Week 89 - "These lights are just sucking the life force out of me! Suck-suck-suck-suck!"
Hey, everyone!
The quote this week is from Tom Hanks' Joe in Joe Versus the Volcano. I'm feeling pretty drained. I've also spent a lot of time in front of my computer, but I don't think the two are related. I guess we'll see next week. The quote kinda works. I keep having quotes come to mind in the middle of the week, and I forget to write them down, so there was probably a better one for this week that I just don't remember.
So hopefully you'll be able to forgive me if I don't make much sense or this email is kind of disorganized--I'm feeling kind of fried. We got up this morning and played ultimate frisbee with another set of elders, and I definitely haven't been doing enough cardio lately. I feel kind of worn out,. We also sort of went all over the place today, and the past four days or so have been crazy busy, so I'm just chilling on the recliner at the apartment right now. I'm beat. Anyway, all that is to say that I hope this email is comprehensible.
So Elder Washburn and I are getting along fine and getting along well with the zone leaders, who we're sharing an apartment with. It seems like we're all here to get work done, and we're all trying to accomplish all we can with what we have. To give you a breakdown of the elders, Elder Washburn, my companion, is from Maryland originally, but now his family lives in Utah. He graduated from high school a year early and attended a year of college at Southern Virginia University. Like me, he loves learning things and isn't sure what he wants to study or go into. He's pretty awesome. He's a very smart person, too, and has great ideas for the social media stuff. Elder Day came out the same transfer I did. To be honest, we haven't had a ton of time to get to know him or Elder Grayson, but I know he ran cross country in high school (like me) and had a 5K PR of something in the mid-17s (unlike me). He's from Utah and seems like a really cool, genuine person. So does Elder Grayson. Elder Grayson comes from California, if I remember correctly. He was originally serving in a Spanish-speaking mission. He seems super cool. We're also often around the other elders in our area, Elder Magleby and Elder Douglass, who are both reassigned. Elder Douglass served in Chihuahua, actually, before he came here. So that's pretty awesome. I think Elder Grayson served in Mexico, too, in a mission close by. So anyway, it's a party.
On transfer day I was able to see Elders Ciminski and Hoffman one last time before I left, because we all went to go and grab the Spanish elders' stuff from their apartment and haul it over to the OSU 2 Elders' apartment, because they were going to be moving to an apartment in the same complex, which is a huge blessing--the apartment they were in was in a basement, and the cell signal was awful, and the WiFi was worse. So they were not in a very good place. But now they're in a better location and have better WiFi, so that's awesome. Anyway, we went and got all their stuff, took it over to OSU 2's apartment, and then said goodbye. I hope I get to see those elders again before my mission is over. I should be seeing Elder Hoffman again, considering we're slated to go home together, but we'll see if I get the chance to serve around Elder Ciminski again. So we piled into the van and headed to transfers. There we met Elder Jones and Elder Wallentine, and Elder Jones and Elder Timothy got together (Elder Jones is the new zone leader on OSU), and I waited for my companion, who was coming from Lewis Center. I palled around with the Assistants for a bit and went with them over to the office across the street to grab something, and then I just spent some time with a few other missionaries. I saw a lot of familiar faces. Elder Wiggins, Elder Lambert (my MTC comp.), Elder Yukihiro, Elder Heil (that was good to see him again--he says work's going well in Cambridge), Elder Schreiter, and Elder Guzman were all there. It was good to see everyone. And then Elder Washburn and I got together, got all our stuff loaded, got an apartment key from the zone leaders, and took off to Youngstown. The drive takes about 3 hours and 20 minutes, so we had a lot of time to just talk. It was cool to get to know each other. I talked A LOT, which I apologized for, but he said it was great to have someone who he could just listen to. He's a super nice person. So we got to the apartment, and at first we couldn't find it, but after calling the zone leaders, we finally found out where it was, and we took our stuff up, unpacked and settled in and waited for them to return. They were moving a bed from one apartment to another, I think.
The next day we went to the church and started using the family history center for our work. Elder Day and Elder Grayson (and Elders Douglass and Magleby), mostly Elder Day, were editing together a music video that they had spent a lot of time making, and they were getting ready to post it to the page soon. They showed it to us, and we were super excited about it.It looked super good. We ended up helping them with it a tiny bit (I made some adjustments to some of the tone in a few of the shots), and over the next few days they finished it up and got it rendered, and then we posted it to the page, and it's done awesome. It's already at over 11K reached (meaning it has passed by someone's eyes in a news feed over 11 thousand times), and has a ton of views, and over 105 shares. People are really enjoying it and sharing it all over the place. It feels good to see quality content like that get made and then be successful. We haven't seen anyone contact the page because of it or anything yet, but we haven't used any funds to specifically put it in front of the people here in our area yet, though I'm sure it's reached some people here.
In addition, Elder Washburn and I have been setting goals and making plans for the page, trying to see what we can do to make it more successful and to help missionaries have more confidence and get more involved. And I think we have some solid plans made. We'll see how they play out in the next few weeks. But either way, the page is super successful since that video dropped. It's been going super well.
