Week 65 - "Where are you taking us?" "Into the wild."

Hey, everyone.

This week's quote is from Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) and Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Using a line from a fantasy epic to describe the (pretty average) experience I'm having seems silly, but I think maintaining the perspective that I'm doing something important and significant helps me to keep going. It's nice to think of yourself as the main character in your own epic story.

So Cambridge is way out here from the center of the mission and the mission home--it's nowhere near the furthest area in the mission from mission headquarters (that would be Ashtabula), but it does feel a little like we're out in the boonies. It's also much more hilly than any other place in Ohio I've served in, and I've heard it's the largest area in the mission, though there may be some dispute about that. We were given a Toyota Tacoma to travel around in, which is probably the most coveted car among missionaries, considering it's a pickup truck, but we were just told today that the mission will be selling the Tacoma, so we're going to have to swap it out for a minivan at our next mission-wide meeting (our videoconference call with Elder Ballard). That's probably going to feel slightly emasculating, but whatever. The main reason for the subject line is that as we were driving out here I saw a sign for something called "The Wilds," and it reminded me of the quote.

We had some good experiences on our way out of Delaware. We got up at 5:45 to go visit a and take pictures with a member named Michael Thomas at 6:15, and then we came back to the apartment and crashed for a bit and then got everything cleaned and packed and stuff and headed off. The car was pretty stuffed (I need to cut down on my luggage--I think I'll send a few things back in a package in the next month or so--I have a massive snowboarding coat I brought out with me that I've rarely used and don't really need). We told the apartment managers we were headed out and were going to be replaced by a pair of young women, and then we went and finished writing out 7 pages of information about the area to give to the new missionaries and printed it off at the library.

Then we met with Carthel briefly to let him know we were going to be able to make it for the temple for baptisms (I neglected to mention that was a thing that was happening--one of our recent converts was scheduled to go do baptisms for the dead at the temple, but it was going to happen right after we left, so we asked President if we could go, and he said he would make an exception for us, so that was how we spent part of our Saturday this past week, which I'll talk more about in a bit).

Then we visited Martin to say goodbye, and he gave both of us a glass egg from a collection of his, and Elder Henshaw signed a name tag and gave it to him. He already has one from Elder Bench and one from Elder Oettli, and I suspect now that there are three, he's going to start collecting them from missionaries--they're all going to want to give him one.

After that Elder Henshaw wanted some Raising Cane's (we're not going to have one in Cambridge--I guess he wanted a last hurrah), so we went and got that, and then we went to say goodbye to a potential we had been helping with some service for the past transfer or two. Her name is Raushel, and she's awesome--she has major experiences with and a testimony of personal revelation: Her daughter has a bunch of health problems, and she was told that she would never be able to walk and would need constant care and attention or something. Raushel's a single mom, and she basically pulled an Amanda Barnes Smith and asked God what she could do to help her daughter. As she went about trying to find solutions to help, she was led to things that would help her daughter, and now her daughter is walking and basically fully functional. Raushel is golden. If she can use that same process to investigate the church and ask God if what we're teaching is true, she'll find something wonderful that she's been looking for her whole life. I really, really hope the sisters get to teach her and help her become converted to the truths of the gospel. That would make me feel really good. Because we did a lot for her, trying to help her, and it would be good to know that helped with her conversion.

Anyway, then we went to transfers. Elder Sears is one of the assistants now, which I feel kind of bad about--he doesn't like administrative stuff, and I told President in an email when he and I were first put together that if President didn't already have him on a list of people who should be put in leadership roles, that needed to change. Elder Sears is awesome, and will be an awesome leader. So when I met him I apologized, and he was like, "I keep being like, 'Man, we need Elder Davis here! He would know how to do this!'" That made me feel good inside. Then we got everything transferred over from our Rav4 to our new Tacoma, gave Sister Orndorff (one of the new Delaware sisters--her companion is brand new out of the MTC, so I don't know her name yet) the keys to the apartment and car and so forth, couldn't find our SIM card but eventually realized we had overlooked it, got in the car, and off we went. I hadn't eaten yet because I was driving, so we parked at the institute building on campus and walked over to the Cane's there to pick up lunch for me, ate it in the car, and then took the drive out to Cambridge.

