Week 93 - "My word is my bond." "Yeah, JUNK bond..."

Hey, everyone!

The quote this week is from Robin Williams' Peter Banning and his son, Jack (who's played by an actor I can't remember the name of) in Hook.

The reason for the quote is that we had an AWESOME Sunday devotional last night: So President has been doing these weekly devotionals where he invites guests to speak to us. Basically it's people he and Sister Horgesheimer know who are motivational speakers, and they join a mission-wide Zoom call and talk to us about their experiences in the gospel and the scriptures and things that they've learned and so forth. Last night the guest speaker was Brit Covey, who's a football player for U of U. He spoke about something I thought was fascinating: He talked about how whenever things got really challenging when he was serving a mission he would basically pray and tell the Lord, "OK, Lord, I'm not going to go back inside or finish working tonight until _________ [we find someone to teach, we talk to ten more people, etc.]," and then, because he gave his word, he would do it. He said that it made it so that the Lord could depend on him, and they both knew it, so when he said he would do something, the Lord knew hew would do it, and the Lord would give him opportunities for missionary work as a result. It was profound to me that once he told the Lord he was going to do it, once he gave his word, he had the motivation and the drive to follow it through. That's something I want to start implementing in my missionary work and in my life. I've noticed that since we've been doing a lot of missionary work inside now, especially as a social media specialist, I've been saying fewer prayers--I don't ask for the Lord's help nearly as much, probably because I think I know what I'm doing--and the result is that I've been feeling pretty stagnant. That has been sapping some of my drive as well. And I feel like I don't promise the Lord I'll do things nearly often enough. I don't make commitments to Him nearly often enough. When Brother Covey talked about those things it seemed like the solution to some of these stagnation issues I've been dealing with, so I want to implement it, and I'm going to. There. I give you all my word. We missionaries do a lot of committing other people to do things, but we aren't committed by others super often. I guess we can commit ourselves through prayer.

OK, so in other news, we had in-person church this week for the first time in a long time. It was really interesting. Very sterile. It felt somewhat strange. There weren't a lot of people there, which was kind of a letdown. I wonder if this whole COVID thing has served as a separation of the wheat and the tares. Or maybe I'm just not optimistic enough.

We also moved. That just happened yesterday. We swapped apartments with some of the other elders because it made more sense for them to be where we were, in downtown Youngstown. Hopefully we don't get transferred and have to move again in a week or so. On the topic of transfers, apparently we'll have a lot of missionaries coming in. They say that every time, and it usually doesn't end up being as many as they predict for some reason, but maybe it will be different this time.

What else... We've been working on more videos for our zone to teach them about making content. We're hopefully going to get our side of the area back up and running a lot better this week, because we definitely haven't been paying enough attention to it... 

I finished reading Deuteronomy recently, which felt good, and I'm in Joshua right now, right in the chapters where all the inheritances of Israel are described, but I'm determined to read the whole thing, so I'm going to plow through it as best I can.

We also met a young man on YSU campus a few days ago and taught him a little. He's really not familiar with Christianity as a whole, so we thought we could start by simply teaching him about who Jesus Christ is. We've asked him to read some chapters in the Bible and maybe watch some of the Bible videos, and we're going to talk with him again this week. So we'll be teaching someone new! And he seems solid. He seems like he's really going to absorb what we teach and our testimonies and benefit from them. I hope we're able to help him develop his relationship with Christ.

Hmm, what else... Honestly, that's kind of it off the top of my head. Hang on... Yeah, I mean, that's kind of it. We've spent a lot of time this week making and editing instructional videos, so, I don't have a lot to report. That makes it sound like we haven't done a lot, which makes me feel kind of bummed. I really feel like these will help missionaries and members, and I feel like we're supposed to do them, but I do a lot of wondering about whether it's worth the time investment. It's a lot of investment for not a lot of visible payoff in the immediate future, but I really feel like they will help people.

I guess that's it for this week. I'm sorry--I've been kind of busy and don't have a missionary talk, and it looks like I've forgotten to post one on Facebook for the past few weeks. I'll study one this week and have one ready for you next week. 

By the way, you won't hear from me until Wednesday, because it will be transfers next week. Talk to you then!

Elder Davis

Oh, yeah, I neglected to mention: Elder Day was looking out the window of the apartment a few nights ago and looked over at the parking structure opposite us across the street and was like, "There's a DeLorean up there." So we moseyed on over and took some pictures. That's my first time seeing one in person. It was pretty cool. Elder Day's supposed to send me some of the pictures I took on his phone, so hopefully there will be more next week.