Week 73 - "Who cuts your hair?"

[For reasons that will become apparent further into this post, I took the liberty of changing Elder Davis' email title, this week]

Hey, everyone.

This quote is from Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. I forget the name of the actor who played him. Someone in my district quoted it during zone conference, and it seemed applicable.

Missionary life has involved some pretty drastic changes the last few weeks, and we were told in zone conference that some of those changes will be with us for a long time. In the future, hopefully when Ohio's stay-at-home order is lifted, we'll again be able to start visiting people we're teaching in person, as well as members, if they agree to it. But we were also told that knocking on doors and contacting people on the street is something that's probably going to be a long way off and that this period is going to change missionary work forever. Personally, to be completely honest, I'm fine with that. I think there are tools that we're drastically underutilizing because we see "missionary work" as the same thing it always has been, but it doesn't work that way anymore, and it definitely doesn't work that way now, while all of this is going on. It seemed like missionaries were treating this period like it was just a holding pattern, like we just had to wait until everything went back to normal, but I don't think they understand the scope of what's going on as far as the virus. I've seen headlines (though that's about all I can see), and we've talked with members, and this doesn't seem like something that's just going to go away in a week or two, or even, really, in a month or two. Things will probably calm down a little, but life as we know it is changing, and, to quote the Vulture, "It's time we change, too." We've got to make a decision and either get busy livin' (work with what we have) or get busy dyin' (go home).

To that effect, since I've had so much time, I've started making a few videos about what I learned about social media while doing it for a newspaper and sharing them with my district. President asked me to start sharing them with the whole mission. I think most of us, when we're told to use Facebook, just have no idea how it works or what to do, and because of that, it feels like a waste of time or unproductive. But we haven't been shown how to use it. We really haven't received specific training on how to use it or what to do, and that's frustrating. So that's what I'm aiming to provide to see if I can help. It definitely seems like something the Lord is helping me with. In fact, I had a cool experience making one of the videos yesterday. I made it, and I just didn't feel right about it. I had sort of felt off about it as I was writing down what I wanted to talk about and how I wanted to present it, but I wasn't sure why. When I was finished, I thought about it, and the thought came to me that I was trying to rely too much on myself and on what I thought I was good at than asking the Lord for help. That's why it wasn't so good. So I sat and prayed and asked the Lord to help me with the next take, and I felt the Spirit much more. Thoughts came to mind as I was talking that hadn't occurred to me before, and I shared them, and it felt like a much more helpful video. So I'm going to be in the habit of praying every time before I record and before I plan for the videos now. The Lord wants us to grow and improve, but sometimes we can see ourselves improve and become and think that we don't need to rely on him anymore. It makes me think of taking the training wheels off a bike before you're ready. When we do it, we crash. We can get a little big for our britches and think we're really something, but when we do that, we fail. We have to remember when we do grow that even though we have made improvements we still need to turn to the Lord and rely on Him for help and guidance. If we forget that and try to do things on our own we don't go very far before realizing how much we need Him.

On the topic of zone conference, which I mentioned earlier, we had zone conference for two hours, and it was entirely over video call, and I was surprised at how effective it was. The Spirit can work through Zoom! It can work across distances and with large groups of people meeting online! You can be sitting at a computer or with a phone in Eastern Ohio, talking to someone halfway across the world (we weren't, but I say that to illustrate the principle), and it's as though you're in a room together, having a conversation and a lesson, and you can both feel the same Spirit at the same time. It's pretty awesome. The Spirit works regardless of distance. One thing I learned in the scriptures, too, is that it works as well with the spoken word as with the written word. Moroni bemoaned his writing and said that though he and his people were mighty in speaking they were weak in writing because of the awkwardness of their hands. He then says that God hasn't made him and his brethren mighty in writing like unto the Brother of Jared, for his words were powerful "unto the overpowering of men to read them." I mean, it's kind of obvious that the Spirit can work through the written word (we have scriptures, after all), but I think we sometimes don't realize that the words WE write can invite the Spirit and can bring that feeling to others. If we begin to recognize that more I think we will have a greater impact as far as missionary work at this time. WE can write words that will invite people to come closer to Christ, and if we are afraid that others will mock at our words, we need only recall the counsel the Lord gave to Moroni, "Fools mock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness." The meek, those who are really searching for the gospel, will feel the impact of the words we write and will not mock. They will, to some degree, recognize what they have found as they read our words and our testimonies.

This week has largely been same old, same old, except for those things. Also, Elder Heil wanted to learn some things about the piano, so I taught him some basic principles, and off he went. He's practicing "Sweet Hour of Prayer" right now. He's got the right hand down and most of the left hand. Now he's trying to put them together.

We went on a killer hike yesterday and found a little beach on the side of a lake and took some great photos. I'll include some of those.

