Week 75 - "12 weeks?" "Sometimes longer, but you could get lucky."

Hey, everyone.

So things have been going pretty well, although we're still on a stay-at-home order and unable to visit anyone in person, unless, I guess, as we did last week, we just happen to run into them and stay 6 feet away. The quote is from Tom Hanks' Josh Baskins and an unnamed government employee in Big. He's looking for the Zoltar machine, and so he has to fill out a form (in triplicate) and hand it in to a government agency so they can try to find it for him. Thank goodness for Google.

We found out this week that Governor DeWine (the governor of Ohio) extended the stay-at-home order for the state, and we're trying to be obedient to that as a church and as individuals--we're trying to be good citizens. I don't know if we'll have reached 12 weeks by the time we get to the current deadline, but we will have been inside for probably 9 or 10. I've lost count.

In some ways, though, that extension has done some really good things. We had a meeting yesterday with the branch council (something I don't think we've done except for once, at the very beginning, when all of this started), and had a discussion about what we could and could not do as far as holding virtual worship services. It sounds like they don't want us to do anything that looks like a virtual sacrament meeting, in the sense that they don't want us to basically have a pulpit and speakers and a program where we bless the sacrament and so forth (at least, I got the impression that those specific types of things were the types of things they didn't want us to do), but we're OK to meet virtually and basically have gospel discussions. Essentially, what we've been doing for the past little while would be OK. The reason I say that this extension has done good things is that I think it's gotten people to recognize that they can't just wait until it's over. We need to adapt and change. There are people who need some help, so we should give it to them. And again, meeting virtually is a great opportunity to start reconnecting people with the church at this time. Less-active members might come and participate and become more active. I know of at least one in particular who I think would be totally open to a virtual meeting, probably two of the top of my head. It will be great. Also, we've basically been assigned the responsibility of taking care of it. So we'll head it and start with a song and a prayer and then give a relatively brief talk, and then end with a song and a prayer. We've basically been doing all this with our devotionals, except the church meetings will be on Zoom instead of Facebook, but we have enough familiarity with that platform that we should be fine. It sounds like we'll also be recording the meetings and posting them on the branch Facebook page. So that's pretty neat. It was good to have that conversation. I think perhaps people thought this was the kind of thing we just needed to hunker down and wait for--that we just needed to be patient until it all blows over, but--and I know I'm beating a dead horse here-- it would be better for us to adapt.

I just started this email by talking about yesterday, but I think I'll go back to the beginning of the week and give you a recap of some of the things that have stood out.

So on Tuesday we had a training visit with Mount Vernon, which was Elder Guzman and Elder Harper. I came back to Cambridge with Elder Guzman, and immediately when we got in the car and were on our way back, it felt like we were just old friends picking up a conversation that we left off of 9 or 10 months ago. It was awesome. We're comfortable around each other, which is cool. I was saying to Elder Harper (I think) that I do training visits with people and sometimes go, "Why can't I just be companions with this person? We would get along so well!" But I suppose being with someone for a day is different than being with them for a transfer. I imagine most people say and do things that would get on one's nerves over time, but still, I feel like I could get along really well with at least three of the elders in my district, if not four.. I feel like we could be pretty good companions. Anyway, Elder Guzman and I spent the day together and did some good stuff. We went to the state park and went on a little hike, and we talked about a lot of different things. It's been nice up until this point to basically just chat with missionaries for a while and try to help them voice their feelings, get to know them better, and just try to help them solve some of the problems they're working through. It's been good. What else did we do? I wanted to get some advice on the piano (Elder Guzman went to college for music for a semester or two, plays the cello, is great at the piano, and loves classical music--that's his favorite genre--so we appreciated some classical music while we drove and so forth). At the end of the day he and I made black bean and quinoa enchiladas, but I think I forgot to take a picture. They were good, though. It was just a good, uplifting, rejuvenating training visit. That was one of the things he said at the end of it, too, that the last week or so for him has just helped him to sort of recharge. He and his companion are getting along, so that's good--I imagine that's not the case for all companionships right now, and if you have a companion you don't like, that problem would be compounded by the fact that you're stuck inside with them almost all day.

On Wednesday we had district council, and in honor of my last companion, Elder Henshaw, I just decided to, as he would put it, "Holy Ghost it." Basically there was this one time (it was near the beginning of my mission--you can go back to the emails--I think it would have been between week 4 and week 15) when Elder Bennett, a seventy, came to our mission to talk about some things, and then he started off the meeting, and he said something like, "I have no idea what we're going to be talking about for the next three and a half hours, but we're going to talk." It was a super cool training. I don't even remember what happened (which probably isn't good, but I definitely wrote it down, I just don't feel like going and looking in my journal right now), but I remember that it was awesome, and it struck me. Since then Elder Henshaw has used that or suggested that as a template for some district councils. Basically you come essentially without anything prepared and just say, "We're going to hold an actual district council, where we council with one another, and that's all we're going to do for the next little while. Does anyone have something they want to talk about?" The one on Wednesday was awesome. We got into some really deep stuff. One missionary wanted to know how he could gain a deeper testimony and conviction that he was a son of God and to understand what that really meant, and another one asked a really deep, soul-searching question I can't remember, and then we also talked about what we can do to find right now. A lesson I think I've been in the process of learning my whole life is that the Lord operates in a way that could adequately be described as efficiency (maybe that's not a perfect word, but it's the closest I can think of): He doesn't do things that are unnecessary, and he uses the tools at hand to accomplish things. When I was trying to ask what we needed to do for district council, I wasn't really getting anything, and I just felt like we needed to open up the floor for discussion. Perhaps that was because the Lord could have told me what we needed to talk about, but there was no need to when I could simply ask the members of the district. There was also probably some benefit to doing that over being told what I needed to say. Anyhow, it was great. That day we also went for a 14-mile bike ride. We decided to clump all our outside time together and see how far we could get down the "Great Guernsey County Trail," which ended up being 7 miles long, so we went all the way to the end and back. Near the end we saw a little snake (Elder Heil said he thought it was a copper snake) and stopped to look at it. Elder Heil got closer to it, and then it sort of coiled and got ready to strike and then he started taking a video and got closer, and it lunged at him a little, but he was too far away for it to get him. Anyway, that was interesting. The bike ride felt super good. it just feels good sometimes to get out in the fresh air and challenge yourself physically.

