Week 79 - "Father, please... guide my sword."
Hello, everyone.
This week's quote is from Mandy Patinkin's Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
A lot has happened this past week, both in the world and in the mission (specifically in our area), so we'll get right into it.
First of all, we were privileged to be joined by the Assistants on Thursday, and that was a treat. As you hopefully remember, I was Elder Sears' companion in Delaware my first transfer there, and he's one of the Assistants, so obviously he went with me, and the other assistant, Elder Foster, went with my companion, Elder Schreiter. When they came on Wednesday night they didn't get to our place until, like, 11:30, and then Elder Sears and Elder Schreiter and I were up until probably 1:30 talking, and then Elder Sears and I were up for another good half hour, and yet the next day I didn't feel super worn out. However, that day was a mess. It was a good day, it was fun, but nearly all our appointments fell through, and most of our plans did, too. Elder Sears and I went out and took a new profile picture for him with the camera Emma from Worthington loaned me, and then we joined the Worthington District's district council over Facebook, which was fun, and then we took The Beast (that's the name for the mission's transit van--we got it swapped out for a 2020 Sienna last week and then got it back when the Assistants came for the training visit) over to the Institute building to practice our talents a little. I'm working on a new version of "In Christ Alone" on the piano that I'm going to sing in as well. I can add a link to it here once I've got it down and recorded and uploaded to my drive. Anyway, we went to practice our talents, but we hardly had any time to practice. Elder Sears brought a uke along, which he's learning how to play, and that was cool. And then I taught Elder Sears some stuff about family history. Then we were going to go back to the apartment to carry out the rest of our plans, but Elder Schreiter and Elder Foster had left the apartment and locked it, and we don't have a second key yet, so we just sort of turned around and went back the Institute building. We also dropped by a UDF (that's United Dairy Farmers--it's a convenience store/ice cream shop/gas station out here, and they're all over) to grab some ice cream, because Elder Sears said if he sits down in one place for too long and doesn't eat anything he starts to get headaches. If he weren't an assistant right now, I imagine missionary life would be pretty tough. Anyway, then we came back and were going to have a lesson, but it fell through, and we reached one or two people on the phone and set something up, but that was about our whole day. We had to do a device audit, so I showed Elder Sears all my memes, which he got a kick out of. And then all four of us went to Chipotle for dinner and then had a training visit evaluation afterward. It was a good day. It was good to see Elder Sears again. He came out just a transfer after me, so at the end of this transfer he'll be at his six month mark. When I write "Week 80" next week, I think that's going to freak me out a little. The way the weeks seem to go by now, that doesn't seem like a lot of time. I think I'm passing the "reeling about the idea of going home" phase and starting to foray into the "thinking about my future" phase, which is weird. Anyway, then we sent them off to Newark for their training visit with Elder Wiggins and Elder Merrill, and we got back to our regularly scheduled week.
I'd like to talk about some of the lessons we've had this week--there have been some interesting ones.
So one of the people we meet with, a member, deals with some major depression, and as we've spoken with him and I've told him about how that's something I've gone through as well, he's become very interested in me, and the last lesson he was just asking me a ton of questions. It was just over the phone, so I turned to Elder Schreiter and sort of mouthed an apology, but he sort of shrugged and gave me a look like, "I'm just happy he's talking to you. Keep going." Later he wrote on a post-it note, "He's asking you questions so he can help himself," or something like that. It was a cool experience to get the chance to be a relief in someone's life like the people who have talked me through my more difficult moments have been in mine. It was cool to be on the other side of that, basically just talking and bringing some measure of light and giving him a break from the darkness he was facing, helping him come up for fresh air, as it were.
We also had a lesson with Anthony, a Chinese man that we're teaching. He asked some REALLY deep questions. For instance, he asked us about seeing other people doing things that are wrong, and he said, "If I see someone praying to an idol, should I stop them, or should I tell them that's wrong?" or something like that. So we talked about how he could, but people don't usually take that very well, and that he can invite people to do things differently--our whole MO as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ--but we can't force anyone to do anything. He also asked, "if we are the true believes of Christ" (he had read Alma 46), "does that mean that others are not true believers of Christ?" We had to explain that ultimately, that's not our place to say--that we can't really tell what's in people's hearts, and that the may be doing the best they can with what they have, and that ultimately the final judgment is the Lord's, not ours. It was a pretty deep lesson. I love Anthony. He always starts a comment addressing us by saying, "Brothers," and it gives me a good feeling.
