Week 74 - "I'm sorry, who are you?" "Exactly. I feel like a completely new man." ... "Who was that?" "Agent M. Your partner?"

Hey, everyone.

The quote this week is from Will Smith's Agent J, another character played by Will Arnett, and an unnamed MIB employee from Men in Black III. J comes into the Men in Black after a shift in reality due to a time-traveling alien causes Agent K to die early, and he suddenly has a new partner, but he's not aware of any of that. The letter for the agent in the quote may not be quite right. It's also not my best work, but it'll have to do. Elder Heil and I haven't been together quite as much this week because we've been doing a ton of training visits: one with Newark, one with Coshocton, and one with Mt. Vernon, and we'll have more this week.

It also feels like I've been experiencing a bit of a "time jump." The weeks are going by a lot faster, it seems. Time has been rushing by. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's the isolation or the monotony, but it's difficult to go back in my mind and think of the things that happened this week that I can talk about. I'm journaling more often, so maybe that's part of it. Maybe my brain doesn't hold on to that stuff as much because it knows I wrote it down.

There was actually a lot this week. So I went on a training visit Tuesday with Elder Harper, and he's hilarious and awesome. He loves movies, so that was about all we talked about during our training visit. We just talked about movies and how awesome they are. We also had gotten a referral the day before, so we reached out to the guy. His name is Jason. We called him and introduced ourselves and tried to figure out a time we could come by and just drop the copy of The Book of Mormon off. (Quite literally--we're not supposed to have in-person contact with people if we can avoid it. If they want materials, we're just supposed to leave them at their door or something.) When we went out there, though, he happened to be there, so we just put the copy of The Book of Mormon on some logs and sort of stepped back so he could grab it. But then we talked (from 6 feet away) and basically taught him the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (two points from the first lesson). It was cool. I think it was a tender mercy for Elder Harper. He's been craving some human interaction, and it was a good opportunity for him to get that.

We also talked about it afterward, and it was an opportunity for us to realize how rusty we are on teaching, too. I guess we've got to do a better job of keeping our tools sharp. But it all worked out--we're still in contact with the guy. Elder Guzman and I will probably try to teach him tomorrow. I'll be on a training visit with him tomorrow--he's Elder Harper's companion, and I was his district leader when he was being trained during his first transfer in Ashtabula--he was in my district when I was the district leader in Warren. I might have mentioned him in an earlier email. He's awesome. He's a very intelligent person. He's given some bomb devotionals and trainings the past little while. I think he's going to be a help to a lot of missionaries during this weird time. So I'm excited to spend some time with him. Hopefully we'll have a good day.

Side note to this side note about Elder Guzman: We've been having a lot more training visits, and I think it's mostly just to break up the monotony of missionaries' lives and get them away from their companions for a little while. It's tough living with someone like this and having hardly any contact with anyone else, and it can be especially difficult if you already dislike one another. So we're basically just trying to help missionaries stay sane.

On Wednesday we had our interviews with President. It was weird having them over technology. I've been noticing that the leaders we've spoken with seem to be feeling either overwhelmed or just confused about what they should do to solve different problems. I hope President Stratford is doing OK, but the interview felt a little off. Pray for him and for your local and area leaders. They need some major help from the Lord right now.

On Thursday I had a training visit with Elder Hansen, from Coshocton. He's a good guy. I had a training visit or two with him last transfer as well. I like him. For part of our outside time we took a hike at the state park and went down a cool little trail and talked about a bunch of stuff and found a tree that had splintered in a really weird way. Later, when we talked on the way back to the drop-off point to make the switch back we had a conversation about how tough this has all been, and I think I was able to help him--at least, I hope so. It's hard to tell, sometimes. I felt the Spirit as I spoke, so hopefully it was good. We also taught Shawn a lesson that day and talked about helping him get started on his family history. I've had a few cool experiences with family history this week, actually. I can talk about those more in a second.

We also had district council, and it was awesome. Elder Wiggins gave a training on listening, I gave a training on bearing your testimony, Sister Lowe gave a training on following up, and Elder Guzman gave an awesome training on setting goals and making plans to pursue them. (Sometimes we set goals and then don't do anything about them. He described it like having a beautiful, leather scripture case and then putting it on a shelf and admiring it every once in a while as it slowly gathers dust. It's important to not only set goals but to make specific, scheduled plans to accomplish those goals and then carry out those plans. It's interesting what you learn as a missionary about how to use your time and life effectively.) It was really good. I think it fired up the district a little.

