bapa's tapes the other day. There was a convert to the church who was confounded by the fact that, people seem to, as Bapa would say, "Leave the church, but they can't leave it alone." This convert, speaking to Joseph Smith, said something along the lines of, "If I ever left the church, I would build a cabin out in the woods somewhere and go away. I wouldn't even mention the church. I would forget about the whole thing." Joseph told that brother, "You do not know what you would do." He also said that once you have joined Christ's church, you leave neutral ground forever, that the adversary will be the one to try to pull you away, and he will do more once he has done so.
With all that in mind, along with the comment from our ward mission leader that he does not want to baptize people into inactivity; the 8 recent converts we have, only one of whom we know, and then only barely; and the activity of only around 60 adults in a ward of over 400 (I'm not sure of the exact count on the ward rolls), our goal has been to help the active members and to reactivate the less-active and inactive members. One of the things we've done is try to verify contact information of less-active and inactive members so that the ward can actually get in touch with them and so that the records of those who no longer live within the ward boundaries can be sent where they need to go and no longer of concern to the organization presidencies. We've also tried to think about what we can do to unify the ward and bring it together. It seems like we've heard a lot of discussion about people being offended and leaving (the pattern has also been that those who claim offense have another reason that the offense is covering for, such as that they feel like they are not important, there is a person close to them who is pulling them away from the church no matter how much they love it, etc.), and we have felt that the ward just needs to do a better job of coming together and being there for one another. So we decided we would try to connect ward members with one another. We thought the logical option would be to connect individuals with their ministering assignments and their ministers, if they weren't connected to them already, so we asked the ward to give us the current ministering lists.
When we saw them, we encountered a problem. We felt they needed an update. With the many people in the ward whose information is no longer accurate and who have moved, with the many members who are inactive, and with several individuals being involved in multiple companionships and with some companionships and individuals having more than 10 or 15 assignments (the Elder's Quorum president has 23), we felt it was time to make reassignments. But here missionaries can run into a problem: We might find ourselves telling others how to do their job, and that is unrighteous dominion. That said, if the ward is not functioning the way it should, unless we bring in a new convert who is just the most solid, ready, elect person ever, and who has a vision for the work of salvation and lifting the ward as soon as they get out of the baptismal font, missionary work will serve neither the ward as it is now nor the people who come into it. We talked about all this in our coordination meeting, and we weren't sure what to do. Brother Cain, our ward mission leader, suggested we have a special fast. So we planned to fast on Thursday. After our meeting that evening Elder Neddo and I got to give blessings a couple who was in town to hunt deer: The woman had tweaked her knee, and the man had some hip and back and shoulder problems, if I remember correctly. They were both members in a branch in New York, and the man was a vet, a former sniper for the Army Rangers. It was cool to meet someone like that and talk to him. After giving them blessings, we took off to Gahanna, where we had training visits with the zone leaders. I spent the day with Elder Richins, and Elder Neddo spent it with Elder Erickson. They seem like really cool missionaries, really solid guys who know what they're doing. I unloaded all of the above frustrations to Elder Richins, and we were able to talk about it, which was good. We also had a pretty OK day. Every single one of our appointments fell through, which is always a bummer, but we met some cool people. There was this one guy who waved us over from the front seat of the car he was sitting in. He was pretty obviously drunk, but he told us about how we were wasting our time in that neighborhood. He knew a guy who was a Jehovah's Witness who had worked that neighborhood and all the people had been pretty unreceptive. He said he himself joined the Jehovah's Witnesses later in life. He told us about a lot of experiences he had where he should have died, but he was still alive. He didn't know why. We shared a passalong card with him and gave him a copy of the Bible I had on me, and we left. He was in the process of moving, so we let him know if he wanted to get in touch with us he could access the website on the card.
