Week 66 - "Kronk! I'm getting tired! Pull over!"

Hello, everyone!

My quote this week is from Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove. Sadly, I don't know who the voice actress for her is. If any of you would like to enlighten me, feel free. We've done a lot of driving this week, and I've had to really work to keep myself awake on those long drives. I'll talk more about it later on, but we've probably been on the road for a total of 8 or 9 hours this week. But we've had the opportunity to listen to Saints, Vol. 1 and a lot of talks, so that's been a plus.

This week has been a bit of a blur, and I'm feeling pretty worn out. It's also a bit of an odd time for me to be writing--because of the recent changes at the beginning of the year in the missionary standards, and at our president's direction, we are able to reverse our missionary schedule and spend the first three hours, starting at 9 a.m., working, and then the final three hours are a part of our preparation day. So I feel a little off--here I am, writing to you around 6:30 p.m. It's odd.

Well, just off the top of my head, here are some highlights from the week:

We had a videoconference with President Ballard on Friday. We drove all the way to Dublin with the zone leaders. It was pretty good. He said something about how the church has asked people about the factors that led to their conversion and so forth, they've found that the missionary is number one: What I felt like he was teaching us was that we have to be striving as much as we can to be like Christ and to have the Spirit with us. I also gave some input at district council (and I talked with one of the zone leaders on training visits--I'll talk more about that later) about how it's important for us to have a good attitude and a good countenance and be happy. You know how people always say, "Well, if you're sad, just smile, and in a few minutes, you'll be happy! When you smile, it releases happy chemicals!" Yeah, that doesn't work with clinical depression.

But I've found that it does make a difference in the mission field, for two reasons:

1. When you're smiling and trying to be happy, and insistently putting off that happy vibe, I've found people are less prone to want to ruin your day, which means rejection tends to be less severe and hurt less, so in a way, smiling does make you more happy, just not in a direct way.

2. If you're just constantly going around feeling down and depressed and forlornly looking at people as you ask if you can share a message with them about Jesus Christ, the wonderful and amazing message you have to give them, the message that has brought you such great joy and such great peace in those small but significant moments, will be misrepresented, and it won't get through. As frustrating as it is, people use heuristics and snap judgments to make decisions, and if their snap judgment of you is that the message you have is of no great significance, then they won't want it. You have to choose to think about and concentrate on those things that the gospel has brought you that are of great worth and significance to you, so that people understand what it is they could have, instead of being blinded by your temporary and unhappy mood. Though we can initially see being smiley and happy when our life isn't all sunshine and roses as being fake, when it comes from a place of real testimony, from memories of the good and great things we have experienced because of the gospel, it's really just being a good representative and allowing people to more clearly see what we have that they can have.

So that was part of what Elder Ballard talked to us about. That's what stands out to me. President also said when he was talking to him to set up the videoconference that Elder Ballard told him that he's working harder than he ever has in his life. He was going to come out and see us in person, but he said there just wasn't time. It seems like the leaders of the church are really buckling down and trying to get some big stuff done. So that's exciting. By the way, if I've never said it before, Elder Ballard was President Stratford's mission president. President also told us that Elder Ballard was called to be a general authority when he was still a mission president, so he went to general conference in Salt Lake City to accept that call and then returned to finish out his term as a mission president. And then later, of course, he became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. He also gave a pretty powerful testimony at the end of the videoconference. And then he goofed around a little--he stood up to leave and then was trying to reach out his hand to us, and then he sat back down to get more in frame and stuck out his hand, and he asked us all to stick out our hands like we were shaking his hand, and then we "shook hands" by all moving our hands up and down. And then he was like, "Now go write in your journal that you shook hands with President Ballard." :) It was funny. He's very personable.

The previous day we were with the zone leaders, Elder Wiggins and Elder Rawson (Parker, for those of you who are reading this who were in the mission). Elder Wiggins was one of the members of my district in Chillicothe. He's pretty awesome, and I'm sure he's making a good zone leader. I had never met Elder Rawson before, really, but I had heard good things about him. He's the one I ended up being on the training visit with. We had a good day in Newark (we doubled in to their area). We actually put someone on date for baptism that day, and we got to do a few other cool things. At the end of the night, it had gotten dark, and we shared a card with a guy who was walking along the street and started talking to him about God. He wasn't interested at first, and then we got to the end of the street, and he was like, "I've got to be honest with you guys..." Both Elder Rawson and I thought he was going to end that sentence with, "I'm really not interested," but he was like, "I'm a heroin junkie. I'm on my way right now to a pharmacy." So we asked him if he'd like information about the addiction recovery program. He stopped for a moment, like he was thinking, and then he was like, "Yeah. I'll take you up on that," or something like that. Those moments are always interesting to me, when you extend an invitation, and then people don't answer for a moment, and they just pause for a moment, it's like they're in a moment where they're completely free to use their agency, and it's just completely up to them. The scriptures talk about how man could not be free to choose, or could not have agency, save he was enticed by the one or the other. We have to be influenced in two directions, like two teams are playing tug-of-war, and we're in the middle, and those moments are moments where it seems like the odds have been evened and people are really free to make a choice and to pull in one direction or the other. They do a little thing to tip the scales and choose the right, and that's a start. That's their first step. Those moments are small hinges on which big doors swing. It's a privilege to be there when those significant moments take place. It's really cool.