We also had two lessons with Nohemí, and holy cow, those were good. So the first time we talked about Mosiah 16 and 17, and we discussed 16 specifically, where Abinadi says that the Law of Moses is a shadow of things to come, and I have been in the five books of Moses recently (I finished Numbers last week and Leviticus the week before, and I wanted to read Deuteronomy this week, but I think my extracurricular reading might be taking a backseat, because there are other things I have to do during meal times and morning and evening times), so I talked about how the Law of Moses points so much to the coming of Jesus Christ and how its purpose is to help the children of Israel look toward and focus on Jesus Christ. There was a member there, too, Emily, and she gave an awesome explanation about that as well. And then four of us (we also had a set of elders from Riverside in with us) bore testimony. It was great. Elder Lyman bore testimony about persecution and how that has felt for him as a missionary, and I bore testimony about being a missionary and how I have felt the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit so much more and grown so much, and then Emily and Elder Schreiter also bore testimony. It was powerful And then on Sunday we had another lesson with Nohemí, and we had asked her to read the next chapter, which is Alma baptizing in the Waters of Mormon. We talked a lot about baptism and its significance, and all four of us testified about baptism and what it means to us. I kept talking about baptism and how awesome it was, but I didn't want to extend the preparatory baptismal commitment, because I looked at her and felt like she was closing off, and I didn't want to blow anything, but it was almost like we were playing hot potato, where I would talk about baptism and then pause, and then Elder Schreiter would talk about it and then pause, and then I would take the cue and talk about it and then not say anything else, and then Elder Schreiter, who was just kind of confused about how I kept talking about this and didn't say anything else but seemed like I wanted to say something, got a prompting, "Invite her to be baptized." I guess the Spirit got tired of trying to push me, because I wasn't listening. So he just went for it, and she accepted! It was awesome! Then Jacob, a convert and a returned missionary--I think I've mentioned him before--asked a bomb follow-up question and was like, "What would it take for you to know that this is true?" And she said that she wants to attend services and to learn more about the structure of The Book of Mormon, so we were like, "OK. We can do that." Sort of--with COVID-19 right now, we're not really in a great place as far as church attendance (we count attendance at a weekly Facebook Live devotional for church attendance), so attending services in person would be difficult, but maybe something will happen that will fill that need for her. And then we were closing up the lesson, but Zoom's 40-minute limit kicked us off, and Elder Schreiter was freaking out a little. We reopened the meeting and got Jacob and Nohemí back on, and we were able to close properly.
The other significant lesson this week was with a guy named David. David believes in the teaching of the Trinity, and though he likes many of the teachings of the church, that's something that's difficult for him to get around. He basically wanted to explain his position, so he cited Isaiah 43:10-11; Isaiah 44:6-8; Isaiah 45:21; and Deuteronomy 6:4-5; as well as Colossians 1:15-20; Colossians 2:8-9; Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1; and a number of others to support his thought that God is three in one. He doesn't believe in modalism, but he does believe that God is simultaneously the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, three distinct beings as one God, and he makes a compelling point--it's difficult to argue with him on that. He also gets hung up about the King Follett discourse, how Joseph Smith said he would refute the idea that God was from all eternity to all eternity, and the teaching that "As man now is, God once was, and as God now is, man may become." At the end of the lesson, Elder Schreiter asked him if he wanted to know that this is true, and he said he does, but he basically also doesn't want to be doing anything wrong. That was a challenging lesson. I'm not a bible scholar. I have aspects of my testimony of this being Jesus Christ's church that I can't deny, but I'm having a difficult time know how to help David get from point A to point B. So any advice would be welcome.