In other news, at transfers President Horgesheimer asked me and Elder Washburn to approach President Connor (our stake president, who's SUPER all in on this whole social media thing and trying to back it as much as he can) and let him know that we are his guys and that we're there to help. So we did that when we got here, and he has a plan to have every congregation in the stake have their own page like this one that we have for the zone, and so we spent some time Saturday helping members of the wards set up those pages and starting to create ways for them to help them post things on those pages. We also spent a fair amount of time making sure our videos on our page could be "crossposted" to other pages in the mission, which has been cool. We'll probably spend a fair amount of time trying to get those more set up and established over the course of this week. There's actually a lot for us to do, and we're trying to do it as quickly and diligently as we can. It's nice to be busy, though, and nice to know that we can be busy trying to accomplish things on technology.
On Sunday we had some interesting meetings. President Connor had us involved in a meeting talking about these new pages and how they can be used, and then we had ward council. There are a few people who are really losing some hope right now. A lot of people haven't been reached out to by their ministers--people just haven't been doing their jobs--and they don't really feel connected. They probably don't feel like anyone cares. If you haven't reached out to your ministering assignments, I'd implore you to do so. I don't know if you can really understand how much people need to know they're cared about right now.
Anyhow, later that day we visited the bishop in person (with masks, of course), and we were able to get to know him a little better. We asked what we could do to help him, and he basically just said that we should stay faithful after our missions were over.
Today we got up and went and played ultimate frisbee, and like I said, I'm beat. It feels good, but I'm going to sleep pretty soundly tonight. We also went and had one of the better experiences of my mission: So after we went shopping and brought everything back to the apartment, Elder Washburn and I decided to do our proselyting hours, and we went and dropped by the Palkos. Do you remember the Palkos, from Warren? We drove down their street, and we weren't sure which house was theirs, but we saw some kids playing in the street, and we went to the end of the street and turned around, and then I saw a little blonde girl riding down the street on a bike, and I wondered if it was one of their kids, and it was! As we drove by her to get to a parking spot, we waved, and she waved at us excitedly. She saw us coming and rushed back home. When we got out of the car, she was like, "Hey, elders! I'm going to go get mommy." Then her little sister came out and ran up and gave us both hugs. Nathan came out for a second and said hi, and then we went around back to a little table covered with a canopy and sat and talked. We were there for almost two hours. Eventually Samantha came out as well, and then I also found out that Ashley, from Warren and Cambridge, was visiting them as well! She joked that I was following her, and when she came out, I said something about not meaning to be stalking her, and she wasl ike, "It's not stalking. It's just God asking me how many times he has to tell me to do this before I'll actually do it," or something like that, and then she was like, "Just a couple more." :) it was good to see them all again. I told them how much time I had left and everything, and they were excited for me, but I made sure they knew I was coming back. It's been hard for them recently being disconnected, with the pandemic and everything happening. Sam expressed a desire to be back at church. She said she's still doing things to come closer to God, but she feels distant. When we were getting ready to leave, she was the one who asked for the return appointment, so we set up a time to go by Thursday. I'm excited to see them again. It did my soul good to see them and talk to them. They're experiencing things in their lives that are much betterthan what they were experiencing before, and it seems like they're on the up and up. It was just good to spend time with them again.
Last thing: I've been really wanting a telephoto lens for the camera that Emma loaned me (I'd love to get something I could use for the rest of my mission, and then give it back to her with the rest of the stuff she loaned me, like as a gift in return). There's a camera store around here, so I asked Elder Washburn if we could go, and earlier this afternoon, we dropped by to see if they had anything that would work. They had a used Tamron AF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 LD TELE-MACRO lens with a Canon mount, and they were selling it for $79. I felt like that was a pretty good deal, so I went ahead and bought it. It looks like a pretty good lens so far. It's a little older, so it may take a little finagling, but the alternative probably would have been something new in the range of $500-1000. So I'm pretty happy with it.
As far as inspiration, I just want to say that I've been reading Saints Vol. 2 recently, and I'm almost done, and holy cow, there's a lot of great stuff in there. There are some things I've read that have been very inspiring to me--wisdom from those people that they recorded that I want to apply in my own life. If you haven't looked into those books yet, do. They're very easy to read and will edify you.
My missionary talk this week is going to be "The Gift of the Holy Ghost: A Sure Compass" by James E. Faust. I haven't had time to write a post for it yet, but it was super good. Check it out.
Love you all!
Elder Davis.
P.S. If you want to watch the video we posted (please do--and if you have a Facebook, please share it!), you can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/
The camera with the new lens.
My apartment (and the view from it) (6)
Elder Timothy and I.
Elder Ciminski needed to borrow a long-sleeved white shirt for the temple on Wednesday, so I gave him mine. He said he felt like Zorro with how much room he had. I tried to put his shirt on, and this was the result.
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