Week 97 - "If we don't come together, right here, on this hallowed ground, we, too, will be destroyed."

 

Hey, everyone.

This week was a doozy. The quote is an iconic one from Denzel Washington's Coach Boon in Remember the Titans. There was a lot about unity at conference, and unity is what we need to be experiencing as missionaries right now, too. I'll talk about that in a second.

So the stake president here in Youngstown is very enthusiastic about social media work, and he's trying to spread that enthusiasm to the other people in the stake, mostly ward leaders. He called us on Tuesday night, and he was like, "Are you elders done with your P-day?" I'm not sure he was quite clear on what day it was. We told him yes, and he asked if we would be willing to jump on a call with the Bishops of the stake to explain what we were doing with social media and how it had furthered the work. Now, we can't speak for everyone else, but at least here in Youngstown we haven't been getting a lot of direct results from Facebook--we haven't gotten any messages from people who have come to the page for a while now (we also haven't run any ads trying to reach those who are prone to message us, so maybe that's why), but it didn't really feel like we had a lot to report. Even so, Elder Washburn went ahead and talked to them about the reporting sheet we have that talks about the stories of different people who have been found through social media. They seemed excited. We also shared with them the first 30 seconds or so of a video we were making to advertise general conference. We're definitely not professionals, and we didn't follow much of a process--we sort of just threw it together--but they liked it, and they were kind of like, "We'd like to have this yesterday, because general conference is just around the corner," and it was kind of like, "Yeah... we know. We've been spending all our time working on it since yesterday." But we didn't say that. Anyway, we decided that we were going to get up and go straight to the church and get it finished Wednesday morning, and then get it boosted. So that's what we did. I think we got it finished around 10:30 a.m. We were going straight to service at St. Vincent de Paul after that, so we did that, and that left us with about 3 hours of regular "proselyting" in our day, with meals, study time and our morning stuff. So that day kind of just flew by.

The next day I don't even remember what happened, to be honest. Part of what's on our schedule was for us to edit a video, but--oh, yeah. We had district council. That's part of why I didn't remember. That was good. We have some new sisters in our district, in the Youngstown Ward, one of which I know from my time in Cambridge. Sister Keller. She was serving in Zanesville. She's training a new missionary who was learning German in the MTC, originally assigned to Frankfurt, I think. Her name is Sister Geppert. So that's cool. And I was asked to speak for a portion of it and said a lot of things that I think were just vaguely swimming around in my brain. I basically talked about how success as a missionary can be increased when our personal conversion is increased, because bearing testimony by the Spirit and with the Spirit is what has the greatest impact, at least that's what I've noticed. So if we want to help people more as missionaries we need to deepen our own understanding and testimony of gospel principles. I feel like too many people look at missions as discipleship factories, like "My kid is a troublemaker. I'll just send him on a mission, and then he'll be fixed!" That may work some of the time, but in my mind that's not really the point. Maybe I'm naive to think I can actually make a difference in others' lives as a missionary and not simply change my own, but that's what my purpose is, and both Elder Washburn and I have talked about it, and we think that's what the purpose of missionary work should be. We should be out here to help others, not ourselves. But the miracle is that by learning to help others better we do help ourselves. But the point is not to focus on ourselves or to come out here for ourselves. "He who saveth his life shall lose it. He who loseth his life for [Christ's] sake and the gospel's shall save it." We actually have to switch to sincerely caring for and trying to help other people. That has to be our priority. As we do, we also grow. Anyway, that was sort of the context of that whole statement. It felt important to help people understand that if they have the desire to help others, one of the best ways they can do it is to deepen their own conversion and bear testimony of the things they know to others. The gospel is so paradoxical sometimes.

The next day several of us elders had a meeting with Sister Reese, who formerly served in this mission and is now working at the MTC training missionaries on the use of social media. That was cool. It seems like there are more things that are going to solidify and get nailed down now. We're all going to be getting more training, so that's good. Really, up until now, there hasn't been very much organization on the social media side. It's just been sort of left up to us to try to figure out what we should do, and people have gone a lot of different directions. Others have had difficulty taking the initiative. So it's good that we're going to be getting more clarity.

Saturday was conference, obviously, and it was awesome, but Saturday and Sunday FLEW by. I don't remember conference ever going that fast. Elder Washburn and I set up a livestream on the Facebook page for each session, and we had about 140 people participating on the first one. Not as much attendance at the rest, but that's OK. We're just glad that it worked. We were using some software I've heard of a lot of gaming streamers use but we're still learning to operate it well. We're getting the hang of it, though.

My favorite talks were probably President Oaks', President Nelson's, and Elder Holland's. Elder Holland knocked it out of the park, as usual, but I appreciate the candor with which President Nelson and President Oaks denounced racism and racist behavior. I feel that was sorely needed. I read a story once about some family friends in Rexburg who adopted a black child. When they told their friends and coworkers, one of the father's coworkers said, "What are you going to name him--Coon?" There were several other snide comments thrown at the baby the family was adopting, and growing up in Rexburg he's been treated a lot differently from most other kids. I didn't think a lack of intelligence that large would ever exist in a community like Rexburg, a community surrounding a university, largely comprised of members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. Don't get me wrong, we're all afraid of the "other," whether it be people who don't believe like us, people who don't act like us, or people who don't look like us, and I'm still working on treating all others the same, but I thought we would have figured out by now that the color of a person's skin doesn't mean anything about who they are. Some of us haven't read Jacob 3 enough. If that's you, we all still love you, but we must insist that you make a change. Prejudice (pre-judging) is a human failing, and one that we were subject to as a church in our not-so-recent history, and it's probably one you've been subject to at some point in your life. It is Christlike to give everyone a chance to prove who they are instead of making assumptions about them upon seeing them.

Anyhow, I'm not a very temperate judge--I don't yet approach where I need to be as far as forgiveness and second chances--so I'm glad both President Oaks and President Ballard (and everyone else who addressed the issue) put it the way they did. I felt like it was as gentle and kind as it could have been, but still firm. I'd be interested to see what happens as far as church membership after this conference.

During the last session we were at the bishop's house (masks on, no eating--there were regulations), and they sent us home with a bunch of food, which was super nice. It was the first time I had sat on a really good, nice couch for... probably since, like, March or April, and I was in and out of consciousness through three or four talks. I don't know if there's been a single conference where I haven't fallen asleep during at least one session.

I think that's it. A lot of our work for the past transfer and a half has just been trying to help get different infrastructures in place and trying to get social media going in the zone. It's starting to pay off. Some missionaries in Rootstown and their district want to start doing a live event on the page every 5 days. They're taking initiative! So that's cool. It's nice to see people getting excited about using these tools for missionary work.

Well, that's it for this week. If my calculations are correct I'm in single-digits for weeks now, which is bonkers. I think about it a lot. It kind of scares me. I like the person I am when I do this. I want to hang on to that as well as I can when I get home. I'm worried I'll lose a lot of it. Pray for me that I can keep it, please.

Elder Davis

Still no pictures this week. Sorry. I'll try to do better. There's just not a lot for me to take pictures of. Here's the video we made, if you want to watch it: https://www.facebook.com/youngstownchristians/videos/768068220710993