Week 91 - "Two hundred and fifty?! You're crazy. You oughta be locked up. You, too!"
Hey, everyone!
This week's quote is from Steve McQueen's Captain Hilts in The Great Escape. I guess there's a couple reasons it works. It's in the context of Hilts asking Roger (and I think Mack) about how many people they're planning on getting out of the camp through the tunnels they'll be building. It's a bit of an overwhelming job to accomplish, and overwhelmed is one of the ways I've been feeling in the past few days. Also, we received news two or three weeks ago that we were going to be bringing the total number of missionaries in the mission up to 250 this transfer. I think that number has decreased since, but we had a big influx this past transfer, I think, and we're going to have more in the next few weeks. There are going to be a lot of people training. Hopefully I'm not one of them, because I have plans for what Elder Washburn and I are going to do in the next few weeks, and ideally we'll be able to extend those plans into future transfers. I hope we get to stay together. He's a goober--he makes a bunch of jokes that are either groaners or just jokes he's made over and over again, and as he puts it, he thinks he's so funny. Honestly, that's a good thing. I told him if he's ever stranded on a desert island by himself--endless entertainment. He also runs pretty deep, though. I know he's dealt with some difficult challenges in his life, and he understands a LOT about the scriptures. He has way more familiarity with the Old Testament than I do. He's a great companion, and I'm sure I'm more than a little bit of a burden at times, so he's been super helpful and awesome. He knows how to put his head down and work, too, even in this nontraditional style of missionary work.
On that subject, our focus when it comes to missionary work has been expanded and intensified over the past week or two: The stake president over our stake, President Connor, is very excited and enthusiastic about all the possibilities of doing missionary work through social media, so he's actually had the different congregations create their own individual pages to move the work forward in their areas, and he's asked us to do a lot of things to facilitate that. For instance, he wanted to know the different area boundaries for the different pages so they could focus their advertising on those areas. So we figured that out, mostly by using zip codes, which took a pretty long time to work out. It seemed like the best way to delineate the boundaries, though. So we got that done, and then now President Connor wants us to be gathering data on how many people have been found by missionaries using Facebook in our mission and so forth. In addition to that, I've had a fair few ideas for videos and series that I would like to make, but there's also an urgent need, it seems, to give missionaries direction on how to use social media and create content and so forth, so right now we're in the process of making some videos to explain how to make content and how to come up with good ideas and stuff. So that's what we've been up to lately, and even though it doesn't feel physically exhausting, it's kind of a drain mentally. I also need to reestablish my schedule, because I'm TIRED. I just stopped in the middle of this email and went and napped for two hours, and I'm still tired. There are things I usually do to prepare for bed that help me sleep better, and I haven't been doing them--I think i've just been really focused on the work and so forth, and sometimes that results in us skipping parts of the day (like companion study, which we were sort of rebuked for at zone conference this week--someone gave a training, and we were like, "Whoops") or just getting back kind of late, and then I don't take time to do those things. I'm out of the habit. I'm realizing what a significant difference a routine makes. I'm also remembering what a significant difference getting proper rest makes. I feel much more sane now than I did when I started writing this email.
Anyway--sorry, that was just on my mind, so I felt like I needed to get it out. This week we also, like I said, had zone conference. We had it in person, and everyone was relatively socially distanced, but not, like, a lot. I'm not sure what the requirements are right now, so. *shrug* It was in Kirtland, and we had a fun drive up there with the zone leaders (we carpooled, because obviously that made the most sense). On our way back we passed by the temple. At zone conference we got to give a little training on how to quickly make content, which was helpful, because it involved having people get out their phones and make some content for the page. It seems like most people don't really do that or want to do that for some reason. We're trying not to force people but simply show them that they can do it, and that it's easy. So we may just send out a message every once in a while and ask people to take 15 minutes during the day and create some quick posts that we can use. Like I said, we're trying to make training videos to help people come up with ideas, and we're going to make some videos to help people with specific techniques that will help them make good stuff, so I think we're holding off a little on asking them to make video content until we can show them how to make it well. Quick posts basically just involve going to the gospel media website, selecting an image that resonates with you and discusses a principle you have a testimony of, then making a caption that is personal and testifies of it and invites the reader to do something, like share something about themselves or contact us or do something. It doesn't take a lot of time, and the posts that can result can be surprisingly effective.