We spent the evening bringing everything in, going and getting some food from Walmart (we had to buy a lot--it's crazy what you have to get when you're reopening an area--just little things you wouldn't think about), and then having dinner and unpacking and so forth. The next day, we found out we had to go down to Newark because we needed to rehearse to sing at the stake conference that's coming up this Sunday. So we drove back toward Columbus, probably about an hour and ten minutes, did that for a couple hours and got a training from a stake presidency member, then drove back to Cambridge and didn't have a whole lot of time to do much else for the rest of the day. Also, while we were at the conference, I talked with Sister Richardson, one of the sisters who was in my zone last transfer, in Marysville, and she is apparently the first sister in the world to be learning Nepali and preparing to proselyte in that language. It just happened this transfer. She's going to be getting a companion, I think a native from Nepal, to teach with. She seems to be taking it all relatively well. She's also got a cool story--her family's from Nebraska, but she's a foreign adoption from Russia. I'd like to pick her brain sometime about what her life has been like.

When we got home we did a couple other things, including call and introduce ourselves to the branch president, who wasn't aware that missionaries were coming into the area this transfer, so that was a happy surprise for him, and we tried to get in touch with the people we're teaching: Apparently the Zanesville sisters have been working this area once a week, and they have two people right now who are pretty solid and practically on date for baptism, so we're going to start working with them. We tried to reach out to those people and set something up with them. I guess we had also had a lesson with one of them that morning that we completely missed, so we felt really bad about that, but we're in touch with him now, and he's ready to talk about his baptism, so we're going to be meeting with him about that later this week.

So the next day was Saturday, but we hadn't had time for weekly planning the day before, so we did it that day instead, after going to the temple in Columbus to do baptisms with Carthel. Carthel is an older gentleman, I think he's in his 80s, so he didn't really want to do baptisms, but we had him do some confirmations, and I think the Spirit was quickening him a little--I think he was a little clearer on what it was we were there to do and so forth. He seemed to enjoy the experience. I hope it sticks with him, and I hope he has a desire to go back.

When we were there, there was also a huge youth group and a smaller group there, including a returned missionary who was there with one of his converts to baptize him and be baptized by him. That was cool to be able to be present for. We also sort of got roped into helping with confirmations, because they needed some additional priesthood, so after Carthel and Brother Kwok (our Delaware ward mission leader and Carthel's ride) left, we went back into the temple, and I got to confirm a whole bunch of youth for and in behalf of a lot of people. I don't know if I'd ever done confirmations before. I'm pretty sure I've at least never been the voice. So that was awesome. And then I swapped out and helped by being the scribe. It was a cool experience. I enjoyed it. It was also good to be back in the temple. I feel it just thinking about it.

So yeah, after that we returned to Cambridge and did our studies and weekly planning and so forth. I've been thinking about how we're reopening the area and need to be reestablish missionary work here, and I've taken a few personal studies to think about what that means and what steps we'll take, and so since we don't have our area book (something happened, and we don't have access to the area book application anymore or to the Cambridge area, so we've just been working with what we have--we have Member Tools, still!) and don't have any information about people we're teaching or members or anything like that, which is probably 9/10ths of weekly planning, if not more, we just used the time to basically talk about what we want to do in the area this transfer and how we can make a difference. So now there are a bunch of sticky notes on my desk organized into things for us to get accomplished and the steps we'll take to get that stuff done.

The next day, Sunday, we were able to accomplish a fair amount. The branch had about 40-45 people attend (the total members on the rolls are about 150-200, enough for a good-sized ward), and we were able to attend the branch council and meet the leaders, like the branch president and the Elder's Quorum president and so forth. Before the meetings we also met Josie, one of the people in our teaching pool, and were able to get to know her. We were asked to help by blessing the Sacrament, and so we did. I was nodding off during the actual meeting (I don't know why I'm so tired all the time). It was a branch conference, and so someone from the stake spoke as well. After that we had elder's quorum, and there was one guy there who was visiting from Burley, Idaho! He flies helicopters and uses a saw on them to cut away growth from power lines and stuff. That caught my attention--it sounds like a really cool job.

