Week 88 - "I can do this. This is something I'm good at."
Hi, everyone!
This week's quote is from Shia LaBeouf's Francis Ouimet in "The Greatest Game Ever Played." His father objects to his wanting to play golf because he feels it isn't an honorable profession, but Francis feels this is something he could make a life out of.
By the way, I realized after I sent it that I didn't give any context for my quote from last week. It was from God (I don't know who voiced him) in "The Prince of Egypt," which obviously got it from Exodus. If you're not familiar with the Bible story, God says it when Moses finds the burning bush that God speaks to him out of.
So this week has been pretty good. Things have all started to sort of blend together, and now that transfers are around the corner, it's really starting to occur to me just how little time I have left. Three transfers. 18 weeks. Four and a half months. That's it. And this transfer felt like it went by in about two or three weeks. I got my transfer news yesterdat (I'm moving, by the way, but I'll talk a little more about that later in the email), and last night before 10:30 I just sort of lay in my bed contemplating the last 20 months or so and the time that I had left ahead of me.
Kip Hartvigsen gave me some solid counsel before I left, and I think I've talked about it in previous emails. He told me that when he has to do something hard or has decided to do something hard, he says to himself, "Well, you're doing this. You might as well enjoy it." He also counseled me, "Don't wish today away." Those were important things for me to keep in mind throughout my mission experience. I feel like the things that have happened to me and the ways I've had to adapt have chiseled those lessons into my mind. For instance, we OSU elders were at the institute building yesterday and had a really interesting conversation about the two different kinds of missionary work we're sort of balancing between right now: the traditional kind and this new way of using social media to do missionary work. Two of the elders at OSU don't see any value in social media work, one of us doesn't value traditional missionary work but is warming up to it, and the rest of us are somewhere in the middle. It was interesting to be part of a conversation about those different perspectives: What I noticed was that at the root, I think, of the different attitudes was our perception of situations where the outcome was uncertain or not immediately perceptible. And in social media, that applies to nearly everything we do. We're not watching people react when we communicate with them because we're creating content and then sort of sending it out into the ether. As a result, all we can do is really guess about what's going to happen or what is happening, and that guess has an impact on our attitude. For instance, one elder talked about how as soon as he shares a post on social media to a Christian group, what's probably going to happen is that he's just going to be annoying people, who are going to think badly about missionaries in the future. Also, he talked about creating a video and posting it, and said that depending on the way he makes it, people are either going to react by just scrolling past it out of boredom, disgust or disinterest after seeing that he's a missionary, or they're going to just watch it because it's funny and not get any spiritual edification out of it. I don't see social media work the same way. When I think of posts being created, I have hope that people are seeing them and benefiting from them, even if we haven't seen a great deal of them reach out to the page.
In the past when I have struggled with street contacting or tracting, my perception has been that if I interrupt people in what they're doing, they'll walk away with a bad impression of missionaries, or if I give someone a card or another piece of commissary, they're probably just going to throw it away when they leave or lose it: They won't reach out to contact me. But that's not the perception of missionaries who like doing that kind of work: The way they see it, there is some hope after every interaction they walk away from that the person they spoke to will reach out to them or at least enjoyed the conversation they had and will benefit from what they learned.
The reason all this is relevant is that to me, at the root of the first philosophy of "You might as well enjoy it" is the realization that you can decide to by happy about something. I haven't found that it's as simple as just saying, "I'm going to be happy"--instead, it takes pondering on a situation and looking for the good, looking for things to be happy about, and then choosing to focus on those things and be happy about them. When things are uncertain, you can choose to be optimistic: You can choose to think that things will end up going very well and have hope that it will be so. This is especially applicable in missionary work, because there are so many unknowns in what we do. We plant so many seeds, and we really don't know what happens to them later on. But we can choose to think that those seeds we plant are benefiting others. We can choose optimism. I don't know if when a calamity arose in my life I could just say, "Oh, wow! A disaster! I'm going to be happy about it!" But if I were to experience a disaster, I might ponder and think about the good things it produced. If nothing else, I could find joy and happiness in the fact that I would grow from it.
That's one thing I may cherish the very most about my mission experience: I have grown. I've grown a lot. There are ways I'm realizing I still am not where I want to be, ways in which I want to grow more while I'm out here, while I have the opportunity, but I have grown so much spiritually. I have experienced things that to me were very challenging, and my spirit has been stretched so that I can deal with those things, like weight training changes your body so your muscles can move more mass. As hard as it has been, that has been a huge blessing. And I don't see the challenges I've undergone as huge difficulties--I'm sure that most of them are things other people would have no problems dealing with. But they were difficult for me, and now I've grown so I can cope with them. I think that's more important to me than anything else. I can do more now.
Anyhow, I guess I wanted to get the deep philosophical stuff out here at the front of the email. I can talk a little more about the week now and so forth. So I've been reassigned to a new area and a new responsibility: I'm being shipped back north, to the Youngstown Stake, and I'll be serving in the area of Youngstown as one of the mission's social media specialists. I sort of requested that during an interview with President this last week. And we had had a training visit with the Assistants before that where Elder Foster sort of asked why I wasn't serving as a social media specialist, and I was like, "I don't know." He suggested that maybe that we be a good position for me to serve in. I suggested to President that that was something I feel like I could really help with, that when it comes to social media I feel like I know what I'm doing, but I tried to communicate that if that wasn't where the Lord wanted me to be, I would take whatever assignment he needed me to take. This is President Horgesheimer's first transfer, so hopefully he's conducting transfers under inspiration, which would mean that I guess this is where the Lord wants me to be.
There are also some people who used to live in Warren who moved to the Youngstown area, some members, so maybe I'll be able to visit them! I'll certainly be able to talk to and minister to them. That's pretty awesome and exciting.
Elder Timothy and I served in the temple together for the first time this week, and that was pretty cool and interesting. It was kind of surreal, to be honest. I've been reading a lot of Saints, and it's made me think about what people are going to write about this time in church history. I'm going to write a little more in my journal about what it was like and how it felt.
What else has been going on? I can't really think of anything at the moment. Oh, yeah: One cool thing that happened was that we took a remote tour of Temple Square with Nohemi! It was pretty neat to kind of be able to "tour" the tabernacle and assembly hall and visitor's center. I'd like for her to tour Nauvoo or Kirtland, though. Elder Timothy may be inviting another person we're teaching to go on a tour as well.
That's basically the highlights. The talk I shared this week is called "A Teacher Come from God." It's by Elder Holland, so obviously it's super good. Here's what I posted on Facebook:
This week's talk is from Elder Holland and is called, "A Teacher Come from God." He emphasizes many things, but I think among the most significant that struck me is that teaching is not something restricted to those called to teach, but guidance from the Spirit can allow us to teach and testify of principles very crucial for others in a time of their need. It's important for us to do the things that keep us close to the Spirit so we can be a messenger when others need it.
I hope you all have a great week! I'll write again soon. Oh, yeah, by the way, I'll be in an apartment with the zone leaders, Elder Day and Elder Grayson, and my new companion's name is Elder Washburn. The apartment we'll be living in is on the ninth story of the complex, so it's pretty sweet. Also, Elder Tyson Jones is replacing me as a zone leader on OSU. He and Elder Timothy are going to have a blast.
Love you all! I hope you have a good day.
Just Elder Timothy and I walking outside. Sorry--I don't have a lot of pictures from this week.
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