Take these sunken eyes and learn to see - 03/25/13

Hello from sunny Murrieta California! Turns out I'm staying put, I'm still covering two wards, and my companion is moving on to Lake Elsinore ward. He's happy to be living in an apartment and not very happy to be in a car area instead of a bike area. Weird, I know. Most people really like having a car, but he knows he'd be happier if he got the extra exercise and he's bummed that his request to be in a bike area wasn't granted. I guess that's the way revelation from God works. You don't always get what you want. Just what you need. 

My new companion has yet to arrive.  He'll be coming to me from San Jacinto, and he originally hails from Minersville, Utah. That's about all I know. 

I won't be living with the Youngs for much longer, but it's going to be a few days before we actually make the move. The home we are going to currently has Spanish elders in it, and the home that the Spanish elders are going to is currently vacant because the parents are on the Youth Conference Trek this week. So we are waiting for the trek to be over. 

Our golden investigator is on this trek right now. Her baptism is scheduled for this Saturday. How cool would that be to get baptized right after Youth Conference, on Easter weekend? She's pretty special, and she is so ready to get baptized. It's pretty cool to see her progress. 

All of our appointments fell through this week. We did not reach our goals, by a long shot. We only taught 7 of our 23 scheduled lessons.  We were both pretty bummed on Friday when we realized there was no possible way for us to hit our goals for the week. But we did some awesome service on Saturday morning, and found out about our new assignments, and that felt pretty good. We got to help pick some fruit, mulch the trees, and plant seeds in a garden that the city of Murrieta has established to be kept up by volunteer service and the food is donated to help the needy. It's called "Produce for People", and it was pretty cool to be a part of it. Apparently the last church that was asked to help out with the garden didn't show up at all when they were supposed to. Our church was the best volunteer force they've ever seen. And that was just 70-80 people from our stake on a Saturday morning. 

Well, I'm not quite sure what else to say. I'm really enjoying my time here in Murrieta. It's kind of weird that I'm staying instead of my companion. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be a District Leader now. Woo hoo. Apparently half of the companionships in the mission are doing the 12-week training program right now. And I'm a leader over them. Nice. 

A cool quote that I found this week from Joseph Smith Jr:

 

"You are now placed in a situation where you can act according to those sympathies which God has planted in your bosoms. If you live up to these principles, how great and glorious! -- If you live up to your privilege, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates. If you will be pure, nothing can hinder."

Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night - 03/18/13

I get the feeling that we're in the calm before the storm. Big changes are coming up, one way or another. Moving out of our homeshare, possibly getting a set of missionaries in each of two wards that I cover, and the possibility of me being transferred somewhere completely different. There are lots of possibilities, and I probably won't know anything more until this Saturday, 23 March 2013. I do know that the Zone Leaders will be moving out of the Perkins home and into the Nash home. But that's according to Sister Nash. Mission Pres may change things up at his leisure.

 

Well, we had a bit of excitement this morning. My companion went on exchanges with another Elder so that the two of them could go mountain biking with a ward member. Turns out that he wrecked his bike and now he needs a new chain and maybe a new derailer if he can't figure out how to fix it. Hopefully we can get it figured out before the transfer calls, but we will see. My bike stayed in the garage, so I'm fine.

 

The Cole Canyon ward turned one year old this week! Our ward had a birthday party out with hot dogs and birthday cake at the pavilion behind the chapel. They even invited the missionaries to play soccer and party games. I got winded pretty quick but my companion really enjoyed it. This mission thing is really bringing to mind how weak I am. But at the same time, I can feel myself getting stronger every morning when we wake up and lift weights. Elliott even says I look a little bit bigger. I'm not so sure about that. But I'll take his word for it. I'll be sad when we move out of our homeshare here and don't have their weights to play with. At least I still have my pullup bar!

 

I also got a little sun on Saturday. We showed up to help another set of Elders with a move, and it turns out that the family we were moving didn't have anything boxed up and ready to go yet. Also, there were two families in the house, so we couldn't just pack stuff up and toss it in the truck, we had to wait for her to show us what was hers. It was a long day out in the sun. But, it was for a less-active part-member family, and I usually enjoy packing up moving trucks, so it wasn't that bad. All the other missionaries told me I looked a little roasted at the end of the day. I wasn't expecting to have to wear sunscreen. Most of the time we can move out a whole house in an hour or two if they're already packed up. We were working on this one from 10am to 4pm, and we didn't even finish, but we had to hit our appointments for the day. Good thing our schedule was pretty empty that Saturday morning. I really enjoy service and I really enjoy spending time with the Los Alamos ward elders. Especially Elder "D". He's a goofy, lovable guy from Toella (I have no clue how you actually spell that town) and we just get along really well.

