Week 103 - "Oh, good! You're up!" "Juuuust making the bed..."
Hey, everyone!
Golly, I'm tired. The quote is from Helen and Hogarth Hughes from The Iron Giant. Hogarth had just spent all night finding the giant a place to lay low (Dean's scrapyard), and crawls through his second-story bedroom window as the sun is rising, stumbles onto the ground, gets up, kicks off his shoes and pulls up his covers to get into bed when his mom opens his door and they have this exchange. That's how I feel right now. I'm just beat. Elder Washburn and I have been slowly getting over whatever it is we contracted. It's one of those colds that just hangs on for a really long time. You know the type that, like, getting back to normal is so gradual that there's no real definitive point where you're like, "Ah, yes. I'm all better now." I'm still just slowly getting uncongested. I'm at the point where I'm starting to be able to taste flavors again, so that's pretty awesome. I was worried for a bit there: I wondered if I had caught COVID and was going to lose my sense of taste for the rest of my life or something. That's my brain, though--it's prone to catastrophizing.
Well, because we were sick, there's not a whole awful lot to report. We spent a lot of time just relaxing and sleeping, which was a huge boon not only physically but mentally. It's always nice to get permission or an excuse to just really relax. ...and yet for some reason I'm still tired. I guess my body is just sucking up all the rest it can get. The whole mission is shut down for a 10-day period: Missionaries can continue to do work, but they have to be extra careful about observing social distancing guidelines and mask-wearing, and they can only visit with members or people they're teaching if they don't have symptoms of any sickness. They started the lockdown because of all the sickness (COVID and non-COVID) that was happening throughout the mission. If you get COVID, you have to self-isolate for two weeks. If you have other symptoms you just have to stay away from other people until your symptoms are gone. But regardless, we're not allowed to meet with other missionaries until the lockdown is over, unless with special permission. There are definitely a couple times we've seen other missionaries. One of them was with permission... the other times were with the same missionaries, but we sort of just happened to run into each other.
The time we met with permission, we were helping the zone leaders film a punishment for the elders not getting more points than the sisters in our zone challenge this week. So like last transfer, our zone leaders have basically set up a points system, and there's a punishment set at the beginning of the week. If the elders get the most points, the sister training leaders take the punishment. If the sisters get the most points, the zone leaders take the punishment. The elders won by 6 points last week, and that was only with some sort of underhanded play, and the punishment was one of the sister training leaders had to dye her hair. The sisters won this week, and the punishment was that the zone leaders had to get "pied." So we filled pie tins with whipped cream and slapped the zone leaders in the face with them. I'm not sure what the punishment is this week, but we're gunning to help the elders win so they aren't miserable.
We've also been getting a lot of referrals, which has been cool, but it's crazy how many people either don't respond/get back to us or just say them signing up was an accident (which, it's like, there are a bunch of steps you have to take to sign up, so I'm not sure what your definition of "accident" is).
Probably my favorite moment of this week was with a family that's been wanting to come back to church. They said they had a package for us, so we went and dropped by, and they had a HUGE box just full of a bunch of food and supplies and stuff. They're super nice. They live in a trailer park, and while we were there one of the kids (they have three, probably, like, 3, 5 and 9), the five-year-old girl, went and found a football and started throwing it to me. So Elder Washburn basically talked with the parents while I just played with the kids and passed the football back and forth. Man, kids are resilient. There's a pandemic on, these crazy health and economic circumstances, and there's a big political controversy, they just moved here, so they probably don't have any friends, and even if they did, they probably couldn't meet with them, but they find a way to play. She was coming up with different games to play with the ball, so we did some of those after we had just passed it back and forth. It was fun. It reminded me of growing up playing football on the street on Linden Avenue. Those are some of my best memories from my childhood. And it reminded me of just playing and having fun as a kid. It did my soul good. And I realized what a blessing children are. They teach us how to appreciate the little things in life and how to find joy. They're just so awesome that way. The world would be a pretty lame place without them showing us how to enjoy the present.
We've released two Hear Him videos, and we'll have another one going out tomorrow. They've been pretty cool so far. They've gotten a lot of traffic, too, which is good. I just hope they've helped people around here.
Yesterday we also threw together an ad President Connor (the stake president) sent us a script for recently. We put that up earlier today, at 2. It's about why God cares about us. It was a pretty good idea. He has some great ideas for ads and things. It's not my best work--I'm not completely thrilled with it--but hopefully it does the job. I also anticipate that we'll get some bashing because it's about premortality and how God is our literal Father and everything, but we'll see. Hopefully President Connor was inspired and it will reach people and uplift them and so forth.
As far as notes from my studies, because I enjoy sharing those things, I'm in 1 Kings, and the Old Testament is weird. Everyone should read it, but it's... there's definitely some strange stuff that happens. There's also some stuff that happens that you laugh at, but you probably shouldn't. For instance, there's a prophet who it seems like wanted to sell his appearance and put on a show for an Israelite king, so he tells someone to hit him, and the guy refuses, so the prophet's like, "You're gonna get mauled by lions," and the guy is, and then the prophet turns to someone else, and he's like, "Hit me." So the guy hits him, and then he puts on a blindfold or bandage or something and goes to the kind acting like a soldier and teaches him a lesson about how he shouldn't have let one of his enemies live. I told Elder Washburn about it, and he was like, "That's commitment right there." Also, the New Testament is awesome. The Bible generally is awesome and needs to be read diligently. Also, on that topic, I showed Fires of Faith, the BYUtv series, to Elder Washburn, so we've been watching that in our down time when we've been at the church. We finished today during our preparation day hours. I felt like it was a good thing to watch since it helps us have a better understanding of the Bible. It was a very uplifting experience. I love that series. It makes me want to read the Bible more, and it makes me want to research its history.
I'm not sure I really have anything else to report. I'll put the links to the videos down here. I hope you all have a great week. I've had one or two people ask, so in case anyone else is curious, my release date is Dec. 11.
Hear Him Through Music: https://www.facebook.com/
Hear Him Through Service: https://www.facebook.com/
Why Would God Care?: https://www.facebook.com/
Elder Davis
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