This week we also had a cool opportunity to go serve at a St. Vincent de Paul Society place and make meals for the homeless. Most of the food was already made, but Elder Washburn and I used our considerable* knife skills to cut up some meat--they had a bunch of packages of partially frozen meat, and the woman who was running the kitchen just had us take all the different kinds and essentially cube it, and then she cooked it in a tray for a bit, drained the myoglobin and water and fat that resulted, added some spices and mixed them in, and cooked it the rest of the way. It was interesting to see what goes into making a bunch of food for a crowd. We've been invited to come help on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and we helped for about 4.5 hours, and I think they liked having us there. Elder Washburn and I just tried to jump in and do what needed to be done (honestly, it felt good--being able to do something different and serve feels super good), like they had a bunch of different kinds of food in big, clear, plastic trays with lids that they took out of the industrial, walk-in fridges and put into metal trays for cooking, and they needed to clean the plastic trays, so we took care of that and just kept everything moving, which actually helped a lot, and then we helped with the meat, like we said, and then they fed us some eggs and bacon and toast they had cooked up (which was tasty), and then they started assembling the meals, and we took them up to the front door, where they were being served. Basically they just took those styrofoam food containers with the different compartments and filled them with different kinds of food (Wednesday is a potluck day, which is why they had so many different plastic trays with so many different kinds of food), and then they put them in plastic bags, tied them off, and put them on a table next to the double doors of the church we were in. Then someone stood there and distributed them. The problem was that people were coming SUPER fast. I guess they put word out that they were feeding people for free, and a LOT of people started coming. We probably fed over 250 people. Normally they're able to fill these carts with about 18 meals, walk them out of the serving area and take them up on the table, and then fill them with another 18, and so on, but people were coming super fast, so I was just taking two at a time as they made them and literally running them to the table. There were points where there was a line of 8 or 10 people, and we didn't have anything made. Eventually the other volunteers realized that we were telling the truth when we said that there were a lot of people (and Elder Washburn just went ahead and took some of their spots and worked faster), and they started hurrying. They had a limited amount of styrofoam containers, and by four minutes to closing time, there were no more lines, and there was only one left. Then someone came and got that one, and that was it. So it was crazy. It was awesome, though. All of us who are serving in the Youngstown area (the zone leaders, Elder Day and Elder Grayson; ourselves; and the Spanish/YSU elders, Elder Douglass and Elder Magleby) are going to try to serve there at some point this week. We'll probably each take a day. The Spirit was super strong while we were there. I think I want to find a St. Vincent de Paul society location when I get home and just help out. Or something. I guess the need to feed the homeless and people in poverty is a lot bigger out here, at least from what I've seen as I've been a missionary versus what I've seen back home. Either Idaho's better off, or I just haven't seen the shadier parts of Idaho Falls and Rexburg. There was an illustration they had in the serving area that was called , "The Jesus of the Bread Lines" or something like that, and it was sort of just silhouettes of different individuals dealing with homelessness or poverty in a bread line, and then right in the center of the line, a silhouette of a bearded man with a halo around his head. It was cool. I'm going to have to take a picture when we get back, but my phone died while we were there. It felt good to do something practical to try and help. Elder Washburn and I have been listening to Bapa's Presidents of the Church lecture series (which he likes to do--he's probably one of two or three companions I've had who are actually down to listen to something like that), and today when we listened to it, he was talking about Ezra Taft Benson, who apparently said, "There is more salvation in wheat than in high-flung theology" or something like that. I feel like we've gotten away from that. I feel like we could each do a lot better with helping those in need. Earlier there was another president of the church who gave money to the Salvation Army. When he was asked why, he said, "Because they get some that we miss." We could do more to fulfill that mission of the church of helping the poor. If you disagree, I'd politely invite you to read Mosiah 4 this week.
What else has happened? Oh, Elder Day and Elder Grayson went on a training visit and got two Carolina Reapers, and they each ate half of one, and... Well, it was pretty bad. We should have gotten some ice cream or something for them beforehand. They exhausted their chocolate milk, and then Elder Day just started drinking milk straight from the gallon and Elder Grayson just ran his mouth under the sink. Reapers are no joke. I'm not sure what they're going to do with the other one.
We also visited the Palkos again, and that was good. We're going to start doing the missionary lessons with Samantha again, and Bailey will be there, and hopefully Nathan and Ashley will be, too. I want all of them to be happier.
I'm sure there's more, but I'm running a bit short on time. I'll stop there. I'll try not to crash for two hours next preparation day so I have more time to write.
Love you! Be safe, and have a good week.
Elder Davis
P. S. We made a cool video. We took audio from a video of the prophets and apostles quoting excerpts from "The Living Christ" and put them over some clips from the Bible Videos. Here it is on Facebook: https://www.
and here it is on Instagram:
Go and give it some love? Thanks!
*not considerable
Saw this in a missionary's memes. I guess I jump between lawful neutral and chaotic neutral most of the time.
We're growing plants for a video idea the sisters had, and my turnips have sprouted!
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