To be totally honest, that lesson shook me a bit. I wasn't sure what to think. I was praying a lot in my heart for Elder Schreiter during the lesson when he was talking, and I was praying a lot beforehand that we wouldn't mess it up. But then after the lesson I was stuck in my head for a good bit. Do you ever have those nagging questions that sort of just get sidelined with everything that goes on in life? All of those bubbled up to the top, and I had to face them. Later when some of my other needs were met (someone brought over an amazing home-cooked dinner the next night, and it was delicious) I felt more calm and less concerned, but I want to plunge back down into those depths and find answers. But it doesn't ever feel like there's time during a mission. Or even during life, to some degree. That's one of the reasons the lockdown was initially so helpful for me, especially the challenge we were given to read The Book of Mormon in two days. That was awesome. I want to just study and strengthen my understanding. But I don't always have time. So that has been interesting. I'm confident that there are answers to those questions, but it doesn't feel good not having the answers.
On that topic, we've come up against a lot of anti-ers and a lot of bashers as a mission these past few weeks. The more time you spend on the web, the more you run into those people. It's the same as knocking doors. And Elder Schreiter was engaging with someone like that, and it made me thinking about the terms on which we often contend with those not of our faith--we usually feel like we have to play on their playing field: We have to go sola scriptura and limit it to the Bible, and that's it. As I've thought about that challenge of discussing the gospel with people, though, I've realized that that's not a game we need to play. As we've talked with David I've realized, in fact, that not only is sola scriptura a game we don't have to play, sola scriptura is woefully inadequate for answering the deep questions of life. Yes, the scriptures have a lot of wisdom, but in order for us to know that wisdom is actually wisdom, we have to have personal experience of the individual principles that are taught and/or we have to know that the source from which they spring is, as a whole, true. In order to know the sources are true, we have to have some kind of experience. Experience is the thing on which our testimonies are built. Yes, we can rely initially on the testimonies of others, but you cannot live your life simply believing that what a book or books teach is true because other people say it is. That's really just not enough. Who said those books are true? What if I come to you and say that The Scarlet Letter or And Then There Were None or Frankenstein are true? Will you believe me? Maybe you will, for a time, but at some point you're going to have to start asking some difficult questions. You're going to have to start wondering why these books are labeled as fiction if they're really true, or why we can't create life in the same way Dr. Frankenstein could or why you can't find Hester Prynne in any history books. You're going to have to ask for yourself whether those things are true, and your experience is going to have to be what guides you to determine for yourself whether it is. As soon as you start seeing what appear to be contradictions between your understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and your life experience, you're going to have to start really asking yourself whether what you've been taught is true. How do we gain experience to know something is true? One way is by seeing it or experiencing it in a physical way, but the scriptures also tell us that if we follow a certain spiritual formula faithfully (pardon the pun) we will have a certain spiritual result, and we can acquire truth in that way. When we ourselves know "of ourselves" (this is an interesting phrase that Preach My Gospel taught me to look for in the scriptures when people are testifying) that something is true, then we will be solid. When we have experienced something personally (whether temporally or spiritually) and cannot in good conscience deny that it happened, we can know. And when we bear that testimony to others, that testimony has power. So I'd invite you to ask yourself: What do you know? What do you really know? If you stood before God, and He commanded you to tell the truth, and the punishment was eternal fire and brimstone, and then he asked you what you knew, really knew, to be true in this life, what would you tell him? If someone in your presence challenged a truth, which truths would you feel compelled to contradict them on and to testify of?
Sola scriptura is not enough. Sola scriptura leads us to personal experience, and that is what we need.
