Week 54 - "Get me to the church on time!"

Hey, everyone! Elder Sears and I are trying to work on our punctuality, and we've been getting a little better, so that's sort of the reason for the quote, which is from My Fair Lady, and is sung by Eliza's (that's her name, right?) father. Also, Elder Sears has been joking about being trunky for a romantic relationship, and he uses his safeguard plan whenever that happens. The Safeguards for Using Technology are a set of standards and principles we're asked to follow as far as using technology, and since it's easy for individuals to get distracted using their phones, tablets and computers (and no more so than today, at this present time), we're taught to have a plan to execute when we realize we're getting distracted. Mine is simply to put my phone down, take a few deep breaths and talk to my companion and then get back to it, but I've heard some interesting ones. For instance, there's a missionary out there whose safeguard plan includes dropping to the ground and pumping out push-ups while saying "Krusty Krab! Krusty Krab! Krusty Krab!" Anyhow, Elder Sears spins in a circle and sings "I Love to See the Temple." You do whatever works, I guess. Anyway, I suppose that's another reason the quote works. ("I'm getting married in the morning. Ding-dong the bells are gonna chime...")

This week has been a whirlwind. I feel a little like I'm back in Warren. We work hard and squeeze as many minutes out of the day as we can, and I think I'll feel more exhausted at the end of my time in this area than I have before, and therefore more proud than I have been before of the work I've done. However, I do feel tired every day, especially during that mid-afternoon lull between 1 and 2, and I'm not sure if that's normal. I'm trying to do all I can to make sure I get quality sleep.

So what all happened this week? Elder Sears reminded me of a fiasco we had Tuesday morning--so when we had the cleaning specialists over they had asked us if there were any things we needed to get repaired, and we told them the toilet was yelling at us. It would make kind of a weird squeaking noise when you flushed it. So one of them took a look at it and kicked the inlet valve, and the noise stopped, so he said there was some kind of buildup in the valve and told us to just kick it if we had any problems. In retrospect, that should have been a solution that we found suspect. In the middle of the night I was using the bathroom, and I flushed it, and it started screaming again, so I kicked the valve. Suddenly the water from the tank just started dumping out of the hole that the inlet valve goes into. I wasn't sure what to do, so I took the top off the tank and just kind of pushed the valve around to see if I could seat it better in the hole and not let so much water leak, and I got it to a place where it was just dripping about a drop at a time, so I just left it there and stuck a towel down below the toilet to soak up the water. It was about 2 in the morning, and I wasn't sure what else to do, so I just left it there and went back to bed. It turns out I could have turned the valve off to not let any more water into the tank and then flushed the toilet again to get all the water out, but that was knowledge I didn't have at the time. Hindsight is 20/20. So the next morning Elder Sears found the mess I had made and was super nice about it. He figured out how to stop the water, and we went to Walmart to get a new valve for the toilet, and then he installed it. It was kind of a fiasco. So don't kick the elements of your toilet--that's not a viable solution.

We also had our first district council, which included the assistants (who are in a trio right now--Elder Bench, the veteran assistant, will be headed home at the end of this week, if I remember correctly, so they needed to make sure there was a companionship through the rest of the transfer. When he leaves, it will just be Elder Ashcraft and Elder Smith), the zone leaders (Elder Kamerath and Elder Ricks) and the Worthington elders, who are also in a trio. All told, there were four sisters and 12 elders in our district council. It was quite the group. That was a good experience.

We've been spending more time recently with Martin, a recent convert who's really awesome. He loves the missionaries, and he's very personable and fun to be around. He also loves helping us out--he makes us spaghetti, beef and noodles and chili on a pretty consistent basis. He made the elders a cheese ball before I got here, too. He's great. He's also a retired sheriff's deputy and has some interesting stories to tell.

The next day or two we had to knock out some more administrative tasks, and then on the way out of town to Marysville for a training visit we grabbed some burritos at a taco shop called Victors, and they were super good. Elder Kamerath and Elder Ricks wanted some, so we bought them for all of us and then drove down and had dinner with them. The training visit was a good time--I went with Elder Ricks, and we actually ended up visiting a missionary who had recently returned from Florida, Haitian Creole speaking. He had just landed probably two hours before, and his stuff from his luggage was all exploded out in his living room, and I guess he was just having trouble interacting with his family, because his mom asked him what she could do to help and if having the missionaries over would be a good thing. He said yes, so she called us, and we went over and spent some time with them. It was interesting to see someone post-flight sort of winding down from the mission experience. He was still on fire--he kept telling us that he was willing to dedicate two hours to the Marysville elders at least for the next couple of days, if they wanted it, so that was a blessing for them. He and his family were grateful we had come over, I think. We were able to relate to him on his level and sort of help him reacclimatize and talk. It was a good thing. It was also good to see the example of someone who was insisting on following the missionary standards until his official release. I think it helped me to sort of mentally prepare. 

