Week 14: Pushing and pulling

Following is Garrett's email from his 14th week of his mission. His email address is garrett.brothers@myldsmail.net. Because transfers are coming soon, please email, but don’t send any mail or packages to his apartment. Either hold off until we know if he’s getting transferred, or send them c/o the mission home: 

 

Utah Salt Lake City East Mission
3487 S 1300 E
Salt Lake City, UT 84106

 

October 3rd, 2016:

 

We hiked up to the Hole in the Rock today.  It's a short hike, but it's almost vertical.  Not enough to be rock climbing, but really steep.  Anyway, I found I love that type of hiking.  It was awesome.

During the car ride I read Lectures on Faith.  I only read the first one and a bit into the second one, but it really opened my eyes.  Faith is the principle motivation for action in every intelligent being.  I thought that was absurd; being so familiar with faith in its religious context I interpreted this as all beings act on a belief in God.  What it really means, however, is we do something (turning on a light-switch) in the belief that something else will happen (the light turns on).  Faith in a religious context is the belief that following the teachings of God & Jesus Christ (or whatever deity, in any religion) will lead to a better life, wither in something as logical as {not smoking} yields {increased health} or something as scientifically unprovable as {praying to God} yields {blessings, if it be His will}.

After this realization (which is like most other things in the gospel for me: so confounding until it is realized, then childishly simple), everything started to click.  For examples, the scripture's statement that following Christ's teachings will build faith (or belief, hope) of receiving blessings, or how whenever we gain knowledge, our faith is dormant, or how (and this is mind-bending) a key attribute of God--a perfect, omniscient being--is faith... and this is not an exhaustive list by far!

Anyway, I realized I do have faith.  I need to strengthen it, though, as faith in Christ is a willingness and a trust that the things we don't understand will still work out.  I, at this stage of understanding, divide it into two testimonies:

• The "lower" testimony: I have a very strong lower testimony.  This is faith that if we do {X}, {Y} will happen.  One does not even need to believe in God to have this (for example, the Word of Wisdom); it is the very tangible and visible effects that others see--LDS saints are often healthier, happier, better off in a way that money and other things simply cannot reach.  It is often what draws others to the gospel, and is well expressed in my previous comments about how "even if the church isn't true, it is good."
• The "higher" testimony: I need to strengthen my higher testimony.  This is faith that there is a God, Jesus Christ suffered and died for us, families can and should be eternal, etc.  Whereas the lower testimony can be found,m at least in part, in people who have never heard of the gospel, the higher testimony is centered on a trust and devotion to Christ.  It enables those who hold it to follow the scriptures and prophets even when in trials or doubt.  The lower testimony may speak to the mind, but the higher testimony speaks to and resides in the heart.

Understand that I do not mean to present this as an assertion, but rather I wish to convey my understanding of a newfound perspective.  This, to my knowledge, is reflected in Church doctrine as true conversion, or it is close to it.  True conversion is acting on a testimony and changing oneself to harmonize with a testimony, so really they are different ideas, but I rest my pen here.

October 4th, 2016:

We spent a lot of time with President & Sister Hillier today.  They're really cool people.

Things are going well, the field is still great, the weather is still cold, we still have food, dogs are still awesome...

I got a "second wife" today. Ive learned that sometimes people will joke around by saying that a missionary and another person go well together and say that the missionary may have found a potential spouse. Anyway, the other person and I do get along, but she's twelve so I will pass :P.  This time it was Elder Matsuzaki who was teasing me. The last time it happened it was the girl's mom who said it. Since the girl was 18 we were both embarrassed because it was just slightly more plausible.

October 5th, 2016:

I'm very done today.  I'm just not effective at planning and my 12 weeks ends soon.  I don't know how to learn how--I go through all the steps, yet our plans just never happen more often than not.  We haven't finished last week's weekly planning but we start this week's tomorrow!

I have some other stuff that happened today recorded in the area book but right now I'm not able to write about it in my journal because I'm out of time.

October 6th, 2016:

Yesterday I had some GI pains.  It was weird pain because I had gas stuck in my intestines. It was unpleasant and wore me down over the day, so I was pretty tired.  After that was planning, which was no fun.

Today was better.  After two hours of frustration in weekly planning, something clicked.  I could explain it in greater detail but I don't have time as we got in at 9:30 pm today.  Basically it involves the role of goals in planning. One frustration of mine in planning was that we are supposed to set goals before we made plans. I had thought that justifying goals as you set them meant to basically make plans.. But now I just needed to rethink some things. So now it's better.  I still need to learn a lot of planning, but I feel that now we can more progress.

October 7th, 2016:

 

As a result of our planning, we decided to drop or at least pause in actively trying to teach many of our investigators in the past week-Jose & his family, Rachel, Roy, Alex & Fidel, Steven, Elaine. They were simply not progressing.