 

We had some fun on Sunday. Our dinner appointment made us an Irish feast and we topped it off with key lime pie and green sherbert floats. And our Afghan refugee family told us that their dad/husband was coming home this week and wants to get baptized. So we made a bunch of phone calls and are trying to make that happen as quickly as possible. He will be returning to Afghanistan for work in less than a week, so our window of opportunity is pretty small. He's been taught and prepared for baptism already, so hopefully he is still ready to go. I guess you'll find out about that next week.

 

Oh, and we finally got our awesome golden investigator on date. She is going to be baptized on the Saturday before Easter. That probably means I won't be around to see it happen. Actually I'm really hoping that they send me and another Elder into the Murrieta Hills ward, and my companion and another guy take the Cole Canyon ward. It's not very likely, but a guy can dream, right?

 

Well let's hope that my companion and I finish out our training strong and hit our goals for the week. This will be the only 5-week transfer of my mission I'm guessing. I'm considering the possibility of extending, but I might change my mind as I reach the end of things. Remember to be of good cheer! Doubt not, fear not.

Strange Things are Afoot - 03/11/13

It's been a wild and wonderful week! I am surprised at how easily influenced I am by my companion. He was having a tough time early this week, and I started getting down on myself, too. But we pushed through it. On Thursday, we went on exchanges, and it was the best day of missionary work I've had in weeks. It even rained all day and I didn't even care. Being with Elder "D" was just so much fun, and we caught up on some referral work in the morning and taught some killer lessons in the evening. We spent a lot of time talking about how we could deal with our little issues, which was needed, I think. Mostly I just laughed and really felt rejuvenated. I hit my regret ceiling and decided to be happy instead of stressing about things. It was a good day.

 

That day, we hit our goal of talking to 20 new people per day for the first time this entire transfer. It felt really good to get our OYMs finally. So on Friday, I made sure my companion and I pushed away our other distractions for time to tract into 20 people. We did it. We finished up the week with 4/7 days of hitting our OYM goal, and we haven't missed a single day since the exchange. We also taught 17 lessons this past week, which is a new record for me and my greenie. When he got here, we were averaging around 8 per week. So that's a huge improvement.

 

An impromptu zone meeting was called this Friday to announce two big changes. First of all, we are now allowed to email friends on  P-day instead of just family. From the first presidency: "Missionaries are to write to their families each week and are also authorized to communicate by email with friends, priesthood leaders, and new converts. Mission presidents should allow sufficient time on preparation day for missionaries to write emails and letters. While in the mission field, missionaries should receive authorization from the mission president before entering into communication, including via email, with converts and others of the opposite gender within the mission boundaries (see Missionary Handbook, 36–37)."

 

The other big announcement was about the mission splitting. Here are the stakes currently in our mission and the mission they will be aligned with beginning in July: 

Murrieta to the Carlsbad Mission
Palm Desert, Redlands, Yucaipa and Yucca Valley to the Redlands Mission
Corona, Hemet, Jurupa, Menifee, Moreno Valley and Riverside to the Riverside Mission

 

So, we have a transfer in two weeks, and then two or three more transfers before the split happens. Speaking of which, I won't be living in the same place any longer. Our homeshare decided to tell mission president that they can't handle having missionaries live with them anymore, and that as soon as they can find a new homeshare, they would like to be relieved of that duty. I can't say I'm surprised. There has definitely been some tension in the house, and with a newborn baby and two married couples and frequent visits from other adult kids, we've felt a bit cramped and maybe a little unwanted. I'm sure it was a really hard decision  because they really love having the missionaries around, but having adult kids in and out all the time and a grandchild screaming every night and missionaries taking up their space is probably a little too much for them to have constantly.

