Blog Conclusion

Serving in the snow on Sakhalin Island.

           This project has been challenging in some ways, but has had great benefits.

            It has been frustrating to me that the project seemed to constantly be evolving.  We started off knowing we need to make a blog and follow five other blogs.  About half way through we found out that we needed to have five followers.  Some people had well over five followers, while others had well under five.  This put the under-followed people in an awkward position of having to ask classmates, who were already following five blogs, to follow their blog also.  At the end of the semester it was implied that a lack of pictures would be detrimental to one's grade.  This evolutionary aspect of the project was really frustrating to me.

            On a positive note, writing this blog has helped me personally.  I dedicated this blog to my younger brother, who recently got his mission call to the Scotland/Ireland Mission.  I wanted to share some missionary experiences and lessons I had learned that I wish I had known at the start of my mission.  At times I have struggled with feelings that I wasn’t a good enough missionary, or that I wasn’t successful enough as a missionary (my efforts were wasted).  Writing this blog has given me an opportunity to reflect on my mission.  Ponder experiences that I have had, lessons I learned, people I helped, and miracles that I saw.  Doing this has helped me to believe that maybe I wasn’t such a failure after all.
            It has also been really cool to read other people's blogs!  I've learned fun things about my class mates that I'm sure I wouldn't have known otherwise.  It has been especially cool to see spiritual sides of people that I haven't seen in class.  

One of my most treasured missionary moments.

            So while there have been frustrating aspects of this project, in the end I think it has really helped me personally, and it has been cool to get to know people in the class better. 
            My intended audience was my younger brother and those about to serve missions, as stated under the blog title.  The required blogs are "Confidently Humble," "The Ethos of Elder Cook," "World of Research," "Ultimate Bonding," and this post.  I would recommend for you "Conquering Doubt With the Shield of Faith," and "Spiritual Insights From Ultimate Frisbee" because they talk about things that have happened this semester, but you can feel free to read any post you want.  If you know anyone that could benefit from anything on my blog, please feel free to use or share any part you want.

Spiritual Insights From Ultimate Frisbee?

            Over Thanksgiving break I had a spiritual experience playing Ultimate Frisbee that is totally relevant to missionaries, and I want to share it as my last post (besides my conclusion). 

ultimatefrisbeefan.com

            During the very first play of our second game of Frisbee, my team had the disk, and we were moving aggressively up the field.  I threw a perfect forehand pass to a young guy on my team, but unfortunately he dropped it.  He apologized for the drop, and I told him not to worry about it. 

Later that game, this young player and I charged up the field on defense to cover the first passes of our opponents.  I covered the thrower tightly.  He threw in sideways across the field to try to get it to a more open thrower, but my young teammate knocked it out of the air.  Quickly he darted into the end zone.  I scooped up the Frisbee.  The defender on the young man was covering him like butter on toast.  Suddenly the young man cut right.  He got just a half step a head of his defender.  I shot him a forehand with laser precision, which he caught gloriously.  When I congratulated him in the end zone, to my surprise he said, “Thank you for trusting me with that.”

After a moment of bewilderment, I realized that he must have been referring to his drop about an hour ago.  When I picked up the disk, the fact that he had dropped a pass earlier never even crossed my mind.  All I thought was, “He just made a great defensive stop.  I want him to get this touch down!” 

At that moment I realized that this situation was similar to repentance.  In life we all make mistakes.  It is our job to repent, and have faith that the Lord will forgive us.  In life, and especially as a missionary, Satan tries to make you doubt the Lord’s mercy.  He goes for everything from old sins that have been repented of and resolved with priesthood authority, to small, current imperfections you are striving whole-heartedly to overcome.  He tries to make you believe that you can’t be forgiven and will never be worthy of the Holy Ghost.  These lies, if believed, can be totally debilitating for missionaries.

My Mission President taught me that the Lord forgives us long before we forgive ourselves.  I am so grateful for this Frisbee experience because as I have pondered it, it has given me hope.  I think to myself, “If I, an imperfect person, can quickly forgive the mistakes of a teammate and trust him in the game, how much more should I expect the Lord, a perfectly merciful person, to be able to forgive me and trust me with his errands in his work.”

It is my testimony that the atonement is real, and that the Lord is more merciful than any of us can image.  I know that if you sincerely repent and go to work, then the Lord will give you chance after chance to be an instrument in his hands.