The next day, Thursday, I was in Coshocton with Elder Hansen, and that was one of the best training visits I've had. So when I was with Elder Guzman, we taught that new referral I had mentioned, Jason. We read 2 Nephi 2 with him up to verse 11 and explained parts of the Plan of Salvation. It was really good. We didn't have time to finish the chapter, so we committed him to meet with us again, and we set it for Thursday. Well, I don't know if I thought about the fact that we would have training visits Thursday. We did, so the next time I met him I was with Elder Hansen in Coshocton. Elder Heil and I were supposed to meet with him yesterday as well, but he was sick, so my actual companion who's actually in this area still hasn't met him. I made first contact with him with Elder Harper, taught the first formal lesson with his companion, Elder Guzman, and then taught the second lesson with Elder Hansen. And during that lesson, we finished reading 2 Nephi 2 and talking about the Plan of Salvation, and he had some great questions that we were able to answer, like "What happens to people who have never been baptized," or have never learned about Jesus Christ? We were able to answer that question. By the way, we also put him on date for baptism. We had mentioned things we needed to do to get closer to God, like baptism, earlier on in the lesson, and then later he was like, "What does it mean to get baptized?" and Elder Hansen came in clutch and explained that baptism is a covenant and what a covenant is, and what it means, and Jason was like, "I want that. I want to get baptized." So we set a date for him. It was awesome. At the end of the training visit, while we were walking back, Elder Hansen told me that he felt that if nothing else, the reason I was district leader here this transfer was that he needed me to be. Basically he said that I had helped him. That meant a whole lot to me. When we were driving back to the halfway point, we listened to the original movie soundtrack of Les Miserables (the one with Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe) and just sang it. Elder Hansen is into musical theater (he did a little of it in high school--he played a Newsie in Newsies). So that was an awesome way to end the day. Man, that's such a good play. I was having all kinds of new insights as we listened to it throughout the day. It was great.

On Friday we had a zone follow-up call with President and Sister Stratford where President basically let us know that we were still going to be inside (as much as possible) for the foreseeable future. I imagine some missionaries were disappointed by that. I admit it's starting to feel a little old, but I'm OK with it. He also told us that he wanted us to start refocusing on missionary work. Basically, instead of spending so much time walking outside and so forth, he wanted us to start dedicating more time to the work. We've been given four 15-minute chunks of time during the day just to take a break and get some variety, but other than that, it sounds like things are essentially going back to normal as far as our schedule, though the activities we do during that schedule will be pretty different. It's been awesome, though--I think we're learning a lot of new ways to do missionary work that make me feel way more effective than before. There's an app called Ed that allows us to learn lessons about how to do missionary work in new ways (I heard that the church was working on stuff like that, but they've really had to kick it into high gear now, which I'm grateful for). There have been some great lessons that have taught some HUGELY important principles in my opinion, that will help missionaries a ton if they'll just watch them. For instance, DON'T BAIT AND SWITCH PEOPLE. Just offer service and the things that they want. Just give them the things they ask for. You don't have to trick people into doing anything. We don't lure people into our church buildings and grab them and baptize them against their will. It's the same principle. Just give them what they want and let them make their own decisions. If they ask questions about our faith, answer them. If you feel prompted by the Spirit, perhaps offer them something more, but as a general rule, don't push them. It doesn't help, and it's not going to lead to them coming closer to the Lord.

Later that day we were going to have a lesson with someone, and then when we got on Facebook we couldn't find the conversation with him in Messenger. We also couldn't find his profile. Do you know what that means? It means that he blocked us. So I was freaking out a little, and we reached out to a previous missionary and a member of the ward who knows him to see if they could still reach him, and they could, and we texted him, but didn't hear back. The next morning we got a text that said, "I decided I'm going to leave the church. Too many red flags." Well, that made our hearts sink. So we knelt and prayed to know what to say back, and we were guided to say what needed to be said, because later in the day he said, "I don't really want to leave the church. I'm just confused." We had told him in one of the texts that we were going to fast and pray for him, and we ended up doing that yesterday. When we contacted him later, he said "I feel like the Spirit's influence took away some of the doubt and anxiety I was having." That was a relief to hear. We're going to be meeting with him more often now and just trying to provide him with greater support. Fasting works!

What else is new? I got that song recorded, finally. I'll be posting it on my Facebook here in the next little while, maybe today or tomorrow, so look out for that. It's me playing the piano. We've also been doing Duolingo, and I'm learning Spanish, and I got number one in my leaderboard yesterday, so that was cool. I'm past the first checkpoint and about to go on to stuff about conversations and more basic vocabulary.

I think that's about all I have to share this week. I'm writing this in the morning, so I'll write something else if I've forgotten anything.

Thanks for reading!

Elder Davis

The snek.

The end of the trail.

A MASSIVE woodpecker we saw at the cemetery the other day. The guy was huge. He was probably a good 9 or 10 inches tall. I've never seen one that big.