Week 86 - "Look... harder."

Hey, everyone!

So this week has been all right. There's actually been a lot of great stuff that's happened. I'll try to remember it all and cram it all in.

So we've been able to have training visits this week, and that's been really great. We've got 3 or 4 scheduled for every single week the rest of this transfer, with the exception of transfer week (I think), which should give us time to meet with every single companionship, and the three district leader companionships twice. We just want to give everyone a little bit more variety. There are a lot of restrictions involved in our training visits, like we have to meet separately and can't be together--once we exchange, we have to be apart from each other, and it's preferable that we're at our church building for the exchange, and the exchanges only last for 5 to 6 hours. We can be at an apartment if we have to, though. So what we usually do is send one companionship to the institute and then leave one companionship at the apartment. We've met with four companionships, I think, in the last week. Hilliard 1 (Elder Schwebach and Elder Parkinson), Scioto 1 (Elder Merrill and Elder Thompson), OSU Spanish (Elder Carter and Elder Abney), and Greenfield (Elder Sorensen and Elder Bond). I was with the first companionship listed in each case. They were all pretty good. I feel like I got the chance to help each of those elders a little bit. Elder Schwebach and Elder Parkinson are awesome. They're both reassigned, and they were basically just dropped into the mission together, given smart phones (they didn't have them in their other missions), and told "Good luck." That's not literally what happened, but I'm sure that's how it felt. 

Elder Merrill helped me start making a little video I've been wanting to make, and I'll share it when it's finished, but I probably won't get the chance to edit it and finish it for a little bit. We've been pretty busy (which is wonderful) for the last little while, and I don't know if I'll be able to find the time. Elder Carter and I talked about some of the videos he's been making and the ideas he's had and so forth. Elder Carter and Elder Abney made a funny video about sin that they were going to share, but the social media specialists felt like it wasn't a good fit for the page. I see where they're coming from, but I think it's a shame that it wasn't used, so I'll just share it with y'all here. And then when I was with Elder Sorensen we had a couple lessons and stuff, and I was able to see him teach. He connects with different people and connects with them in a different way than I do. We had a lesson with some members in Greenfield, and there's definitely a reason he's assigned to serve in Greenfield and I am not. He seems like a good fit for the people there, and he interacted well with them, and they bonded with him really well. It was cool to see the lesson just work out well in his favor, even though I felt like what I was saying wasn't landing right. It taught me that I have an assignment, and so does he, and I should trust him with his assignment--he can do it perfectly well, and his assignment is what he's there to do. It was neat.

We also had zone conference this week, and some elders made a video about how to make good videos, with a catchy acronym, "MEME" for good videos and "BOT" for bad ones. I don't remember what the acronym stood for, and tbh, I don't really have time to find it and write it down (I'm writing this in the back of the Beast as we drop off the OSU Spanish elders back at their apartment). But anyway, apparently the video has been sent to the general authorities in Salt Lake because they want to see it, probably to get some ideas as to how they can train missionaries or something. I'm a little jealous of that, because I feel like Elder Timothy and I could have made some good videos explaining basically the same principles, and I had some good ideas for that, but we never did them. But what they made was good and accomplished its purpose, and it did it in a good way, so it might be best that they were the ones to create those guidelines and instructions.

What else happened? Oh, man, we have a huge opportunity now with service.

OK, so the temple engineer called us and asked us if we could help him move some furniture. He was looking for about 4 companionships to come and help for about 5 hours on one day and then another 4-5 to help for another period of time for 2-3 days in August. Well, he called us again today and told us the Columbus Temple is on its way into Phase 2, and he needs some more help: He needs people to come and help sanitize between own endowment sessions, because there are several people who need to get them done in the coming weeks, including (get this) several missionaries! Because the temples have been closed, many missionaries have been sent into the field without first receiving their endowment. So they want a missionary companionship there during four three-hour shifts every day for 6 days for the next three weeks, so we just scheduled out all that service.

I typed out a bunch of stuff while I wasn't looking at my phone when we were driving home, and it turns out that none of it got recorded because of reasons. So I guess I'll just say the quote's from Rafiki in The Lion King. I've been realizing a lot of things about my missionary service, and it's mostly that it's blessed me a lot in a lot of ways, partially because I've been able to distinguish between traits that I have and what makes me, me. I've met a lot of companions who are very much like me, with just a thing or two added or subtracted, and it's helped me realize that I am not my traits and that agency is a real thing--the things we choose to do really do have an impact on who we become, and the fact that we can choose has a much greater impact on our life than we sometimes let it. There are so many ways you can really exercise your agency to make your life better, so use them. 

Listen to the talk "The Belief Window" by Hyrum Smith, and think about how you can apply those principles in your life. You can watch your life change.

Gotta go. Love you!

Elder Davis

Elder Lyman and I picked up trash at the institute building. He was the other training visit I forgot.

There was a massive rainstorm. I thought we were in a hurricane for a second.

Wanna watch the last Book of Mormon video? It's hidden in your Gospel Library. Elder Jones found it.