~later~

Well, today I experienced my first bible basher.  While Elaine (one of the investigators we just dropped) was kinda bashing with us, it's really that she wasn't ready.  Meanwhile, this man--Jim--was a whole new league.  As soon as we stepped in the house he wanted to show us a video from "Mormon historians" and stuff... we didn't even get a proper introduction to him.  I think he may have said hello.  Anyway he kept interrupting our responses to his questions with more questions. He had no interest in listening or considering what we would say. He just wanted to argue.

I thought bashers would be people who just took a strong intellectual approach to religion, but no. They are people who are convinced that you are wrong but they don't even let you talk.  I think that some may have good intentions (?), but if they're trying to "help" us by persuading us to see that we are wrong (in their eyes), they're not doing it well.  I wish they would be willing to have an honest  discussion.

I'm dealing with frustration in understanding how to be guided by the Spirit.  It's really hard for me to feel like I've been guided, or rather it's hard for me to recognize it.  I think this is me being too self critical; I feel worn out by the field instead of happier to be here, despite my growing testimony.  I'm still working on it, but one thing is that I've focused so much on is improving myself.  The logic is that every "I need to improve on..." is followed by a "...to help people better," but sometimes I've been doing it too much.  I believe I need to strike a better balance between trusting that God guides me and driving myself to do better.

Really, I should probably just stop worrying so much!

October 8th, 2016:

A few days ago, we got ward from Elder Taylor that he needed help getting our apartment ready to accommodate another set of Elders. We have a second bedroom, so we have the space. It looks like our area may be split f in the next transfer!

I've been reflecting on my mission:

• Spiritual health: Up! ^^^
• Physical health: Up ^
• Mental health: Even --- 
• Emotional health: Down a little

So I hope my emotional health gets better (as I've been talking about).

I'm not depressed or anything, I'm just pretty stressed. I'm working on it.  I'm too stubborn to give up ;).

~later~

Last night we found a cat, dead on the road, that had been hit by a car.  After investigating, we found it was probably from a man that raises cats just to let them run free and eat mice (?).  Anyway it was weird.  It felt kinda like a crime scene or something.

October 9th, 2016:

 

Two of the investigators that we are putting on pause are Alex & Fidel.  They work up in a ranch raising sheep in the far north area.  They can't meet right now because theya re so busy getting the animals ready for winter. They say that they want to meet later. In meeting with them, I learned something cool: all the ranch hands have their own sheepdog. All the dogs have different roles (some will herd the mass of sheep, others will scout the area for stragglers, etc.).  Not all ranch hands and their companions are out at once, but those that are together work as a team.  I love dogs and teamwork (in that way) so it was awesome to learn more about that.

Our plans crashed today--the lessons were not happening and we simply hadn't planned out enough regarding the content of the lessons, even if all the lessons happened.  Yet in spite of this--and all other frustrations--there was something good, some reason why I'm not super stressed right now.  I just can't remember at the moment :P.

When I get back home, I hope to have a family reunion.  It would be amazing to see my immediate and extended family for at least a few weeks, or even just a week.

 

October 10, 2016:

 

Things are going pretty well right now.  The sisters in our district have come back from Star Valley--their time got extended from 6 days to 15 days out there--and so they are doing e-mailing time with us.  Typically during a p-day we do studies, clean our apartment, clean our car, and head to emailing.  On the way to the emailing computers, one of the companionships grabs a pizza from "Papa Murphy's," a pizza place that gives us free pizzas (!) so we eat lunch as we email.  Usually we have a district activity--mostly hikes--but sometimes we have zone activities and we'll play something with the other zone.

Mom, you asked about what you should include in my next care package.  Transfers are soon, so some food like granola or those lentil soups (after transfers) might help. I'll let you know if I'm getting transferred first. Some missionary apartments don't have a ton of food in them, so if I do move and we have very little food I'll let you know. But of course we'd have to go shopping for food before the package would arrive. But food is far from an issue. Dad's already going to send me out our old iPod loaded with church music, classical music, and piano, some speakers (we're not supposed to use headphones), a flash drive for the iPad, and hard drive to use as a backup.  Really the only thing I can think of is Legos.  I would love a lot of 2x4 or other sized Legos, along with a few of those 1X4 pieces that have a hinge in the middle and can become 2x2 pieces.  The reason for this is I plan to construct a holder for all the pamphlets and Book of Mormons, as we just use a cardboard box.  I could make a neat holder for them out of Legos, but it's really not essential at all. Really, anything in a care package is wonderful!

 

I'm more than an eighth done with my mission already!  Crazy!!!!!!

No pictures this week - no time!