Week 94 - "You... go... to... sleep!" *snoring noises*

Hello, everyone!

The quote's from John Goodman's Sully in Monsters Inc. I was trying to think of something that had to do with this week, and I thought of that moment where he says this, and then Boo chuckles a little and then just zonks out. We've been going pretty hard, and this is one of those weeks where preparation day came a few days later than usual, and in the past 36 hours I've probably napped for about 5 or 6.

Well, I'm staying in Youngstown as a social media specialist, and Elder Washburn and I are staying together! There are a lot of great things about that. I love being Elder Washburn's companion, I've loved serving in Youngstown, and I've loved being a Social Media Specialist, but I'm also a little unsure about how we're going to spend our time this transfer. We as a mission were recently told by President Horgesheimer that considering we're still in Phase 1 we're actually not supposed to be going out and doing street contacting and so forth. If we're in a context where someone asks a question, we can answer it, but we're not supposed to be actively trying to find out on the streets. I think that took a lot of wind out of missionaries' sails, but that's OK with me. I feel like the tools we have and have been encouraged to use aren't tools that we've really adequately explored. There's a lot of potential there that we haven't mined. Area Book, member work, and social media are now our primary sources of finding, maybe our only ones. 

On that topic, over the last transfer Elder Washburn and I have been trying to make fun, engaging, interesting videos to teach missionaries principles about making content for social media. We just did the final filming for a 12-part series about it today, and we'll edit those last videos together tomorrow. We also thought of an additional 13th video we want to make, so hopefully we'll get that done sometime. We've felt like missionaries would not respond to training if it was not mingled with some entertainment and humor, and so far it seems like it's been helping a little. We've been getting higher quality stuff back from missionaries to put on their pages, and we're going to check with them to ask if the videos have had any effect. We've also sent them to President Horgesheimer and suggested that they might be helpful for other missionaries in the mission. They're certainly not perfect, and given more time we probably could have made them better, but they're what we felt we could and should do. I'm praying they help missionaries redirect their energies to these new types of missionary work.

That's really been the majority of our focus, especially this last week and a half. I think we pumped out 4 or 5 training videos in that time, and we've got these two more coming out in the next few days. In other news, we've been getting a ton of referrals from comeuntochrist.org, and most of them haven't responded to texts or calls. We got two from one lady, so after having texted her once one or two days before, we texted her again, and she responded, and we were like, "We got a request from you for a missionary visit. When would you like to meet?" And she was like, "I'm Pentecostal, so I'm not interested, thanks." And we were like... "?" We're not sure how some of these things end up in our inbox. It's like, did you not realize what you were doing when you signed up? Why did you sign up more than once, on two different days? Did someone else sign you up? What's going on?

BUT we did get ONE that responded to a text almost IMMEDIATELY, and we set up a time to meet! So that was awesome! We'll have to figure out a third male, though. Oof. Maybe we'll just snag a pair of the other Youngstown missionaries. I'm sure they'd love to come along to a teaching appointment. Which reminds me, in other transfer news, our district is only changing in one way: Elder Day is headed back down south to Polaris, and he's being replaced by one Elder Bohn, who seems like a cool guy. Also, he, Elder Hoffman, Elder Lambert and I only have twelve weeks left. Goodness. Now that I'm there, and now that I'm in a position where I feel I'm really being useful, I'm kind of like, "Can I extend?" I don't want all this to end that fast. It's coming up super quick now. If this transfer goes by as fast as the last one did, it's going to feel like I'm coming home in three weeks. That makes me sad. I feel like I've grown a lot as a missionary. I'm sure that I'm going to continue to grow and learn a lot in life outside of full-time missionary work, and I can continue to serve others and to be a missionary, but it's the end of an era, and I don't like that feeling.

I don't know if I could ever explain all this to my pre-mission self. I don't know if I could help him understand what all this would do and how it would all feel and what he would gain and what he would lose. I guess I'd just tell him that he'd be able to find answers to questions that bother him--questions that he's never really been able to articulate. I'd also tell him that there are holes in his life that would be filled in hugely significant ways. He would realize some of the things that he was really, truly missing. He would realize how to find fulfillment. He would realize what would make him actually happy. I hope he would listen. I guess he did.

