Week 44

What's up,

Outside of a little bit of travel, was a pretty average week for us. Not fantastic but not horrible, so I guess can't complain. Hope all of you had a good week and are doing alright. 

As I said, we started off the week with some travel. Even though it was only the first week of our transfer, we had zone conference this week so that we could have one more zone conference with our current mission President before he leaves this Saturday. We headed to the airport Wednesday morning for our flight that was supposed to be at 10am, but when we printed off our boarding passes for the flight it said our flight was leaving at 5:25. We had tried to get on a few earlier flights, but ultimately we ended up being in the airport basically all day. Our flight at 5 only took us part of the way to the city we were going to as well. At that point, our connecting flight then got cancelled so we were in the airport even longer, just in a different airport. We finally ended up arriving after 9, which made us miss all of that night of the zone conference. Which was annoying but it is what it is I guess. The zone conference the next day was super awesome. There were definitely some emotional parts with it being our current mission President's last. I have a huge amount of love and even more respect for him, and I am pretty certain that is how basically every missionary in the mission views him. Definitely is super sad to see him go, and definitely a bit scary to see how the new one will be. 

We ended up flying back on Friday morning, and right when we got back we went home and changed our clothes and then jumped right back in the car and headed out to help work on the farm of one of the member's in our branch. She currently has 2 farms, and has now decided to sell one of them, so there is a lot that needs to be done to clean it up and such so that it is ready to be sold. I'm honestly not sure she fully knows what she is doing, but we just show up and do what she tells us and I'm glad we can be of any help to her. We ended up being there for like 6 hours. The first few hours of that was literally just dumping rotten potatoes out of a bunch of crates down a hill, and then scrubbing down all of the crates. Which was actually so nasty because a lot of the potatoes had just become mush and literally just smelled like dog poo bruh. The last few hours we set up makeshift tables with the washed out crates, and then just put a bunch of random stuff she has and wants to sell out on the tables. I'm not joking when I say I could have made fun of basically every single item I grabbed. Not sure how the selling of most of those items is going to go, but once again, just happy we can help her in any way she wants us to. 

Between Saturday and Monday we had 3 appointments with Muslim guys. Until the last few weeks, I haven't discussed faith with Muslim people much at all, so it has definitely been interesting and enjoyable in many aspects. Obviously it is not the absolute best when we are looking for people who are interested in learning more about Jesus Christ, His gospel, and His church, but I am still grateful for the conversations I had with all of these guys, and that I have had with Muslim people over the last few weeks. All 3 of the guys are people who are just interested in learning about our beliefs for the purpose of being educated on many different religious perspectives. All three guys were very friendly and respectful. Unfortunately one of the appointments was not very respectful, as this random guy that knows that missionaries in this city walked up and just sat down and joined one of the appointments, and then proceeded to just argue with us and bash us and not let the guy we were meeting with ask any questions. But besides that all of the appointments were all very friendly, even if the people are not interested in growing a relationship with Christ. 

The highlight for the week for me in terms of missionary work was an appointment we had yesterday. It was with the guy I talked about last week that came to church and after the first time meeting with us said he wanted to start meeting 2 times a week. He didn't reply to us for the whole first half of the week so I was pretty convinced that he was just done with us because I'm pretty used to that as a missionary, but he ended up texting us back towards the end of the week, and then after more inconsistent replying we were able to meet up with him yesterday. Man is he a rambler, but it was still enjoyable. I looked over and my companion was just completely asleep after all the rambling haha. But within the rambling he said some cool stuff that makes me hopeful and excited about teaching him. He explained how he grew up going to church with his family and such, but how he never knew it was true for himself or had a personal relationship with God. He told us the only times he remembers praying in his life was when he was trying to get a highly coveted job or get into a prestigious university. But now, after he has completed university, he said he has a "craving" to grow his personal relationship with God and gain the power that comes from that. Always really cool to hear stuff like that. We couldn't get in many words, so I knew whatever I was to say had to be worth something. I was really trying to listen to the spirit and think about what would be best to say, and all that was popping in my head was the Book of Mormon, so we explained that to him and how it can be a blessing in his life. We plan to meet with him on Friday to keep up with the 2 times a week he wants :).

I struggled thinking of any sort of spiritual thought this week. With that being said, I tried to break it down very simply in my head to what the biggest thing I learned in the last week was, or even what one significant thing was that I learned in the last week. And I think this week that came from our zone conference. There were definitely a few different themes of the conference, but I feel like one of the big things was just an overall motivation to be diligent and be intentional in every single thing we do. Our mission President's presentation was about "checking your form" and "assessing your drift", things that I think are so applicable to average everyday life and not just missionary work. I think it honestly just comes down to being aware of yourself as a person and your current state and progress in the many areas in your life. If we are able to be humble and notice that we are slipping or "drifting" in certain areas, we are then able to make the needed adjustments to be back on track. Like I said, I think this is very applicable in every area of life, but I think it is especially applicable spiritually. President Nelson, as well as other church leaders, have talked repeatedly about the idea of spiritual momentum, essentially making sure you are always having positive spiritual growth rather than negative spiritual regression. That is a concept that I feel I have experienced personally since I have been on my mission. I've personally come to know on my mission that you are always in one of two camps when it comes to your spirituality: growth or regression. I personally don't believe there is much of an in between. Obviously in our imperfection, we simply are not always going to be in a state of spiritual growth, but I think it is important to always be intentional in our strive for that. For whatever reason, I feel like I have not had a lot of spiritual growth in the last month or so. When I think about a solution for this, I think about the small simple actions that take place in my day to day and how related or unrelated those are to Christ. It doesn't directly connect, but I love the application of this quote to this topic: 

"Good habits are not acquired simply by making good resolves, though the thought must precede the action. Good habits are developed in the workshop of our daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct our lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life. They are acquired by practice"

To me, this connects in the sense that as we change small actions each day to be more focused on Jesus Christ, or simply just to be slightly more diligent in whatever area of life it is, that we can then build strong momentum and avoid regression and drift. I'm not sure how much of anything I wrote just made sense, but simply put, my goal for myself this week is to be intentional in what I am doing in the small moments of freetime each day. Am I doing something that is productive, or building my relationship with Christ? Or is my time being wasted on something that is not a good use of time? I think when we can all ask ourselves that question, we can begin to have growth in all areas of life. It's easier to see growth by having 1% improvement in numerous areas rather than a large percentage of improvement in only one area. 

Lyric: "Besides I'm never giving time to what doesn't matter"

-Kofi Stone

(The pics of the overview of the city were at midnight😃)