I've renewed my focus on personal betterment. I can't control this mission. I can't control the members. But with focus on and a submission to what God wants me to become, casting aside all doubts, I know that I'll be able to fulfill what he sent me here to do. I will grow. I will adapt. I will succeed. I just have to learn to put everything that I am in God's hands...
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Mazeltov everybody.
Not a ton of time, but this week will be a bit more biographical in view of last week's impassioned plea.
The week opened up with a bathhouse excursion to finish out my p-day. They had saunas and pools and nude, elderly Korean men of all shapes and sizes. It was pretty relaxing stuff. It was a comfortable change from every day missionary work in that I was relaxed, tagless, and had a lesson. Met the most ancient of men and talked to him about the Restoration and Plan of Salvation. We built a bond that can't really be built any other way than having two guys that can't talk to each other talk naked about modern prophets in a hot tub. Unfortunately, we had to refer him away, so not a new investigator.
We might have picked one up though. One of the guys that attends our English class talked with us for a half hour or so about religious things after class this week. His name is Jake and he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He thinks deeply, like me, skeptically, like me, and wears a hat in such a way that we can never see his face, less like me. He told us that he actually had been coming (since long before I got here) primarily out of interest in our church. He's more into worldly fixes to problems (politics, economics, and what not), but he's interested in and curious about God, who he believes in. Pretty open minded. So we talked with him about some questions he's been having and he said that he would think deeply about our answers and consider strongly meeting with us in a more missionary setting. So score one for the Republic.
Our diabetic investigator has taken an interesting turn. We met with him again and had a pretty unfocused (his bad --- we generally don't introduce the topic of American superiority as part of the first lesson) discussion about the first lesson. We didn't make it through, but things seemed fine until the next day. We were halfway through language study when Elder Coats (my companion) received a call from an angry old lady of questionable relationship who lives with him. Said call escalated from a personal request to stay away, to a claim that we had incited him to do things that aren't conducive to health with his condition (something about bread?), to her screaming for about twenty minutes straight and threatening us with the cops if we ever contacted him again. After we hung up on her, we got a call from his less crazy 23 year old daughter who delivered a similar threat. We've never talked to either of them before, and neither of them had talked to our investigator before hand. In fact, we're pretty sure he doesn't have a clue about what happened.
So that whole situation is a bit weird right now. I'll let you know how it goes next week.
Spiritual thought for today is an invitation to study the symbolic application of the Jaredites getting ready to leave (Ether Chapter 2) and crossing the ocean (Ether Chapter 6) story. I learned a ton from it, even before my mission. I usually focus a lot on the stones incident (Ether Chapter 3) and what those mean, but studying through it this time, I found that their preparation, travel method, and course had a lot of application in understanding life and the plan of salvation. One thing I'll point out, briefly, is that the way that they traveled was based on a total surrender of control. The barges didn't have any way to control where they were going, so they had to rely on the Lord to bring them safely to their destination. And he did. Though it wasn't an easy trip (they were stuck in those things for almost a year), God never ceased to push them towards where he wanted them to be.
I've renewed my focus on personal betterment. I can't control this mission. I can't control the members. But with focus on and a submission to what God wants me to become, casting aside all doubts, I know that I'll be able to fulfill what he sent me here to do. I will grow. I will adapt. I will succeed. I just have to learn to put everything that I am in God's hands.
Wish me luck.
Whitlock out.