Later that day we met a lady who was telling us about how after she had met with two young women a couple times, she had a dream that an old, white lady was talking to her, and she thought it was really weird, so then she looked at some of the materials the girls had given her and realized they were Mormons and then stopped meeting with them. She was like, "I thought, no way I'm messing with those Mormons." We were like, "...uh-huh." We kept talking, and Elder Richins pulled out a copy of The Book of Mormon and explained what it was and read a scripture from it. She was a little hard of hearing, so we're not sure if she entirely understood, but she told us later that we should come by whenever the Spirit directs us to. She was a pretty religious lady.
The next day we had interviews. Basically my interview with President consisted of just discussing the kinds of things we're dealing with in our area (I had sent him an email about the ministering lists earlier and asked if he could talk to the stake president about it, because we didn't feel like we were really within our rights to admonish the ward leaders to make change). He gave us some advice as to how we could help the area, and we took that back with us, and had another meeting with Brother Cain (that was the day we fasted). We talked about what we might be able to do, and eventually we settled on having a meeting with the RSP, EQP and the ward clerk. We set something up for Saturday, and the other missionaries volunteered me to sort of be the spokesperson. We were praying a lot over the next two days, in the hopes that what we shared would be well-received by the ward leaders.
When Saturday came around, we had the meeting, and it started out with some of those in the meeting coming off a little cool--one or two people seemed kind of defensive. As we talked, however, the conversation opened up, and I think the Spirit got our point across, because there were things they said they felt like we were communicating, that we definitely didn't explicitly say, and yet they were the kinds of things we were trying to say. There was this emphasis on focusing on the one, and on sharing our love with them and letting them know they are cared for, and just helping that one person, and then when their needs were met moving on to the next person and helping them. It was awesome. There were also a lot of ideas that were brought up by the ward leadership that I think have a lot of potential. It seems like things are looking up. We tried to emphasize in our meeting that we weren't here to tell the leaders how to do their job, but simply to convey information that we had found as we had tried to work with ward members. Things went very well, and they gave us some assignments that we can work on to help them out as well. It was a very productive meeting, and I think work with the less-active members in Chillicothe is going to improve over the course of the next transfer or two. I think the leadership has caught the vision of what ministering can and should be about, and I hope it makes an impact on the ward.
That's basically what's been on my mind this week, so there's not much else to share. Although actually there were some insights I had from reading the scriptures recently that I've sort of seen as a theme the past few days as well. So I was reading in Jacob 7, verse 64. This is part of the allegory of the olive tree. Jacob says, "Wherefore, dig about them, and prune them, and dung them once more, for the last time, for the end draweth nigh. And if it be so that these last grafts shall grow, and bring forth the natural fruit, then shall ye prepare the way for them, that they may grow" (emphasis added). It occurred to me as I read this just how much work the Lord is willing to put in for us to give us even the slightest possibility of change. Notice, the Lord advises his servants to "dig about them, and prune them, and dung them once more" (side note: Dunging a tree doesn't sound like a particularly enjoyable job), and says that after that process, IF they begin to grow, then they'll make a way for them so that they can grow. It takes a lot of hard, nasty and dirty work just to find out if any further work will help, and yet Christ is willing to do it, and as his servants, we are asked to be willing to do: it as well. That's something I probably need to improve on with the aspects of missionary work that I don't enjoy. But essentially Christ is indicating here that we're worth that work. We're worth getting cuts and scrapes on his hands and dirt under his fingernails and carefully snipping off branches and twigs and picking up dung and plastering it around the graft. We're worth that much time and effort, and he'll do it, just to see if there's a chance. That is at least how much we're worth to him, if not more. To my understanding and thinking, if we are his representatives, that is at least how much others ought to be worth to us. They should be worth enough that we're willing to do the difficult, trying, uncomfortable things if they are necessary to see if there's a chance we can help them.
I hope that message made an impression on your mind as much as it did on mine.
Random aside: I was recently shown these two 25-minute videos. They're about David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery and feature the actor who played Christ in the Bible Videos, and they're super good. You should watch them:
I love you all! Keep fighting and striving! It will be worth it in the end.
Elder Davis
Me and Elder Neddo at a ward function.
The before and after of eating a meal at Sumburger, a local restaurant, courtesy the generosity of a member.
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