The day before that was district council, so that was good, and we got to meet one of the people we're teaching who was on date at the beginning of this year. He has three kids that he's adopted, and they're all super cool. He works a LOT (that seems to be a thing with people here in Ohio), like 60 or 70 hours a week. He's also married, but so far his wife hasn't been supportive, so we're going to try to spend more time in his home and see what we can do to help him and help her resolve her misconceptions.

On the subject of district council, it was held in Newark, and that's an hour away. We've been driving a LOT this past week, and I'm the designated driver for our area, and we had to take our Tacoma (our truck) back to the mission office because the mission is selling it, and swap it our for a minivan, a Toyota Sienna. Some of the cars in the mission are used a lot by mission leaders like the assistants, and they've been given names. For instance, there's a huge 12- or 15-seater van, the one they usually pick up missionaries from the airport in (the one I was picked up in), called "The Beast." This is one of those mission vehicles. It has been dubbed "The Man Van." So there's that.

Anyhow, we drove to and from Newark twice, and then from Newark to Dublin and back again on Friday for the videoconference with Elder Ballard. When we were given the van Elder Bower, the mission vehicle coordinator (he calls himself the "car czar" and "bike baron"--he's awesome) told us not to worry about February's miles on it (the next day was the last day of February), and our area's HUGE, I think it's the biggest in the mission, so that day we just decided to go crazy and go to some of the furthest reaches of our area we could and try to meet the less-active members there. We also drove 60 miles today to a district activity. So there's been a lot of driving.

We've spent most of this week trying to meet with members, especially less-active members, and we've had some amazing experiences, and a miracle. One woman we met with had a bad experience growing up in church (she dealt with ADD, and it was difficult for her to pay attention and to not be too active, and then her parents punished her when they got home for being "bad"), and she said she never liked going, and I was like, "Oh, yeah. As a kid? Me neither." (I didn't say that, but that was the sense I tried to convey, because I didn't really look forward to church--it got in the way of everything fun.) As we continued to talk, we were able to empathize with her, and by the end, she was saying she would like to understand more about Christianity and faith, and she would like to come to church. She even asked us to text her to remind her about it. She didn't end up coming, but we had a total of 3 nonmembers and 6 less-active members there, and the aforementioned miracle is part of the reason why: So it was Saturday, and we were going to go home for lunch, but we decided to stop by one more person, and we met a family in the ward. When we got to the door, they welcomed us right in, and we got to know them all (the dad grilled us about our hobbies and favorite things to see if they were in line with what he liked, and he concluded we were all right), and then we listened to their concerns and past experiences. We also introduced them to the Book of Mormon videos and stuff, and then they asked us to give a granddaughter of theirs a blessing, so we did. Then the grandma asked if we could give her a blessing, so we did, and THEN, when they CAME TO CHURCH the next day, one of the nonmember sons asked if we could give him a blessing to help him to be more patient. So we did. It was AWESOME. And then the whipped cream was that there are two nonmembers in that home, both of them were at church, and two of the three members expressed a desire to come back the next week, and the cherry on top was that when we met with them, the grandma told us she was just struggling with a really difficult problem for her and was just about to ask the Lord in prayer for help to resolve it when we showed up. I'd never had that experience where we show up and people say, "I was just praying," or "I was just thinking about my faith," on my mission, and I had just mentioned a few days earlier that I'd never had such an experience, and then there it was. So it was kind of a double miracle: I got to have a cool experience I've always wanted to have, and we got to help that family. We've also scheduled a standing appointment Saturdays to meet with them and study Come, Follow Me together. We also introduced them to "The Phone Call," which they thought was hilarious.

It's getting late, so I should probably sign off and call the fam. I love you all, and I'm grateful you're reading this, and I'm grateful for your emails. They always brighten my day.

Elder Davis

Spotted in Walmart today. You know it's getting serious when the National Enquirer picks it up.