On Friday morning when we were up working out and stuff I felt like I had some kind of scab or something on my back, and I have a bad habit of picking those, but it was like it was already coming off, so I reached back and held on to it and slowly just kind of pulled it away and let it come off, and then I looked in my hand and saw a little arachnid. Until that day I didn't realize that certain parasitic blood-suckers have eight legs. I'm not sure how--I feel like I was particularly blessed, but I calmly held on to it, walked into the kitchen and got a plastic bag and stuck it in there. After further examination, we weren't sure if I had gotten the whole thing, but he was still alive, so we assumed we had. We called the medical coordinator and told her what happened, and she consulted a doctor after I had sent her a picture of the wound and the tick. (He looked empty, but there was definitely a mark--he must have jumped on me during our hike the day before, so I assume he had been feeding. I guess when I pulled him out I must have made him spit everything back out. Sorry not sorry for the graphic imagery.) Long story short, she let me know I was getting prescribed with a familiar antibiotic: doxycycline! Do you remember when I had that rash in the Riverside Area and the doctor at the Insta-care was like, "We treat everything like it's MRSA" and gave me that medication that makes you allergic to the sun? Yeah, that's this stuff. So I've been taking that. I guess they're hoping I don't get lyme disease or something, but they haven't given me any details on why they want me to take it. So far I've felt fine, so that's good.

On Saturday I had a training visit with Elder Merrill. He's a funny dude. He's good at just ham boning and being a goofball. We went on a walk, and to stay out of the sun, I put nitrile gloves on my hands, a beanie on my head and my mask on my face. Elder Merrill was just normal. We must have looked odd walking around. Eventually I just took the gloves off and put my hands in my pockets, since I was keeping them in there anyway. We actually got passed by a member, Sister Aguayo, who was driving to the track at the local YMCA to walk around with her kids, and she called us and was like, "You're out anyway: Come join us! Come social distance with us!" So we just kind of redirected our path and walked over and walked a lap with her. We turned it into a member missionary visit, so that was cool. They're a really cool family.

Later that day we came to the church, and I practiced a song I've been working on. (I'm trying to learn something on the piano so I can post it on Facebook in one of our missionary outreach groups. It's one of my favorite songs, but I'm getting a little sick of it now, with how many times I've played it. How do artists not hate their music by the time they've arranged it and learned to perform it in exactly the way they want? I guess whatever it is that allows them do that must be what makes them performers. I practiced the piece a bunch of times today and just kept messing up at weird places I hadn't messed up before, and now I'm getting a little tired of the song.) Then I helped Elder Merrill fix some things in his family tree. That felt good. It felt nice to be of service to someone in that way. Yesterday Elder Heil and I looked at his own family history, and we're going to try to fill out his tree a little bit more. It's been cool. That's another thing I want to teach other missionaries about how to do, but I'm not sure what I would share. I'm still basically just figuring out what I can share about Facebook that would actually be useful to people. It's like I'm trying to design a curriculum on the fly. It's a good experience, but it definitely shows me my inadequacies.

At the end of the day with Elder Merrill we did something dumb that made for a funny story in retrospect. So the night before, the zone leaders (Elder Merrill and Elder Wiggins) were just coming off training visits with the Mt. Vernon elders (Elder Harper and Elder Guzman). So they were just joining back together. They met right in Newark, at the zone leaders' apartment, instead of at a halfway point, so they asked us to make the drive to Newark instead of meeting them somewhere. In a way, that was probably the best way to do it, but it meant we had a long drive and had to use a fair amount of miles. Since they're the zone leaders and have been doing a lot of training visits (they've been visiting with a lot of the elders in the zone, again, I think just trying to help everyone stay sane), I assumed (don't do that) that they needed us to drive to Newark mostly to save themselves some miles. I also assumed (again, don't) that they would want us to drive to Newark to make the switch back. Elder Merrill and I both figured that. We didn't really need to talk about it, we just both thought that made sense. So when 6:50 or so rolled around we took off to Newark. When we got there we didn't see the zone leaders' car in the parking lot, and we were about to call them when we got a call from them. In my mind I was like, "Oh, good. They're about to tell us where they're at and that they're on their way back to the apartment. They're probably late coming from somewhere." Elder Wiggins was on the line, and I said, "Hey, where are you elders at?" And he was like, "We're in your study room." I closed my eyes and was like, "...what?" He said, "We're in your study room. Were we going to meet at a halfway point or something?" It turns out the mistake Elder Merrill and I made (the mistake we all made) was not to communicate our plans to one another. So we burned up about 100 miles. We agreed on a halfway point and took off so we could try to make it back home in time to have our devotional, and then we met there and swapped again. As we were swapping luggage and companions and sort of laughing about what happens when you assume, Elder Wiggins chuckled and was like, "Bunch of donkeys..." It was funny. At least in retrospect.