(See these sources on the subject:  The Atonement Can Clean, Reclaim, and Sanctify Our Lives, Shayne M. Bowen; The Great and Wonderful Love, Anthony D. Perkins; Ether 2-3 (Book of Mormon))

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes… Goals and Plans Make it Come True

slantmagazine.com

            Today’s blog is about one of my biggest weakness that I wish I had figured out before my mission – setting goals and making plans.  I was always the kid that rolled his eyes at New Year’s time when everyone sat down to make New Year’s resolutions.  My attitude was, “I know I’m not going to look at this paper again for the next twelve months.  Why waste my time?” and “If I don’t right it down, then it is not considered an official failure if I don’t accomplish it.”

            Setting goals and making plans is essential in all areas of missionary work, but I noticed the blessings of it most obviously in my language abilities.  For the beginning part of my mission in the field, I struggled to come up with an effective language study.  Finally, I came across a quote that changed my life.  I don’t remember who said it, but it was something to the effect of, “Even if you don’t reach your goal, you will still accomplish more than you would have if you hadn’t set the goal.”  This revelation was key to me overcoming my fear of failing to achieve a written goal.

            So I pondered.  I decided it was a dream of mine to speak better Russian and be able to use the scriptures better in Russian.  So at the beginning of a transfer I set a goal to memorize forty scriptures in Russian that were related to the first lesson by the end of the transfer.  I planned out which scriptures I was going to memorized and when.  I believed it was possible, I really wanted to accomplish it, and so I went for it.  I worked hard.  I prayed hard.  I think I fell just a little bit short of my forty, but by the end of the transfer I had memorized thirty-something Restoration scriptures in Russian, and I noticed that they helped me significantly improve my ability to teach the first lesson. 

             Dreams don’t come true on their own, or by the magic of a fairy godmother.  When you learn how to turn your dreams into achievable goals, and learn how to plan to accomplish them, then you have the power to make your dreams come true.  When your goals are in line with the Lord’s, and he helps you fulfill your plans to reach your righteous goals, miracles happen.  I wish I had practiced more before my mission how to set goals and make plans.            

There is a Plan

           “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths,” (Proverbs 3:5-6).  Today I wanted to share an experience taught me to believe this scripture.

Me and Simeon (member) on Leninskaya Street.

            With three transfers (four and a half months) left in my mission I was transferred back to my favorite area as the zone leader, with a brand new missionary.  When my companion and I first arrived, there were no progressing investigators.  The previous missionaries had worked very hard and had baptized two brand new converts, so my companion and I needed to do some finding.  For the first three days in our area we hit the streets.  Our area had two major streets, Mirskaya and Leninskaya.  We tracted in the evenings, called potential investigators in any spare moment, and visited former investigators, but we spent several hours a day walking back and forth on those two main streets talking to people, because that’s where the people were.

            We fasted and prayed, but for days seemed to do nothing but finding.  One day, toward the end of the week, a man called out after us, “Hey, Elders!”  We were shocked because people who wanted to talk to us usually didn’t use the title “Elders.”  The man asked if we had the information of the church in that city.  We gave it to him and before we could find out more, he took off.

The first church building in our mission!

            Sometime in the second transfer of being there construction finished on the first “meeting house” in our mission, which was in our city, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.  As we moved all of the church things from our previous space in an office building into our own church building, the man who stopped us on the street several weeks prior showed up.  He explained that he was a member from another city, in another Russian mission, and he just needed a copy of the Book of Mormon before he head up to the northern part of Sakhalin Island to work.  So we gave him a Book of Mormon and he left. 

            The move was great, but our second transfer brought us some hard disappointments with the work and investigators.  I was trying my hardest to help this new missionary start his mission out on the right foot.  I wanted him to have experiences that would fill him with confidence that golden investigators actually exist and miracles do happen in missionary work, but things seemed grim.  Early in my last transfer, a pair of strangers showed up at sacrament meeting.  After talking to them we realized that it was the man from the street with a friend. 

            It turned out that the man was a less active member from another city, here on business.  During my companion’s first week and mine, the man had seen us go back and forth on Leninskaya Street, over and over again.  Every time he saw us he felt like he needed to stop us, but he kept chickening out.  Finally, we had passed him so many times every day that he couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped us.  He felt like he needed a Book of Mormon before he went to work up north.  While he was up north one of his coworkers noticed the Book of Mormon and wanted to know more.  He explained about it, and let her start reading it.  She was touched, and so they came back to our city so she could learn more.  She was a golden investigator whose heart had been prepared.  She took the lessons and in a few weeks was ready for baptism.  

            I wanted to share this story because you future missionaries will do a lot of work that will seem monotonous or repetitive at times, but I want to assure you that if you work with all your heart, and try your best to follow the Spirit, the Lord has a plan.  Just trust Him, and keep up the work.  