Sorry--this one's turning out to be super long. I just wanted to say a couple more things. I've noticed the past week just how much of my life has been preparing me for this point in my mission. I did social media for a local newspaper. I learned design principles in college and learned to use design programs in yearbook and newspaper jobs. I learned to use Photoshop in high school and more extensively in college. I learned the basics of photography a few years ago. I'm an introvert. I got a college degree that taught me how to write. I took a 400-level college course on argument and debate. I was socially isolated for two or three years before my mission anyway (I'm kidding about that one. Mostly.)--the list goes on. There's also a section in the Safeguards for using technology where an apostle is quoted as saying, "The only really effective filter for lifelong technology use is the individual heart and mind of the individual young person." I think that's something I've learned this past few years, too (I won't claim to be perfect at it, but I feel that is a skill I have developed extensively). And all of that has made me have two thoughts: The first is that me being here is important. That thought helps me, especially now, because it's hard to feel productive, and it's easy to think that the things you're doing don't matter. The second is that not doing this, not coming on a mission may have been a huge waste. If I hadn't used these ways in which I was prepared and applied the skills I was given and developed for the reasons I think I was given them, that would have been a major shame. I won't claim to be an expert in anything I know how to do, but the skillset I have seems uniquely fitted for what I'm doing right now, and to me that seems significant.
Three more things: So in a devotional a sister invited anyone who wanted to to share something on the topic we were discussing, and I felt to share what I experienced my first week in the MTC. It's in my first email, I think--the bit about Elder Bednar's talk. I think the fact that I was prompted to share that was at least partially for me, because I'm learning that I need to stop being so concerned about the things I want to do and be more focused on how I can help the people around me, and if I do, the needs I am trying to meet by the things I want to do will be met by the Savior. I say that with confidence. I know that can happen.
When I was studying this week I wrote something in my study journal that I thought to myself, "I should share this in my weekly email," so I'm going to do that. I'm looking back through the journal, and I think it's this thing I learned from reading Jacob 4, verses 1 through 3. Here's each verse, with my commentary on each verse in italics.
1 Now behold, it came to pass that I, Jacob, having ministered much unto my people in word, (and I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates) and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain;
It took a lot of work, so they couldn't do it a ton. They couldn't write a ton of stuff. Maybe that's why they say an hundredth part could not be written--because it literally couldn't be.
2 But whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away; but we can write a few words upon plates, which will give our children, and also our beloved brethren, a small degree of knowledge concerning us, or concerning their fathers—
Perhaps this is the reason for the focus on sacred and holy things: The reason was, at least in part, practical. It would be a waste of precious time and materials.
3 Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents.
I hope we're grateful for what this is and means, and I hope we don't take it for granted, but I get the sense that we often do take it for granted.
The Book of Mormon contains plain and precious truths, and if we aren't appreciating that, we can and should do better.
OK, last thing. I've been highlighting a talk about missionary work every Tuesday on Facebook, and I felt those talks were things I needed to start sharing in my weekly email. This week's talk is called "The Challenge to Become," and is by Dallin H. Oaks. I think my favorite part of the talk was where he told a parable about a father whose son wanted his possessions, wanted to be wealthy and successful like him. The father said, "That which I have I can easily give you, but that which I am you must obtain for yourself." I realized reading that that when we become what we are meant to become, then we can have all that is meant for us to have. The relationship that has with missionary work may not be clear: I have often heard that we cannot convert others beyond our own conversion, and it's true. In order to bring others to the truth of the gospel, in order to be like those who were great emissaries of Christ, we have to become like they were. And doing that involves a lot of study, practice, and even trial. It requires some spiritual work. If that's what we want, we need to accept that becoming something new is the way we get there. Becoming better than we are is the way we get there. Helping others accept the gospel is all about personal conversion.
That's all I have for now. The reason for the quote is that I've been experiencing a lot of struggle in the Spirit this week. That feels like something relatively sacred, but I feel comfortable sharing it, because I trust you all. It's been hard. But I've grown, and I continue to grow in that process, and you can, too. I just want you to know that in case it wasn't something you were already aware of.
Love you!
Elder Davis
"The Challenge to Become" - Read it and send me your insights, or join the discussion on my Facebook wall starting Tuesday.
Mr. Missionary's Neighborhood, from Elder Lyman. Please share it if you liked it.
The Book of Mormon is the ultimate spiritual Flex tape: Ditto with the sharing
My original "In Christ Alone" recording
Elder Schreiter and I went on OSU campus this week.
Us on campus
We have to get creative sometimes.
Something inspiring I saw
Wholesome meme
Cool post I saw from someone
Us with Riverside last week
New Testament meme
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