Side note: When I was with Elder Merrill we were able to get back in touch with Ashley, so that's cool. We had a lesson planned with her this morning, but it didn't work out. So now we're going to meet tomorrow when I'm with Elder Guzman. Hopefully it goes well.

Yesterday we had Sacrament at our apartment, and that was a good experience, but we could keep a cleaner and more organized space, especially if we're going to perform that ordinance there.

Yesterday we also called a person we're teaching who is in a really complicated situation, church-wise. I won't go into it, but basically her lack of transportation and her relationships with a certain member of the ward would make it difficult or awkward for her to attend. We haven't been in very close contact, because we didn't really know what to do, but we checked in with her to see how she was doing, and over time she mentioned she was struggling a bit with getting food and stuff, and she mentioned a few things she needed. Almost all of them were things we just happened to have a lot of, even extra of: ramen, butter, clementines and soup, for instance. So we put those things in a bag this morning--Elder Heil stuck some popcorn and a little pasta side pack in there, too--and dropped them off at her door. Giving to others is always an awkward position to find ourselves in as missionaries, because we don't want to give people the impression that the missionaries are people who will give you money whenever you ask for it or are necessarily here to provide for people's temporal needs. On the other hand, Christ commands us to do good to others, and we should give to those who are less fortunate than we are. We know we're not supposed to use money, but we figured since we'd already bought the stuff anyway we could take it to to her and it wouldn't be a big deal. When we called to confirm this morning, she asked if we had $10 to give her, and we said we didn't, and she said she understood, that we would give it to her if we had it. We didn't want her to think that we were just there to help temporally or that that was our purpose, so that sort of gave us a little pause, but we had promised to bring her the stuff, and helping other people is a good thing to do, so we just went for it and drove down to where she lives to drop it off. We went up to her front door and put it on a chair on the patio like she had asked and then went back to our car. She has a daughter, and when we were in the car getting ready to go, she sort of timidly came out, looked in the grocery bag, and then got all happy and started jumping up and down with excitement and looked at us. That's when we knew what we did was the right thing. From what her mom said she went through some rough stuff this week, and it sounds like they're really struggling, so to see her get so happy and so excited about such an eclectic little bag of stuff made us realize that we had done something good.

We also had a great talk today with our elder's quorum president. He bore a powerful testimony of tithing and how much paying it has helped him and just made everything in life better. He said that his family uses cars until they're used up, and then they sell them to other people for really cheap if they want them, being sure to let them know that the car is old and may have some problems. He once told a guy, "This car runs on tithing." It was old, but it had worked well for him, and he was only selling it to him for $500. Still, he told the guy, who was a member of the church, that if he wasn't paying his tithing he was going to have problems with the car. Well, the guy thought that was ridiculous and wasn't paying his tithing, and he continued not to pay it, and the car broke down. The transmission blew and something else broke. Our Elder's Quorum President said that's happened multiple times, and he also said that even though he's been out of work he has a job offer that sort of fell into his lap that he's been working on right now that may bring his family a lot of things that they've really been hoping for, like free college tuition for his kids, one of whom is about to graduate high school. So that was a testament to us that there are also good things resulting from the current situation (he was laid off because his work shut down, which happened because of the virus). So today's been a pretty good day.

I'm sure there's a slough of other cool things that have happened, but I can't write them all. Oh, Elder Heil introduced me to Duolingo today, and I'm learning Spanish. I'm a bit worried, though, because I think I'm starting to get a little manic about it. I've probably spent a good hour on it today. It's the closest thing we have to a video game, and I think whatever part of my brain that's been alternately sleeping and complaining for the past 17 months or so just woke up and was given relatively free reign. It had me in a weird mood. But learning a language is a good thing, so hopefully Elder Heil and I can keep it under control as we try to learn every day.
Love you all. Have a good, safe, virus-free week.

Elder Davis

Pictures:

That weird tree I mentioned.

We made the tacos that the father in the part member family taught us to make--again. They're so good.

Assembled tacos

I made chicken souvlaki for Elder Merrill two nights ago (we have more time to cook now). Again, so good.

Me and Elder Harper (we had Quantum of Salsa burgers that night, as a side note)

"Say hello to my little friend..."

I wasn't sure this was quite accurate during my lesson today, but whatever. You do you, dude.