Week 8 - "W-what blizzard?! It's a couple of flakes!"

Hello, all!

This week's quote is from Groundhog Day. It's been an interesting week. In Utah and Idaho we sometimes joke about how states that don't experience snow react when they get it. Like, if an inch of snow falls in southern California, it seems like everything shuts down. If you live in Idaho, though, it takes several feet of snowfall and high winds before school gets canceled (or it takes the temperature falling below -20F). You would think that here in Ohio, people would be very accustomed to the snow, because it comes every winter, but there are laws and levels of advisory here that make it feel like people are very careful about the snow. There's a Level 1 advisory, which basically is like, "Hey, don't travel on the roads if you don't have to," Level 2, which is like "Level 1, but we're serious, though," and Level 3, which is "Unless you're emergency personnel, you run the risk of being arrested if you're on the roads. If we're at level 2 or 3 on a Sunday church usually gets canceled, and that's what happened yesterday. It was a level 2, and we were actually told by our mission president that we needed to just stay in our apartments all day, and then later we were told we were permitted to leave after 1. We went to some appointments later in the day as a result. I'll talk more about those later.

One of the things they tell you to bring when you come to this mission is thermal underwear, and I bought a couple thermals from REI before I left, and they've come in super handy, but they sort of confuse people. Those of you who know me know my skin's a little thicker as far as cold goes, and when I came to Ohio, I felt like the cold was really getting to me, but I feel like I've adjusted a little since we've been here. So that means I'm usually wearing thermals, then my suit, and because I stay pretty warm by default, and we're moving around a bit, that suffices in most cases. But we had a lady stop us the other day and be like, "I'm a mom, and I'm sorry, but this is a mom thing: Do you have a coat?" Someone once said, "You just don't look warm," and a very motherly member berated me for not wearing a coat. But I wore a winter coat over my suit coat when we were walking around yesterday, and I started sweating. I just took the winter coat off and put it under my arm. So either I'm going to have to stop wearing thermals and wear outer layers to make people more comfortable, or I'm going to have to use it as a point of conversation with people or something.

So one of the quotes I debated using for this email was "I know nothing, Lady Brachnor," from The Importance of Being Earnest, because of how much I've been learning from people, especially investigators and new members, since I've been out here. My brother Max often talks about how some people have really "maxed out" on the light of Christ, and I've seen that here. There are many people who I've met who have such a greater grasp on certain true principles than I do. When you go on a mission, you shouldn't go out believing that you have all spiritual truth. You have the truth of the gospel, and it can greatly help the people you bring it to, but the people you meet may have a much greater understanding of and testimony of service, prayer, and many other principles. You should be prepared going into a lesson to learn something from the person you're teaching. We went to teach an investigator named Dwayne who's an aspiring young arist about to enroll at an art school, and his father, who isn't a member but reads the Book of Mormon and wants his son to be taught and have sort of a spiritual education, sat with us and basically taught half the lesson and was spot-on as far as the truthfulness of the principles he was teaching. It was awesome.

Mom, you shared your insights regarding a recent Come, Follow Me lesson in a recent email, and experiences like the one I've described above make me think of the recent insight I had about a CFM lesson. We've been encouraged to study CFM as a companionship for an hour every Sunday, so yesterday we studied the lesson for the upcoming Sunday, which is on John 1. One of the things that made me really love this curriculum was in the second lesson, where the manual explained the origin and purpose of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, so when I learned we were reading about John, I looked to see if there was similar explanation for the Gospel of John in the manual, and it wasn't quite the same, so I started looking at some of the references, and I ended up at "Gospels," "John, Gospel of," "John, Epistles of" and "John" in the Bible Dictionary, and they were quite informative. Anyway, I read John 1 aloud to Elder Thomas as he was working on a project (this was on Sunday, when we were stuck inside), and the first 6ish verses of John blew my mind, especially with the Joseph Smith Translation. It reads, in part, as follows: "In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God ... In him was the gospel, and the gospel was the life, and the life was the light of men. ... Which was the true light, which lighteth every man who cometh into the world." We sometimes talk about how everyone has the light of Christ when they come into the world, and we sometimes refer to that light as our conscience. it occurred to me that, based on those scriptures, that means that each person has in them the gospel, to some degree. We all understand basic things about fairness and morality (don't kill, don't steal, be kind to others, etc.), and our gut understanding of those things are in line with what the gospel teaches. It occurred to me that when you share the gospel with people, if they have been listening to the light of Christ in them, the gospel feels familiar to them. We are teaching them things that they already have a concept of, that they already know, and those things resonate with them. I don't feel like I'm doing a good enough job explaining this concept, because when it occurred to me it was far more enlightening than I feel like my explanation of it is, but hopefully the spirit helps you understand what I'm trying to communicate.

