Week 65: Conference weekend

Monday, September 25th, 2017:

 

We need to get our morning study schedule sorted out for p-days.  Elder Parnes didn't study and we didn't plan well. Elder Parnes wanted to plan on the way to Walmart. I learned that there's a reason we have time set aside to plan and study.  They are not things to be multitasked. 

 

We balanced most other things out well; I got a haircut, everything is clean, we played volleyball and soccer at the activity, and we didn't rush about. The same sister helped us out with laundry, as she does every week.  It really helps us.

We taught Olivia, a new investigator, tonight.  She is so ready for the gospel but her parents, both raised LDS, are not.

Tuesday, September 26th, 2017:

Today was weird.  Planning sore of led to finding, but we're running out of potential investigators. The whole day took a hit. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.  We visited many people, but we're just running low on names of potential new investigators.

One lesson was with an active family.  We wanted to help them do missionary work, but as luck would have it they're really on the ball, this being their fourth son on the mission field.

Our other lesson was with Tristyn and Staci.  After the lesson, we spent two hours prayerfully studying and discussing their needs as a companionship. We also talked about those investigators with Elder Opificius and Elder Martin.  We determined that helping her come to Christ should be our focus, not baptism.  We decided to set any previous issues aside and just teach her.  

 

In coming to this decision, I drew on how Kyle in family services has told me to not feed negative emotions (but be aware of them). I'm drawing on the lessons I'm personally learning on my mission to help those I'm teaching.

Wednesday, September 27th, 2017:

Interviews with President Hillier went well.  I feel like I'm approaching the point where I'll be in there for 5 minutes and I'll have no bad issues or personal concerns to talk about with him.

I misplaced my copy of PMG.  I'm still trying to find it.  I really hope I do, as I have a lot of study imprinted to it.

Our day was a mix of crazy busy and slow times.  We had four lessons. I felt very unprepared because we had so many lessons at once; I've done it before but these felt different.  A large part is I didn't know the people very well.  I should have leaned on Elder Parnes more.  I'm working on having better lesson prep time, but there wasn't much more we could do today given the circumstances.

The slow time came after the lessons.  One person we tried to contact--lights on, people home, but no response at the door--hid their spare key above the doorframe, but it was tilted at such an angle that the lamp shined in our faces through its reflection.  It was very easy to spot after dark.  I can't tell you how tempted I was to use the key, poke my head in, and shout "hey!  We could tell you checked the peephole and walked away!  At this point, we were just trying to tell you to hide your key better!"  We didn't, though.

 

We also had productive time time when we were in our apartment, double-teaming the phone work we had to do.  I really have no idea how missionaries existed without phones.

 

We ended up had to ask the family that was scheduled to have us over for dinner to instead bring the food by the Sorensen's house (the older couple that we meet with each week) and visit the member family tomorrow.  

When we headed into a chapel to write our lesson reports at 8:30, we discovered a deacon's quorum setting up to play a sort of hide-and-seek in the dark.  Elder Parnes scared one deacon semi-accidentally.  That became a highlight for the whole quorum.

Deacons playing hide and seek

I wish missionary work was just proselyting, not so much planing and reporting and training.  But it's not.  Proselyting is when I'm happiest, but I guess there are things to be learned.

 

Thursday, September 28th, 2017:

I went to family services today.  We talked about how I feel like sometimes I just play a role as a missionary.  I want to be more of myself--emotionally, directly connected--as I perform missionary work.  As I talked, I realized I really just think too much.  I search for a logic-based response, trying to find if a course of action is or is not right.  Kyle suggested I try to go with what feels right and not try to reason it out so much.

Acting on feeling is not a new concept to me, but it had not occurred to me in this situation.  I never developed the skill of an emotional-based interaction; usually, my conversations had an object in mind (e.g., asking a person if I could get a ride, can I give you this, would you tell me if you know so-and-so).  If someone was visibly upset, I acted to meet their emotional needs, but it was an objective to me, something I deemed important.

Kyle introduced the idea of emotionally connecting to people.  I had done this to some degree de facto, but the idea of itself is very new.  It would mean actively caring about the thoughts and emotions of others. This is not to say I don't care about that, but to say I usually don't have caring about others to guide how I act in a conversation.  He also introduced having an emotional connection to God and myself.  I'm still turning the last type of connection over and over in my head.

 

As I write this, I'm not sure if it's the newness of the idea that causes me to feel a little uneasy, or the spaghetti and meatballs I ate as an after-hours snack.  

We did not get far in weekly planning, but we now have return appointments with almost all of our 15 investigators.  Each of them has conference information, with the majority soon to be invited by one friend or another to watch with them so they can better understand.