Earlier that day Elder Ricks and I met with a recent convert and helped him by cleaning up his yard. That felt pretty good. We also made a contact with his neighbor and were able to introduce ourselves and get to know him. We hope the recent convert will keep reaching out to him and invite him to participate in the church. Later that night we were going to go to a Book of Mormon class at the church, but it was about 45 minutes before, and we were walking around a nice, middle class neighborhood in the dark, and we started talking to a guy, and even though he had asked for just a quick message when we offered one, he stood there and kept the conversation going for about an hour. He talked about a lot of different things, like making your own path and not blaming yourself for your circumstances and so on. He also talked about some pretty personal stuff about how he got his girlfriend away from drugs. He seemed more invested in teaching us something than learning something from us. It was a good conversation, but he wasn't really interested in having us back. Which was funny, because partway through the conversation, he was like, "And maybe you run into some people who aren't quite ready for your message." I kind of thought, "Yeah, like... you." But we planted a big ol' seed. It will do something for him later. So we didn't quite get to the church on time for the class, but we were able to come in late and participate anyway.

The next day we returned home and basically just did weekly planning and some contacting, but later that night we attended a cool event called "First Friday" that Delaware holds where businesses and other local organizations will set up booths and people will go around and just kind of look into the different things that people have. So we had a booth and a Light the World service calendar set up and a poster for a Christmas concert that's going to be held in Dublin next week, and some members had bought some hot chocolate packets that we had added a Light the World card and a little candy cane to, and we were handing those out to people. We hope they visit the website, enjoy the nativity video and start following the calendar and stuff. When we were cleaning out our apartment a little while ago, we also found a ton of hand warmers just sitting there, and we figured we could bring them to make sure we stayed warm, but then partway through the event it occurred to me that that would be a great thing to hand out to people. So I stuck "JustServe" cards to the hand warmers with scotch tape, and we handed those out, too. There were people we gave "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlets to and who took Articles of Faith cards and some other things, and overall it felt like a successful event. There was one kid who picked up a Restoration pamphlet and walked away with it. That was cool to see. I hope some people start looking into the church because of what we did that evening.

That morning we also ran into a recent convert who's dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis. We were able to meet with her for a little while and set a return appointment, and then we came back for that appointment the next day with Martin, and the two of them hit it off. Martin's very fun to listen to and talk to, and he tells great stories, so we just kind of sat back and let them interact. When we eventually left, Martin was like, "I like her!" We invited her to a number of activities, so we're hoping to see her there in the near future, and we're going to be helping her move some things on Thursday. She has expressed that she had doctrinal concerns (she didn't go into specifics), but we wonder if her concern is simply that people weren't reaching out to her and inviting her and trying to help her--I've learned as a missionary that sometimes people offer one type of concern as an explanation for their behavior, and eventually you find out that their real concern is something different. We'll see what happens.

Saturday was basically just a day of trying to get in touch with people and find people to teach. We did find a woman who had attended the church before, and she said she'd be willing to listen to us, so that was cool. We'll be stopping by her this coming Saturday. We also talked with Martin about what's coming up for him--he's preparing to receive the Melchizedek priesthood and then attend the temple, and so we're going to meet with him soon and talk a little about the temple garment and the temple clothing. He wants one of us to be his escort, so we'll get to go to the temple sometime this transfer, I think. Or maybe it will be later in the new year. It will be a good experience.

Sunday was good--we attended the Book of Mormon class again. I don't remember if I mentioned us attending that last week--it's really cool. Basically we just sit there and read about 6-10 verses at a time together and then discuss them with those at the meeting. We were in Helaman 6-9, if I remember correctly, and there was a lot there that seems very pertinent to what's going on in our day. There's discussion about secret combinations (basically seeking to escape consequences for your actions by banding together with those who will help you to cover up your crimes), the Gadianton robbers, pride and other problems. The Book of Mormon was definitely written for our day. I'm seeing more and more things happening in our day that have parallels with what is taught in it.

As far as my personal study, as I've studied the Great Apostasy, including scriptures about it in the Bible, I've begun to gain a personal testimony of it. As you serve a mission you see so many people trying to teach doctrines that are clearly contradicted by what is taught in the Bible and so many people choosing not to get into the scriptures and thinking that they have everything they need in the words of others. It's frustrating. It's also apparent to me reading the letters of Paul that the church needed a guiding hand (or hands), a hand inspired by God to make sure they were staying in the right way. There are so many ways that they're messing up, and so many ways that they're straying from the faith--I've begun to wonder: How likely is it, really, that after the apostles all died they kept doing what they were supposed to? They needed a ton of correction and guidance. I can't imagine that after all the apostles were gone they kept in the right way. There's also so many different ideas about religion in our day, so many contradictory ideas, and not everyone can be right.

Anyhow, the Great Apostasy was a real thing.

I love you all. Keep on keeping on. Thanks for keeping in touch, those of you who have been. I hope your holidays are going well.

Elder Davis

A bumper sticker I saw recently.