We also had an awesome lesson with Shawn. So we sat and read the scriptures with him, and when we were reading and expounding on the doctrine, he started to realize everything that was there that he hadn't noticed before. He was like, "Man, there's so much theology and doctrine." We summarized to him something that Bapa said about Joseph Smith. Here's the direct quote:

"Joseph Smith ... talked about reading the scriptures prior to the time that he received the gift of the Holy Ghost. He was astonished, looking back, that only after that experience of laying on of hands did he somehow become capable of seeing them in a new light and recognizing the meaning of passages which otherwise and heretofore he had not understood. And their more mysterious passages, as he said, came with patent clearness. Another way of saying it is that there are times where scriptures can leap up off the page and bomb you--hit you right between the eyes and right between the sternum, such that you know these were written under inspiration, and you see clearly how they apply to you."

So that was a cool experience to have. It was neat to be able to see that difference taking place in him, where the scriptures were beginning to be more opened to his eyes. I do think the Spirit's really working on him. He's also facing a lot of opposition, though, from family members and so forth, so if you would like to pray for him, that would be great.

Another cool thing that happened this week, yesterday, in fact, was that we called a less-active member, Sis. Barber, and eventually invited her to attend church with us remotely next Sunday. She said she would. She's in her 60s or so, I think, and said she's a gamer and has been since the 70s. She plays Guild Wars 2 online most of the time. She also does a lot of sewing, and she and her friend Jane are LARPers. To me, that's pretty awesome. When we were talking she said when I leave the area I need to stay in touch with her. Maybe I'll pick up Guild Wars when I come home (just kidding--that's an MMORPG, and those can be pretty dangerous for me). But seriously, there are a lot of people I've met on my mission who play online video games, and some of them spend a lot of time doing that. If we have common interests somewhere down the line, that may be one way for me to stay connected with them. That would be neat.

Other cool things that are happening: One of the elders in my district, Elder Harper, recently gave an analogy to us during a nightly devotional about prayer being like a drive-thru. He decided to talk about that live on Facebook the other night, and it was really good. If you go to my Facebook wall you'll see that I shared it and had a watch party. You should watch the whole thing. It's super good and helped me gain some greater insights about prayer, and it's pretty short. I think it's less than 30 minutes.

We have masks now. One of our members, Sister Caron, made us some, and then there are some formerly Amish members who sewed one for each of the missionaries in the mission, I think. That was a really awesome thing for them to do. As far as I understand, cloth masks like the ones we wear don't really protect us from the virus but can help prevent others from catching the virus if we're carrying it, so we wore them to Walmart today and try to wear them whenever we're outside and think we might be interacting with people. I'll take a few pictures when we're back at the apartment and add them to this email.

In the quote for this week I thought about using "Who cuts your hair?" "Tony. Why, you think I should go to your barber?" from Sabrina, because Elder Heil asked me to cut his hair. I had basically no idea what I was doing, and I definitely made a mistake or two that needs to grow out to get fixed, but at the end of the day, it wasn't bad. I'll send a picture. I guess I've acquired a new skill, sort of.

We also did two more social distancing birthday parades. Have I mentioned those? Basically we make posters (Elder Heil and I just write on a whiteboard) and go to someone's house and drive by honking and waving the signs or park in front of their house for a second. We did it for two kids who just turned 8: Millie and Tristan. They can't get baptized right now, and I guess they've been kind of bummed about that, not to mention everything else, so hopefully we were able to lift them a little. When we did Millie's, we were parked across the street from their house, so when we sang "Happy birthday," Elder Heil and I just sat out of the windows and sang. It was fun. Sister Aguayo took a picture of us--I'll include it. Later an older woman in the branch did the same thing, but as her husband was driving and as they went by the house. It was pretty funny to watch. She was being all dramatic and stuff. I love people who just do odd things like that and don't care what other people think. Those are pretty cool people.

Oh, yeah, shout out to my trainer: So Zachary Thomas went ahead and sent me and my companion $50 of Pizza Hut the day of that parade with Millie--two pizzas, cheese sticks, a giant cookie and a giant brownie. So... he's awesome.

One of the assistants (Elder Foster) and one of the zone leaders (Elder Merrill) visited us a few days ago to drop off the masks the Amish converts made. (They were on training visits--Elder Wiggins and Elder Sears were in Powell). We went out and played frisbee with them for a bit. It was cool to spend time with them.

So I've been trying to journal more consistently, making it a part of my nightly routine, which is why there's this sort of piecemeal collection of things at the end of the email that aren't necessarily related.

Well, that's basically it for this week.

Please remember that we as missionaries need your help now more than ever, but we need you to help us with the work. If you are connected on social media with people who are not members of the church, I would invite you to ponder on how the knowledge you have about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is helping you get through this and feel hope right now, and share that on a post or a direct message on social media. Will you do that? Then please email me and let me know how it goes. It's something I'd like to start trying to do with the members in our area to see if we can help them share the gospel, and I'd like to learn what your experience with it is like.

Love you all! As Elder Watson, one of the missionaries from my MTC district says, "Keep yourself alive!"

Elder Davis

Pictures:

We've been taking pictures of gravestones we find in the cemetery (we walk there a lot) that share the names of missionaries in the district and the mission, and my contacts app made this suggestion earlier today. I guess I need to treat my phone better.