Ultimate Bonding (Personal Narrative Final Draft)

iphonelife.com

           To a sleep deprived, early-morning-seminary student, Saturday mornings are sacred, especially when you have nine o’ clock church on Sunday.  So you can imagine my displeasure when I woke up one Saturday morning to my dad shaking my leg, saying, “Alright boys, it’s time to get up for Ultimate Frisbee.”

            To his surprise, my dad came back five minutes later to find his sixteen and thirteen year old sons still completely comatose.  “Seriously?  Come on you guys!  We’ve gotta go so I can set up the field!”  His voice seemed distant, like an echo in a dark cave.  I buried my face deeper in my soft pillowcase, deeply breathing in the smells of motherly love and Snuggie’s drier sheets. 

            I was about to dive into a fresh REM cycle when I felt something slowly wrapping around my ankle.  I recognized the rough, thick fabric as a Tae-Kwon-Do belt from my elementary school days.  As I tried to make sense of the sensation, the filing clerks of my memory retrieved an image of my younger brother tying my Tae-Kwon-Do belts together into a multicolored rope and trying to repel over the second story railing.  I visualized the knotted rainbow rope tied to my ankle, mentally followed it over the edge of the top bunk, across the floor, and right into –

            “GWAHHHH!” I yelled as the lower half of my body was ripped over the edge of my bed.  I scrambled back onto the mattress while my dad prepared for another tug. 

            “GUR!” my dad roared as he yanked again.  The wooden bunk bed creaked and tipped as I push against the safety board with all the strength in my free leg.  Heart pounding, mind racing, I grabbed the bright colored belts and pulled back.  My brother Joel woke up wide-eyed to watch the classic struggle between father and son unfolding in our bright blue, hero-themed bedroom.  From the other side of the room I could see the veins bulging in my dad’s meaty arms as he pulled on the belt-rope.  He leaned back toward the almost closed bathroom door, putting all his weight into the titanic tug of war.

            The bed creaked, my arms shook, and my whole bed was on the brink of collapse when suddenly, I let go of the rope.  With a yelp, my dad flew back, crashed through the open bathroom door, onto the cold tile floor.  Fuming, my dad stormed out of the room, and Joel and I went triumphantly back to sleep.

            “So how was Frisbee this morning?” I asked teasingly as my dad came home that morning. 

            “I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied.  I hoped my teasing would provoke some witty banter, or some acknowledgement of my morning glory.  My triumphant smirk faded, however, as I found sadness in his eyes, instead of the playful fire.

            The rest of the week went normally, which meant I didn’t see my dad very much.  I was sitting in seminary before the sun was even up, and most nights dad had bishop business after work, so I caught glimpses of him at dinnertime every once and a while.  The next Saturday I was shaken awake again.  I turned over ready to remind my dad of last week’s victory, but paused when I saw a glimmer of hope in his dark brown eyes.

            Reluctantly, I crawled out of bed and went with him to the field.  It was a gloriously miserable game of Frisbee.  Our socks and cleats were heavy with cold winter rain.  The slick mud made for beautiful sliding and diving catches, and rewarded the players with wet, muddy badges of honor for their heroic plays. As the game went on our hands grew stiff and unresponsive when we tried to close our fingers around the Frisbee.  After a while, the wind came and officially ended the game. 

            Soaked and shivering, my dad and I ran to the Jacuzzi at the community pool.  Entering the hot water felt like wadding into a pool of hot needles as our freezing skin came back to life.  As the steam rose around us, my dad and I reflected on the game.  We laughed as we relived some of the exceptional throws and critical catches.  Conversation gradually turned to school, seminary, and life in general. 

We knew it was time to go when our fingertips began to wrinkle like raisins.  Before we left my dad stopped me.  The mood became more serious, and instantly I thought I was in trouble.  On the contrary, my dad looked at me with eyes full of love and said, “I was thinking this week about things that I’m grateful for, and you were up there at the top of my list.  So I just wanted to let you know that, and say thank you for being such a great son.”

“Thanks dad!” I replied as we climbed out, dried off, and headed home.

            The rest of the week went normally, which meant I didn’t see my dad very much.  We both kept busy, and before I knew it, it was Friday night again.  Glancing at the Superman clock on my bookshelf, I hurried through nightly routine with superhuman speed.  Teeth brushed, pajamas on, I stepped around a pile of clothes, over the multicolored belt rope, and jumped in bed.  My pillowcase was soft and cool.  The bright red covers of my bed were comfy and inviting, but before I got too comfortable, I made sure to set an alarm for Saturday morning Frisbee with dad.