Some cool things that have happened this week: We were going over to meet with a returning less active member one evening, and she said she was going to have a friend from work over. She wasn't sure what her opinions about religion would be, so she was like, "Just don't be pushy. I mean, I know you guys aren't pushy, but don't be pushy." When we got there we met her friend, Jennifer, and had a really good conversation and taught her some true principles about God and prayer and revelation. Later we got in a Facebook group with her and the member, and we did a video chat to meet with them both, and we did that a second time last night, and it's been awesome. We weren't sure how receptive she'd be, but she understands some important true principles, and she's been super open about learning. I think the spirit's been really present when we've met with her. One of the photos I've attached is the group photo for our conversation (5 steps is referring to the fact that we've all committed to do something to have the spirit more present in our lives, and we report back every night to tell the rest of the group how we did on our goal, rating ourselves on a scale from one to five). Without our even asking, at our first video chat, Jennifer said she was going to be coming to church on Sunday! But then it got canceled, obviously, so we were pretty disappointed, but she says she'll be coming this week. She's got a great fellowshipper in her friend, the less-active member. We're really hopeful for her.

Last night we had another interesting experience. There's a less-active family who we're consistently visiting on Sundays to help them with the Come, Follow Me curriculum. The mom is really excited for the curriculum because she feels like it will help her kids feel more comfortable at church because they'll be able to study what is being taught beforehand, so they'll know the answers to the questions they're asked. So we've been visiting with them, and just as an aside, the mom is an absolute saint. I guess there was a program in the area that families could apply for several years ago where you could go to an organization and get a background check and stuff, and then if you were approved you would be given a special sign that you could put in a window to let kids know that your house was a safe house. So if there were kids going by who didn't have a safe home to go back to or needed something, they could see the sign in your window and know it was a safe place for them to go. This sister had done that, and then even after the program ended, her house became this gathering place for kids, a place that everyone knew was safe, and so she has four kids that are hers by blood, but she's officially or unofficially adopted probably 5-10 others, if not more. So when we were going to come to teach them last night, she was like, "Just so you guys know, there are going to be a ton of kids here," and Elder Thomas and I were a bit intimidated. That was going to be a different dynamic than the one we had experienced before. But we went and talked about New Year's Resolutions and showed that "Look Not Behind Thee" video from the church about Lot's wife and discussed what we can do to look forward and not ahead, and I think it was uplifting. I think it was a good message. There were about 6 or 7 kids there, if I remember correctly, most of them young women. I felt like what we taught them was good. I hope that in the future some of them might be interested in learning more about the church. Also, the son, Zach, is talking a lot more, I guess (he talks a lot when we're there), and I wonder if it's us. I wonder if our consistently being there, and their effort to learn the curriculum, has made the spirit more present. Maybe that's a stretch, but it's what I like to think.

I hope this email wasn't too disjointed (I wrote it in a sort of busy room). I love you guys, and I hope life is going well. Keep up the emails. :)

Link to the dog-walking video I promised from last email: https://drive.google.com/a/myldsmail.net/file/d/1Zxkh8A7WMUah7dkUdUdn6-Ww4lRqJd8v/view?usp=drivesdk

Photos: Our chat group photo (we were using a mustache filter), our complex parking lot as seen from one of our apartment's upper windows, and one of my favorite notes from the candy my sister sent me at Christmas (it cracked me up -- it was in a bag of gummy bears).