Week 7 - "Heeeeere's Johnny!"

I've never actually seen The Shining, so I guess this is more of a quote from Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little quoting Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

There are two reasons for today's subject line. 

First, we met a less-active member named Scott in his apartment on Saturday, but we dropped by to see if we could catch him earlier in the week. When we were headed over to see him, Elder Thomas said, "Do you want to feel like you're in The Shining?" And I was like, "No, I'm OK. But we went up these metal back stairs (you know, the kind where each stair is a grate, so beneath it you just see the ground, and it makes you feel like you're going to break through them) to the second floor of this building to get to his apartment, opened the back door, and stepped into what looked like a hotel hallway, but with absolutely no decor on the walls or anything--they were all blank and painted this yellow-tan color. Each group of doors is isolated by a door on each side, so as you move through the building, you have to keep opening doors and entering a new hallway, and it's eerie. It kind of feels like you might find someething terrifying behind each new door. If any of you are familiar with the Doctor Who episode "The God Complex," it also reminded me of that a little bit. Anyhow, I attached a picture here. Scott seems like my type of person, in a way. He's smart, and right now he works for a company that builds sensors that go in things like NASA rovers and things. He's also a gamer--his PC background is a promotional image from Destiny 2, so that was sort of the topic of conversation we started on when we came in and sat down, and he and I talked about Bungie and games for a little bit. He's super nice, and we talked to him about the scriptures a little. He's a convert, so he said he's actually not super familiar with The Book of Mormon, but he wanted to read through it, and he wanted to study more about the rise and fall of civilizations, and the cycles they go through, and we were like, "The Book of Mormon is all about that." So now we have a standing appointment with him every Saturday. Hopefully we can get him to come to church--with the new 2-hour format, discussion seems to be the focus, so I think he might love it. If we were studying The Book of Mormon this year, I could see him really getting into it.

The second justification for the subject line is a bit of a stretch, but a funny story. So we've recently been getting a few referrals, both online and just from individuals in our area, and one of them was named John. That's the long and the short of the justification. But it seems like a running theme of the people we've been trying to contact and the referrals we've been getting is that they end up somewhere else, particularly in Polaris, one of our areas. So a week or two ago we handed off an investigator named Emmanuel to the Polaris elders. And then this week we scheduled two lessons with potential investigators, and later realized that they were actually in Polaris' area. So we called them and were like, "Are you guys free on these days, at these times? Because we've just set up appointments for you." And then to top it off, the address of that referral we got, John, is actually in Polaris' area. I guess they must be doing something right: Four new potentials fell out of the sky for them. I guess we were a little upset about it at first, but the sheer amount that it's happened just makes it funny to me.

We visited two potentials, Emma and Taylor, on Monday, and we brought them some donuts we had and some Silk chocolate almond cashew milk, which Elder Thomas swears by. We asked them to try to find a man to come over (we need a third male at appointments with women), and they invited over their neighbors, who we found out were members of a folk-rock band named Caamp (two a's). We had told Emma and Taylor we were bringing them a gift, and I guess they decided to give us a gift in return, because they gave each of us a lunchbox filled with a bunch of stuff. Taylor's best friend growing up was a member of the church, so she called her and asked, "What do missionaries want?" It was super nice of them. They gave us hand warmers, a mug, hot chocolate mix, a head lamp and some madelienes made with pistachios. And then we just sat there and chatted with them and their neighbors. I mentioned that I played in a folk band back home and said we were on Spotify (Local Kin, if any of you are interested), and then the topics of the Sacrament and the Salt Lake Temple came up, so we talked to them about that. Maybe we'll have their neighbors over to talk another time as well. They seemed like really nice guys.

We had some really great experiences this week. There's this woman, Nancy, who we've been visiting, and Elder Thomas and Elder McVey found her when they were companions. They were just sitting outside studying scriptures, and then she walked by, and Elder Thomas said, "I like your scarf," and she sort of stopped in her tracks, gave him a look, and asked, "Are you hitting on me? Like, spiritually?" And then they started to talk, and they told her about what they do. She's great. She said she'd be happy to talk to the missionaries, but she didn't want them to preach to her. So we've just been dropping her a line every once in a while. At first we came and watched her dog, Wilson, while she went and grabbed dinner a week or two ago, and she mentioned that in her home weird stuff started to happen when there has been contention and bad people around. We told her that we could bless her home, and that's what we did while she was gone. She said her home felt more peaceful afterward, and she wanted us to make her a sign that said "This home was blessed by Mormons," so Elder Thomas took her up on it and made a sign (with the correct name of the church, of course), and we're probably going to take it by sometime this week. But the miracle was earlier this week: We asked her if we could walk Wilson, and she said that would be great, because she had to make a call for work, and we felt like it would be a good talking point with people, so we walked Wilson for a good long time (we met an older guy named Dwayne at a park who seemed potentially interested in coming to church with us. He grew up with a religious background and seems like he may not be satisfied with his current church. I gave him our number and the address of the church. I'll let you know if anything comes of that). And then when we got back to her house, she had left us a bag of stuff to take with us (some apples, some clementines, etc.) and a note that said, in part, "Bring some of your literature next time so I can learn more about what you do." We were super excited about that.

The other contact we had recently (it may have been this week or last week) that was really cool was with a woman named Kate on the way to the library. She was taking her kids in a stroller to story time, and we were headed there to study and use the WiFi (which our apartment is unfortunately lacking, but it gives us an excuse to be out in the open), and she grew up in the faith and church she's in right now and seemed pleased that we were going around telling people about Christ. We asked if we could friend her on Facebook, and she said that would be great, and yesterday we saw she accepted the request! She seems like a person who would really love and benefit from the church. We're hoping we'll catch her on the way to the library again some week and continue talking about things.

We're working on some new ideas for finding, like offering family history help and stuff. There's an idea I've been playing with that I want to try, and hopefully we'll execute it this week, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Last night we watched the devotional with Elder and Sister Renlund. I thought it contained a lot of things that could help a lot of people we associate with in this area. There were some ideas that really resonated with me. And we watched it at the house of a less-active member, so I'm hoping some of the messages of Elder and Sister Renlund sank into their hearts as well.

One of the members we've started visiting with every week, Bill, showed us songs from My Turn on Earth, and it was... painful. Elder Thomas commented about how he wonders why in arguments about the church, people bring up polygamy when they could bring that up instead. He's like, "I would have no response to that." And then Bill showed us some older church-produced music (there was a song about the Golden Rule) and said his mission companion listened to it all the time. Then he pulled up some of Bapa's stuff and said he listened to it on his mission, and it was good. I haven't name-dropped to anyone yet--I've been trying to keep it kind of low-key, for reasons that should be obvious. Thanks, by the way, Max for sending his lecture about the Sabbath. I'm going to enjoy listening to that if we get the chance. Maybe on a longer drive to Zone Conference or something. We don't get a lot of opportunity to really dive deep into stuff unless it's in companion or personal study, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate at those times. Exercise time might work, though. I'll have to think about that. Also, thank you for the Nauvoo Pageant music. That was a great pick, and I'm excited to listen to it. The only problem is that I can't share the sentimental feelings I have for it with my companion. Maybe I'll just act the whole thing out with him. I should know it well enough by now. :)

I wanted to give you a tour of the apartment this week, so many of the pictures I'm sending are from that (can you spot Elder Thomas?). I was also sending a video of us out with Wilson, but the file is too large, and I don't have time to upload it with the WiFi we're on. I'll have to send it a later week or post it to Facebook or something.

I love you all! Thank you for your emails. They help me out. It's great to keep in touch.

Elder Davis