There was an awesome missionary, Elder Sam Collier, who once told me that that famous verse in Mosiah 18:30 was how I would come to see my mission. It says, "And now it came to pass that all this was done in Mormon, yea, by the waters of Mormon, in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon; yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer; yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever." I don't know if I ever honestly thought I would look at Ohio with fondness, that I would come to love my time here, but I sometimes imagine coming back to visit, and that would bring back a flood of memories of good and deep and important things that happened to me here. I now regret the amount of days I have let myself go without recording some of those experiences. I remember one that happened just a few days ago--so I've had a lot of concerns about how we've been spending our time. It's entirely different from most missionary work, and yet we felt it was the most logical step and the most effective way to improve the quality of missionary work in our zone. I've spent a lot of time feeling badly about it simply because it's different and have essentially asked for reassurance from Elder Washburn and from the other elders. But then we had a social media specialists meeting for the specialists in the North America Northeast Area, and the people leading the meeting literally stated ALL OF THE MAIN CONCEPTS in the first FOUR VIDEOS THAT WE MADE and emphasized their importance. It was at that point that I was like, "Yeah. We're doing the right thing." They were like, "Yeah, it's so important to focus on faith, and faith in Jesus Christ especially," and "You know, considering that these messages are being directed toward non-members of the church is vital," and "The key thing, the most important thing for you missionaries is to focus on your purpose," and "Helping people to come closer to Christ is what you want to be doing." Those aren't their words verbatim, but that's essentially what they said, and those are the four things that were the focus of our first four videos. Again, they probably could have been taught more eloquently, but the principles are there. And again, we've seen better content from the missionaries since we made the videos. Whether that's correlation or causation remains to be seen, but until I find out I'll choose to think that it's the latter.

In other news, we've still been volunteering weekly at the St. Vincent de Paul society place, and we've formed a lot of good friendships with the people who are there, and when we told them we might be leaving this week (we told them there was a possibility, but that we didn't know yet--we only found out last night that we were staying, and we were helping there yesterday morning), they seemed super bummed. They were like, "We love having you here. You're really great workers, and you bring something--you have a great attitude," sort of a thing. That felt really good to know we've had an impact, and it will be great to go back next week, and be like, "We stayed! We're still here!" It feels good to just serve. It feels good to show people instead of telling them. "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."

There's one other thing I wanted to talk about. I was writing about this in my study journal and felt like I should share it. So when I was serving in Delaware I decided I was going to study each of the 42 points, one every day, and go through all the material in Preach My Gospel (and later the church's pamphlets) about them. I just finished all of the lessons in Preach My Gospel. I went through and wrote down tiny summaries of the verses next to the scripture references so when I'm going through Preach My Gospel I can just look at the references and get a sense for what they say. I've also written in my study journal what I feel is the most significant about what is discussed in Preach My Gospel. Anyway, the other day I read the second to last point, "Teaching and Learning in the Church," and learned some things that helped answer a question I've had for a long time. First, a summary of highlights from PMG:
The Church is organized to perfect and bless the lives of its members. It gives us opportunities to teach, fellowship, serve and support one another in our quest for salvation.

To me, that last sentence is the purpose of the church as an organization. And in my opinion, if we're straying away from that, the church is losing its purpose. I'll elaborate. I understand now the importance for me of being with other saints. This is the rest of what I wrote.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:77-79 and Ephesians 4:11-14 are great verses. All this has helped me realize the importance of the church as an institution. God doesn't work by personally appearing to each of his children and teaching them the gospel. He works by sending authorized messengers. Why should he not teach the individual principles of the gospel through messengers? In other words, why would we think that he would teach us each individual principle of the gospel solely by the Spirit and by revelation and inspiration? Even in the age of COVID [when we are socially distanced], why would we think that? God does teach us that way, but as Ephesians 4:11-14 teaches us, he aso institutes teachers so that we can come to a unity of the faith and not be blown about with every wind of doctrine. We teach and help one another so that we will gain together, and that appears to be the way God has appointed for us to learn. If we think we can stand as islands during this time and not need anyone, we're probably going to find out we're wrong. We need to help one another, and by so doing we will receive help we could not have gotten any other way. As Doctrine and Covenants 88:77-79 teaches us, if we teach [or perhaps you could say if we associate one with another and spiritually uplift and strengthen one another] diligently the Lord's grace will attend us. If we want his grace, let's diligently participate in this process [of lifting one another], yeah?

Well, that's about it for this week. I picked another talk but never posted it (I'm sorry. That Facebook post thing has taken a backseat with everything else we've been doing). The talk is called "The Gift of the Holy Ghost: What Every Member Should Know. It's by Boyd K. Packer, and it's super good. Definitely check it out.

Well, I love you all! I hope you have a great week. Email me if you want to talk.

Elder Davis

The DeLorean and pictures of me next to it. (4)

We went on a hike as a district on Monday. From left, Sister Schramm, Sister Santore-Tovar, Elder Grayson, Elder Douglass, Elder Magleby, Elder Washburn, Me, Elder Day.