 

And, on top of all that, my AP friend told me that he's meeting with Mission President soon about making sure all the wards have their own set of missionaries. So it's a pretty good chance that I won't be covering two wards anymore, starting in two weeks. Of course, there's always the chance that I'll be transferred out of Murrieta entirely. In any case, I'm pretty sure there will be changes. I'm trying my hardest to eat all of my food so I don't have to try to pack it out and I'll try to be mostly packed up ahead of time.

 

I really feel like we're making much better progress in our two wards than we did when I first got here. The ward is a pleasure to work with, and they seem to like me pretty well. We've got some solid investigators in both wards, and we are teaching like crazy every single night except Saturday. Nobody wants to see us on Saturdays... yet.

 

I love all of you tons! Can't believe I've been out eleven months. We're pretty close to another general conference! I doubt it can be as earth-shatteringly awesome as the last conference. But we will have to wait and find out. Maybe they will announce a temple in Jerusalem or something amazing like that.

Happy Birthday - 03/04/13

Sunday was Tyler's birthday.  He turned 25 years old.  Here is what he had to say:

I enjoyed my birthday yesterday. It was a very spiritual fast and testimony meeting in both of my wards yesterday, and I felt so energized and uplifted by everything. My recent convert was amazed at how much energy he felt in the chapel that day. I am so uplifted and optimistic about the future. 

I woke up to a bunch of balloons in my face. My homeshare had rigged up the door with a tarpful of balloons. That was awfully sweet of them. They also printed out birthday wishes and put them on our bathroom mirror, bathroom door, refrigerator door, and pantry door. I think that was partially to pay me back for my Valentine's Day shenanigans. I took about 30 heart-shaped post-it notes and hid them around the house with "We Love You! -The Elders" written on them. It took our homeshare about a week to find them all. I had a lot of fun with it. They also bought me a gift and made me a cake. It was a pretty delicious and moist cake, too. You make it in a crock pot with lots of gooey chocolatey stuff in it. I don't know the recipe but I kind of want it now. 

Between District Meeting, Zone Meeting, and the aforementioned super-duper-spiritual sacrament meeting, I've found a lot of spiritual insight since the last time I wrote. Whatever hard feelings and self-doubt I had expressed earlier are pretty much buried under the terrific weight of the Savior's love that I've been feeling lately. I just couldn't stop smiling yesterday. It drove my companion a little batty, actually. He was all grumpy about fasting and how hungry he was and how low his blood sugar was. I've gotten dizzy and extremely tired on fast Sunday before, so I can kind of relate, but when you really learn to appreciate the power of the fast, it gets a lot easier. At least, that's my experience. I loved fasting yesterday. It was truly an occasion to rejoice.

 A lot of our appointments canceled this week, which goes along with the recent trend. I think we started with 18 appointments and ended up with 13 lessons total. That got my greenie pretty depressed. I think I was able to play therapist well enough to get him motivated to keep trying hard. I was a bit worried there for a moment that he would just give in to learned helplessness and not try hard anymore. We got him on the phone with the mission nurse about his insomnia, and she wants him to see a doctor now, so that should help. She also basically promised him that he would get to be in a bike area next transfer. I could definitely see that happening, and that it would help him feel a lot better. It would make me feel a lot worse, actually, but it would make him feel a lot better. And I can just adapt. That's what missionaries do.

There are a couple of ways that he could be put in a bike area. My guess is that they will take away my Murrieta Hills ward and give it to a pair of Sister Missionaries with our car. Cole Canyon would become a bike area. My companion could either stay here and bike or leave here and bike. I think if they do that, they'll keep me here another transfer so they could make use of my knowledge of the area while the new people get used to the Murrieta Hills ward. Or maybe just to aggravate me by making me man up and learn to bike.

 

I was looking through my letters that I've gotten from my favorite letter writer (yes, I do have favorites) and noticed a trend. I do spend a lot of time worrying about how post-mission life is going to pan out. I just do. Well, I got an awesome letter this week from a returned missionary friend of mine. He noticed that trend, too, and told me to man up in no uncertain terms. Well, he told me to go read the Sermon on the Mount. And pay special attention to the last half of Matthew 6. And pay extra special attention to the last verse of Matthew 6,

 

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

 

I needed that. Don't know why it took him being so blunt for it to sink in.

Well, I'm off to go save the world. I love you tons! Thanks for the prayers.