Week 14: The Cramming Begins

The Good
I have one more week left in my training and graduation this upcoming Thursday which means I start "cramming" this week. I am not sure if graduation is something either new or something just the Arizona Tucson Mission (ATM) does because none of my siblings or sibling-in-laws did it. Essentially I'll be tested on  how well I know the principles, I'll have to teach a lesson to another missionary who will have a checklist, an just overall be tested on my competence as a missionary. Basically everyone passes, but I am still kind of nervous and will be cramming (hence the subject line) for the next couple of days. I am just excited to be stripped of the official title of "Greenie" after graduation jaja. 

I went on two exchanges the past 2 weeks and they were both super fun! The first one was with my zone leader and mission grandpa Elder Vickers! He is a very good missionary and goes home after this next transfer. Nothing too huge or exciting happened but it was good because he shared a lot of cool insights with me from a seasoned point of view. At the end of the day, we reflected on the day which was really cool because neither of us had anything in particular for the other to work on, so we just shared what we learned from each other.

The second exchange was with the other "greenie" in the Sahuarita district Elder Cook. Yes, I don't know what Elder Medina was thinking putting the two least experienced Elders together (a combined experience in the field of 3 months), but it was actually an excellent day. We had a super powerful and spiritual experience after dinner when the Brother asked us for a blessing of comfort and that was one of the coolest experiences of my entire life. At the end of the day, Elder Cook said  it was the best day of the month he has had on the mission. We both hope that we are companions at some point, but I would have to be changed to English work for that so we will see.

A cool miracle happened this past week with an inactive member! There was a lady that we had been to several times and she had never opened the door. Well one day around 8pm, all of our plans fell through and it would have been so easy to just go back for the day and do some studies and Facebook finding. I was honestly ready to go home that day, but I asked Elder Medina what we should do and I felt like we shouldn't get back into the truck until we knew. So we stood for a minute or so when Elder Medina said we were going to visit Darely (said inactive member). We went and she actually opened and said she was so happy thst we showed up. Apparently her daughters have been wanting to go back to church and she has been thinking a lot about it too. What's more, we found out that her younger daughter is now 8 and hasn't been baptized. I asked the daughter, Clarisa, if she would like to be baptized and she thought for a second and said yes! Hopefully they will start coming to church and we will be able to set a baptismal date with Clarisa very soon!

Many of you may know by now, but my sweet, loving grandma passed away a little over a week ago. I am super grateful for the technology that allowed me to watch her beautiful funeral service and I'm very glad that the current conditions with COVID did not inhibit my family being there in Canada. There have been many small blessings in the past week.

The Bad

This week was a bit rough for finding mostly because school and everything has started so we will have to figure out new ways and different times to find new people! We'll keep moving forward!

The Beautiful 

Elder Medina, Sullivan, Cook and I went on a hike this morning and it was absolutely beautiful. I have not seen so much greenery in Arizona before but it seriously felt like I was hiking in Kentucky! Arizona might be a desert, but don't judge it until you have come to see it.

The Funny

Elder Medina has been learning common English phrases during language study and I help him with the pronunciations. Well one thing I say a lot is "I was about to say" and Elder Medina couldn't say it all really quickly no matter how slow I tried to say it. Then I got an epiphany and wote "áuz abáuraséi" on a white board and told him to read it. He then said "I was about to say" as fast a as well as I say it and we both just busted out laughing. It took me until the last week together to figure out how to help him with English. 

The Spiritual

I came across this quote during personal study this past week and would like like share it:

“Korihor was arguing, as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose." --Henry B. Eyring

God gave us agency, or the power to learn and choose for ourselves. Sometimes all the "rules" we "have to" follow in the Church can be overbearing and difficult to follow. Well we sometimes make them really hard to follow when we see them as restrictions. It has taken me very long to learn that the moral guidelines that we decide to follow are the path to ultimate liberation. "Freeing" ourselves from these "restrictions" is not freedom, but choosing to do what Satan wants and ultimately deciding eternal misery. Setting up guardrails for us I this life will allow us to ensure true happiness and freedom later in life and in the next. 

Love you all and hope you see the miracles in your weeks!