After that we spent some time doing some companion study and taking care of some communication, and then we met with the branch president for a sync-up meeting. It was interesting to learn details about the area and what it's been going through. The branch was shut down at one point and became a part of a Zanesville 2nd Ward and then returned to Cambridge after a while, and apparently that created some bad blood among descendants of the people who helped found the branch, and now they won't come to church. Something similar had happened in Warren when I was there, and people felt like the church had abandoned them or something, so now they won't come. Apparently we're going to have to be walking on eggshells with certain families, because they're sensitive about that sort of thing. It's been interesting for me as a missionary to hear the reasons people do and don't attend church. Sometimes it feels like a different world out here. It's hard to figure out how to help resolve those concerns and those problems.

After we had eaten lunch we went and visited with the Erskines. He's a convert and a former branch president, now the branch clerk (the current--and fourth-time--1st counselor told us they just trade hats a lot around here), and they seem like really quality people. He told us about the less-active members of the ward he would reach out to and focus on and gave us the names of all the active people as well. As we met with him, he wept about some of the people in the directory he was going through and about their struggles. I felt the Spirit very strongly and felt an urge and a drive to go out and find and bring these people back in, to build up this branch and help it get its strength back. I told Brother Erskine that we were here to work, so we're going to. He seemed grateful for that. It sounds like the branch is really struggling. Though we talked to the elders in Coshocton, and when they first got there there were only 15 or so people at church, and they've bumped it up about to where our branch is now, so we're not struggling as bad as they were. We'll be able to help out here. Good things can happen, and they will.

After that we tried to visit two people. No dice. But that's OK. We'll reach people.

On a spiritual/study note, I wrote something down Tuesday that I felt was important. I've been learning that sometimes when I get into a mode where I'm writing and the words just flow out, and they're words of chastisement or rebuke toward certain groups or types of people, when I'm finished it's a good idea to take what I've written and judge myself by it and see if I have a beam in my own eye. Here's what I wrote.

"If we expect those who come into the church to have a conversion beyond social when they arrive, and choose to let those who do not have [a more] full conversation fall to the wayside without help or assistance, allowing them to regress into apostasy because we don't think they're good enough, and then we chafe at the idea of sharing the gospel with our friends, for fear that we will lose them and they will no longer be our friends, we damn ourselves, in no uncertain terms. We have a beam in our eye, and it will take great force to remove it. If you are unwilling to help those who came because of the love they felt from others, and who do not yet realize that this church and gospel house eternal truth, and you are also unwilling to share that eternal truth with your friends, then you, not these new converts, have much work to do. You are only willing to live the gospel inasmuch as it does not interfere with your social life. You are not yet willing to sacrifice the socially temporal in favor of the spiritual and eternal. I would add that you are also forfeiting great blessings of a socially eternal nature. 'How great shall be your joy,' the scripture says, 'with [one soul you have brought unto God] in the kingdom of [the] Father.' You shortchange yourself by choosing not to reach out to your friends and neighbors--the Lord has offered you the thing that will be of most worth unto you, 'to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto [Christ], that you may rest with them,' as Jesus puts it, 'in the Kingdom of my Father.' If you love those whose friends you are, if you truly are their friends, and if you have a testimony of this restored gospel, it becomes you to warn them, to give them a chance to be with you in the Celestial Kingdom and, moreover, to give yourself a chance to get there (Doctrine and Covenants 60:2-3 and 82:3)."

I'd like to add that all that is not to say that if we have not yet converted our friends to the truths of the gospel, or if we have not either alienated or converted them, that we are in trouble, but I would say that if we not have not even tried, we're in trouble. We can always make an effort to invite and help those we love to come to the restored gospel. Those invitations don't have to be invitations to be baptized. They can be invitations to come ans participate with us in a church activity, or even to simply come into our homes, places where the Spirit is present. But we must do something. We will be surprised when we do what the results are.

I love you all. Have a great week.

Elder Davis

Our little branch building.