My hip and knees have been acting up.  Not painful, but my knees make a grinding sound when I squat or otherwise bend with weight on them.  My hip rolls over the muscle, usually as I am sitting.  The hip can actually be uncomfortable.  I am going to see the mission doctor on Monday.

There was a speaking event--a former space station commander with fifth all time for total time in space.  It was cool to hear about the unexpected parts of living in space.  Not as many people showed up as the WML would have liked, but the chapel was full.

Friday, September 29th, 2017:

We had our last lunch with the Sorensens, one of the senior couples in our area.  Next week, it's a new month, so the Shephards, the other senior couple in our area, will have us. The senior couples rotate through having lunches with the various missionaries in their areas.

District meeting, which will be held at the far building until the end of the transfer, was on finding.  Each companionship covered three sections; one of ours was on family history, which I can't say I've used before as a way of finding investigators.

The Slade's sent me a package.  It's the winter clothes I had in the bag I left at the mission office.  They aren't the winter clothes I was looking for, though. In one of my prior areas, I apparently left behind a bag with my winter coat, hat, and other snow gear, and I have not been able to track it down. I also had purchased at the DI another nice winter coat, then ended up giving it to a new missionary who was transferred to ouor area from Puerto Rico after the hurricane shut down missionary work on the island. I do appreciate that Chelsea looked and even sent what warm clothes she could find.

Jilin will join us for general conference.  Cameron is the other person going with us.  Jilin is in our area, being taught by the YSA sisters.  He's on-date for the 14th.  Cameron is a recent convert from just before I got here.

We had a visit with a less-active member recovering from chemo for blood cancer, a lesson with Kiki, Gong, and Tina, and what was supposed to be a lesson with a part-member family  but turned into a meeting with the WML because the family was a no-show.

Saturday, September 30th, 2017:

General Conference!  The end of September is here. Conference took our entire day today.  We watched the morning session with the Sorensens, then watched the afternoon session with the family who was going to have us over for dinner. For the priesthood session, we had tickets to attend at the conference center.  We took Jilin (Cameron bowed out yesterday.) In going to meet Jilin, we didn't realize that we had not coordinated a meeting time.  We knocked on his door at 4:10.  He was just getting ready, so we left at 4:50 or so.  We made it in right on time.

At the conference center, I ran into a bishop of my former area from the Winder West 11th ward.  He was going with the recent convert that I had taught. It was good to see them. They had tickets to section 12; we had four tickets divided between sections 2 and 12 so we swapped them.  We were guaranteed to sit in the same section.  We gave our extra ticket to a group of missionaries who had an unexpected extra companion.

Being in the conference center was interesting. We were far enough away that I found myself looking at the large screen instead of the lectern.  The congregational hymn was fun, as I had to sing loud to hear myself if I wanted to sing any of the written parts (normally I can't sing loud on parts in sacrament meeting as it can drown out what I'm pitching with/against.  Jilin fell asleep during the first talk, but we woke him up ten or so minutes later.  

Coming out of the Conference Center, we saw a car with this sticker.  It reminded me of my mom, as she likes the Life is Good brand.

We had about thirty minutes at the end of the night, so Elder Parnes asked me to close my eyes and tell him what turns to make and see where we ended up. We visited a house with no response, then headed to the neighbors down the road.  They gave us a referral for their neighbors on the other side.  We also got to see their nine puppies!

Puppies!

Sunday, October 1st, 2017:

Jeremy texted us this morning to let us know his five-year old son, Seth, had a high fever and wanted a blessing.  When we got over there, he was grouchy and would not cooperate in getting a blessing.  We helped Jeremy set up his smart TV so he could watch conference online, as he doesn't get antenna channels.  

We continued watching conference today, the morning at the Shephard's and the afternoon at Jeremy's.  We wanted to watch with the family who was going to have us over for dinner that night, ask for referrals, contact the referrals, and come back for dinner, but everything worked out.  We visited the people they told us about after dinner.  We gave their kids the idea to destroy some old squash with baseball bats (hopefully that was ok) and reported back.

Elder Parnes and I are working well together.  I think I worry about everything I'm not able to do because I'm not skilled enough yet while we actually do solid work together.  The area is going well, besides not having so many new people to try, but even while I feel like I have little control over what goes on, things are improving.

I enjoyed conference.  A lot of the topics were so similar that it's hard for me to pick out a particular talk.  I liked Elder Holland's Saturday morning talk, Bishop Waddell's Sunday morning talk, and Elder Ellis's Sunday afternoon talk [having found and reviewed the summaries on LDS.org].  You'll just have to look to see what those are.

 

Mount Olympus, which changes day-to-day.  It was brown, then green, then snowy, then partially snowy... now, the clouds make it look bleak.