Week 70 - "I'M... FEELING!!!"

Hey, everyone.

This week's quote is from The Grinch (the Jim Carrey one), at the request of Elder Henshaw. That's his favorite movie. Well, Elder Henshaw is now gone. Gone from Cambridge, anyway. Transfers were held a couple of days early this time. They were supposed to be Wednesday, but we had missionaries coming in from other countries, or rather from assignments in other countries. I guess they came home to their families from foreign missions about two weeks ago, self-isolated, and are now being reassigned to our mission. There were 5 coming our way from Korea. Anyway, that's the reason transfers were moved up, or so we were told. So now Elder Henshaw is with Elder Klinkowski (one of my former zone leaders, from when I was in Riverside) in New Albany. The two of them will be flying home on Friday, along with a bunch of other missionaries, including Elder Neddo, my companion during my second transfer in Chillicothe. Elder Anderson, my greeniebreaker, is home now, too. Pretty soon the only companions I was with who will be left in the field will be Elder McVey and Elder Sears (he's an assistant now, if I hadn't mentioned that yet--that happened at the beginning of last transfer). And my new companion, of course.

So yeah, I said goodbye to Elder Henshaw, and that was a bummer. He and I had a lot of fun. I feel like I'm sort of a downer most of the time--I can be a very serious person. Elder Henshaw and I were able to sort of just have an enjoyable time and make a joke out of the difficult things. I hope he appreciates our time as a companionship like I do. Anyway, the reason for the quote was that Elder Henshaw leaving, even just a few days early, made me bummed.

My new companion is Elder Heil. He's from California, in Orange County, and he's the first missionary I've been paired with (I think) who came out at 18. He seems like a good guy, and an obedient missionary. I think we'll have a good time together. He shares a lot of my interests. He likes to hike, and President and Sister Stratford had advised all of us to go out and take a hike or go for a bike ride or do something really outdoorsy on preparation days so we don't go crazy in our apartments, so we went to a place called Hosak's Cave in Salt Fork State Park. I'll include some pictures I took with Emma's camera.

So I wanted to share some grand conclusion or experience from finishing The Book of Mormon in two days, but I didn't finish in two days. Since transfer day was moved up we were supposed to scramble to get the apartment ready and everything, and then we were busy most of transfer day, and then we were busy most of yesterday. I'm in Ether right now, but I'm nearly done with it, so maybe I'll be able to finish it tonight. I just have a few pages to go.

I'll list off some of what I've learned so far.

1. Having so much of The Book of Mormon in recent memory helps with making connections. A name or word or phrase will pop up, and I'll be like, "Wait, this sounds familiar..." I learned a lot of cool things that way.

2. I could sit and read The Book of Mormon all day. I could probably do the same with all the scriptures, at least as a missionary. There were missionaries who were really struggling with it, with doing so much reading in such a small span of time, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I don't know if I would feel the same way about reading fiction or some other subject matter. I can feast on the scriptures and never feel like I'm wasting time. I always feel fulfilled and satisfied (at least in a way--I'd like to go back for more).

3. There's a special power to the Savior's own words in the scriptures, particularly in 3 Nephi. When I read them on Sunday, I felt something authoritative and constant. I guess "everlasting" might be the best word in English, or maybe immovable. It just all felt true. Not in a Hallelujah chorus way, more in a 1+1=2 sort of way, if that makes sense. It just felt like it always was true and always will be true, both the words that he said and the fact that he said them.

4. The Book of Mormon is all about Jesus Christ and his gospel. It really is true that that is the focus. I noticed that over and over again as I read, that the authors are always pointing us to Christ.

5. This is a great way to study The Book of Mormon. I'm considering trying to do it a few more times during my life, and do it right. It helped reaffirm my testimony that it is true. It just all works, and it all makes so much sense.

6. Jesus Christ has our number. He really is aware of the issues we face, the things we think, the questions we have and the feelings we feel. 3 Nephi 24:13-15 slapped me in the face this time. How often do we all do this, think in our minds that there's really no point in keeping the commandments and that others are happier than we are when they don't? Which brings me to...

7. The Book of Mormon really is written from our day. As I read into Helaman and 3 Nephi I started to notice more and more things that were familiar, like echoes. There are things happening now, before the second coming of Jesus Christ, that happened to the Nephites before the first coming of Jesus Christ. We see the same behavior, the same patterns, and the same problems, and we often see the Nephite solutions to those problems, which may help us in our day. It's never been more important for us to be studying The Book of Mormon and consulting the Lord. If you haven't been doing it, repent! I promise you won't regret it.

There's tons more I could talk about: I have 15 pages of journal notes from the whole process, and I'll probably end up with 16 by the time I'm finished, and I was trying to go fast. There's a lot to learn and a lot to ponder.

Other cool stuff that happened this week:

One of our less actives has a friend who is becoming very interested in the restored gospel. We may be able to start teaching her soon, which would be awesome.

Elder Henshaw and I went and took some cool pictures at Salt Fork State Park last preparation day. I'll include some of them here.

There's a part-member family in the ward, the father of which has a dream of starting his own taco stand. He fed us some AMAZING tacos before the self-isolation, and he taught us over the phone how to make them, and we did. I made them again last night, too. I'll include some pictures.

The crowning cool event that happened this week was that Brooklyn, a 9-year-old girl we were teaching in Delaware, got baptized! And she asked Elder Henshaw to baptize her and me to confirm her! I got the wording messed up a little and needed to start over at the beginning, but during the confirmation I learned that she's really important to Heavenly Father and has some important things to do. It was a very Spirit-filled experience. I know that she's got a mission here. I'll attach some photos of that.

Well, that's really all I can think of for updates for this week. We're still in social isolation, and it's starting to look to me like we're going to be for a while. I saw a headline about the president saying he was going to advise a month extension of social isolation or something, so we'll see what we're up to in a week. We have to stay inside another week anyway because of an order to the people of Ohio from Governor DeWine. I get the sense that this won't be going away soon. But I guess we'll see.
Love you all!

Elder Davis

Elder Henshaw takes polaroids of himself and all his companions. This was the one with him and me.

The tacos

This was a picture we passed at a distance all the time in Delaware in an arts park, and I always wondered if it had something to do with Harry Potter. Turns out it did (we checked while we were in Delaware for Brooklyn's baptism.