Week 106 - "There's room for a little more."
Buckle up. This is probably going to be a long one.
Holy cow, I don't think I ever expected to be here. I've been delaying thinking about home, and I've been a little hesitant to write this email.
The first quote I used, after my first week in the MTC, was a quote from Lord of the Rings. This quote came into my head a few weeks ago, and I figured it was only fitting that I end with a Lord of the Rings quote as well.
This has been quite the ride. It's weird. When you live a certain way for two full years, you don't ever think your life is going to be any different, much less go back to the way it was. And from the beginning it was difficult sometimes to dwell on thoughts of home, so you sort of just tamp them down and try not to think about it. But now, with the reality of home around the corner... It's surreal.
We were driving home from the Lisbon area on Monday after a choir practice Elder Washburn was participating in. The sun was coming down, the light was beautiful, and we were winding down hilly Ohio roads, taking a long drive back to our apartment. After a few moments, I sort of came to, and I said to Elder Washburn, "Dang it, I'm feeling nostalgic." That's an emotion I haven't felt in a long time. He was like, "Is that a bad thing?"
Before I left on my mission I felt like I was just sort of going to have to "hold my breath" for two years. I was going to have to suspend certain things. I was going to have to choose not to think about some of the things that would normally bother or intimidate me, and I was just going to have to knuckle under and do what I was supposed to. I got sort of comfortable in that place, but it also meant that a lot of the things I would normally feel, a lot of the things I might normally enjoy, even, took a backseat. I feel like there are parts of me that are waking back up now, and I just hope I like what I find when everything's awake.
At the same time, as I've sort of monitored myself and my thinking and some of the beliefs that sit in dusty corners of my mind, I've found that some of the assumptions I have about life or about human experience or about reasonable expectations for myself and my future have been revised. It's as though throughout this whole process someone went to those corners, retrieved those things, and showed me what was incorrect about them. And those sorts of things in the past caused me a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of pain. I don't know--it's hard to describe, and it's hard to come up with a particular example. It's like there are just these little parts of my machinery that were incorrectly placed or poorly adjusted, or there were places where there were a few parts missing, and as small and seemingly insignificant as those problems were, they jammed me up a bit. I would never have known where or what they were or how to deal with them. But I feel like as I've spent two years in His service, Jesus Christ has repaid me by finding those broken, mismatched or uncalibrated parts and lovingly, carefully, diligently repairing them and resolving the issues. I have been blessed in ways I don't understand how to describe, and I've experienced growth and healing that I'm convinced I wouldn't have been able to experience any other way.
The quote is from Elijah Wood's Frodo Baggins near the end of Return of the King. Sam comes in to see him as he finishes his account of the story, writing The Lord of the Rings in the pages following Bilbo's manuscript of There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale. Sam tells him, "You finished it," and Frodo responds, "There's room for a little more." He later passes the book off to Sam as he leaves for a final journey, telling him the last pages are for him.
In what may be the most emotionally impactful scene I've ever seen, he then leaves the men he began his adventure with, the men who traveled with him from Hobbiton to Amon Hen. He leaves behind Merry and Pippin, who after their separation had had their own unique adventures, and he leaves behind Sam, who was by his side from the beginning to the end, to go with Gandalf, Bilbo, Elrond, Galadriel and others to the Grey Havens, a place he won't return from.
To compare my story with Tolkien's is a romanticization of my own situation, but the feelings are similar. I'm leaving behind my own friends who have had their own unique adventures, and as I wait for a plane to Salt Lake City in the Minneapolis airport, or a plane to Idaho Falls in the Salt Lake City airport on Friday, I'll begin to separate from people who started this journey alongside me and who have finished it alongside me, too. As a side note, Elder Washburn taught me that every separation is like a foretaste of death, and every reunion a foretaste of the resurrection. I guess that also communicates how I feel about all this. One of the things I was afraid of is how much I would change as a missionary. Ultimately it's been change for the better, but I worry a little that the people I'm leaving behind will be too different when I see them again, like it will be as though I'm leaving them for a final time.
That said, it's such a mixture of emotions: I'm also excited to see and be with the people I haven't seen for a while. My family will be waiting for me at the airport, my trainer has been asking me when I'm getting back, there's an elder or two who left this last transfer who I'll be able to see, and I'm hoping to see many of my past companions soon, too. There are happy things I'm going to, but there are people I'll be sad to leave behind. We actually just visited Brother and Sister Nicholas, my first converts in Warren, as a last goodbye before I left.
I'll especially miss my fellow missionaries. James Thurber defined love as, "What you've been through together." We've been through a lot, especially now. The past few months have been hard on a lot of missionaries. I feel a little like I'm leaving my fellow soldiers on the front lines. I've probably said that before. I want to do everything I can to help them from where I am.
I also want to do everything I can to help the missionaries serving in the Rexburg area, and if there's anything I could ask you to do, it would be for you to do the same: To ask your local missionaries how you can help them accomplish their work and try to do what they ask. They need help right now, just like everyone does. And if we help each other right now, I think we'll find ourselves being lifted, too.
As far as what has happened this past week, we've been just plugging away at social media. I put together what may be my favorite Hear Him video about a sister named Sister Hereford. It was really good--she has a great testimony about repentance and what really makes her happy. You should go watch it. https://m.facebook.com/
Most of the week was spent working on social media stuff, as usual. We also did service at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius church for the last time (for me). We also got to do a video with some other elders in Alliance, but I don't remember if that was this week or last week... It's all blurred together. And we did a punishment video or two with the zone leaders (that's how they've been motivating missionaries to do certain kinds of work--they get punished if the missionaries get enough points). They did the Paqui one-chip challenge today. It was pretty crazy.
We're also doing daily stories on Facebook as reminders for people about the prompts for Light the World. That's been pretty cool. They seem to be relatively popular. There are some good things about to happen on the social media front, I think--we're going to be reporting to the stake presidents some of our success and letting them know what members can do to help, so hopefully over the next transfer things are going to pick up. I don't know, though--it's been really, really difficult for missionaries to reach members. They call, and they call, and they call. So I don't know if it's just that people don't think the missionaries are important enough for them to call back or if it's that they're becoming inactive or what. I mean, a lot of people are dealing with a lot of difficult things right now, but I feel like participating in the work would lift them. It's paradoxical when Jesus says that if we lose our lives for His sake, we'll find them, but that doesn't make it any less true.
And then today we went to Cockeye BBQ in Warren for dinner, and I got to visit John and Jean for the last time. That was really cool to have that opportunity. I'll be coming back when they get sealed, though.
I also had some good conversations with other missionaries about some of the issues missionaries in the mission are dealing with. Again, I want to help as much as I can, and there will be opportunities for me to help when I return. I'm going to finish editing the "Hear Him" series of videos when I'm back and send them over for them to publish, and I'm going to try to help in other ways, too.
So there's room for a little more work for me, there's room for a lot more work for the other missionaries, and there's room in my life and in my heart for a little more of all of this. In short, it makes me sad to leave, but I'm happy to know what I'm going back to.
I want you to know that this experience has laid a foundation for my life, and that I have received what I never knew I needed but all I could have ever wanted from it. The Lord always blesses us for the time we spend in His service. When you serve Him like this, you can be blessed in the same ways I have.
My best friend, Grant, has called missions real adventures in every sense of the word. And he's right. I'm going there and back again, just like Mr. Bilbo. And just like Bilbo, I'll have a tale or two to tell when I come back, and when I do, I will not be the same.
I love you all. Thank you for reading.
Elder Davis
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