A member of our stake has a pizza oven in his backyard which he made himself, so last p-day we got to make pizzas there. It blew my mind, cause they only take about 90 seconds to cook.
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| Pizza! |
That day also happened to be the bishop's birthday and he invited us to go driving around some nearby dunes. We spent quite a while trying to fix up a dune buggy, but in the end we just took his truck. Lots of wild (yet cautious) nyooming around. We caught some air at the end too.
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| Bishop Miles and a couple of his friends working on the buggy. |
Guess what? Some Jehovah's Witness missionaries visited us the other day XD. My companion and I were in the middle of personal study when I looked out the window and saw a couple well-dressed women walking up to our door. At first, I thought it was apartment inspections, but the moment my companion began to open the door, I suspected it was something else entirely. We had a friendly conversation with them and they said they admired what we were doing coming out here in our youth.
I discovered a really cool deeper meaning behind my name! It's almost a poem for the apostle Matthew's identity. Matthew was a tax collector, and was viewed as a traitor to his people. But despite this, the Savior saw his divine potential, and called him to be a teacher and to hold the priesthood despite his reputation. Now, my last name is Tolman, quite literally meaning "toll man", which is to say, tax collector. Not the best of titles, if you ask me. But my first name, Daniel, means "God is my judge". Just as Christ saw Matthew's worth in the midst of those who harshly judged him, I can value my standing before God more than my standing before man. The world is not my judge; God is my judge. And how will He judge me after all my shortcomings? My middle name is John, meaning "God is gracious".
Daniel John Tolman: God's grace allows a public traitor to turn upward and be judged worthy of apostleship. Thanks Mom and Dad!
On Saturday the whole zone gathered together with the members for breakfast and then split off for a "Blitz", where we invited every single inactive member we had records for to a devotional next Sunday. We missionaries will be singing a beautiful song called All Creation Speaks His Name there, which we've been practicing all transfer, so we're excited. For the blitz, I went on an exchange with President Clyde, a member of the mission presidency, up in Brawley, the northmost area in our zone. Elder McLean in turn went with President Merritt down in Calexico. Being farther north gave me some more English opportunities, which was great, and President Clyde is very energetic and encouraging. He served his mission in Argentina, same as my dad, sister, uncle and cousin. As we reconvened for lunch, some of the other missionaries got me rattling on about Shakespeare, and I discovered that Hermana Neves, a member of my district, is the granddaughter of the founder of the Utah Shakespeare Festival! Her parents help run it! That had me absolutely fanboying. "I loved your grandpa!!!"
Sacrament meeting attendance went from 65 for the primary program back down to the 30's for the past couple weeks. This made me really sad, though of course it's a comfort to discover that 30 people can invite the spirit just as well as 300 can. It is hard to have a strong support system with so few though. I've felt immense gratitude for the enormous wards I've seen or been a part of back at home. Only now do I realize what a miracle they are. By extension, when I think of other missions in the world that struggle to even get 10 people to gather on Sunday, I think of what a blessing the faithful members in Calexico are. At least we have a dedicated bishop, and 3 young men to help with the sacrament, and a wonderful primary president, and so on, and so on.
Wednesday was filled with the wonders of second tries.
- We attempted to visit a friend named Marlen, but we got no response at her door. Normally that means we'd try again a different day since we have so many people to get to, but I was really hoping to see her cause we'd had a promising contact with her the week before, so I asked Elder McLean if we could come back later that evening after some other visits. When we returned, voila, she was home! And she was willing to hear a mini lesson at the door!
- Later, we were sitting in our car preparing for a visit when a guy in a dark hoodie tapped on our window and asked if we could give him a ride to pick up his bike. We had to say no due to mission rules, and he said goodbye before we could strike up more of a conversation. As he left I thought "Oh man, did we just miss an opportunity?" Following our visit, we got back in the car, only to hear a tapping on our window again. He had returned. When we rolled the window down, he asked us if we knew where he could buy a Tesla. Yes, you read that correctly. We couldn't offer much help as far as car shopping goes, but we got to talk with him more and found out that missionaries had met with his family when he was younger. We got his address and have since been able to visit him and his sister!
- Finally, after we had returned to our apartment, we decided to give our friend Rudy a call. I mentioned him a few weeks ago; he was a guy we miraculously ran into as he visited Calexico due to a tragedy in his family (We followed up with him later and discovered that he read Alma 40!). So I dialed him up, but he didn't answer. We normally call everyone twice just in case, but it was pretty late in the evening and we had unsuccessfully tried to call him pretty recently, so I got really worried that we were only bugging him. But, just as I was about to move on, I thought "aah, I'm going for it" and called again. This time he answered! We got to check in on him, invite him to read more and pray, and ask him what blessings he needed us to pray for for him. He expressed a lot of appreciation to us for keeping in touch. Third second try of the day!
I have a grand tale to tell you all, and it begins in the MTC store several weeks back. Each week there, we were given a little bit of pocket change to spend on extra supplies or snacks, and I hadn't spent any of mine yet. Elder Hansen and I were taking a look around the MTC store when I decided to buy a hardcover Book of Mormon to get a fresh start on marking scriptures. As we left, we started talking about how it was also a good idea to have an extra Book of Mormon on us for our flight out into the field in case we found an opportunity to share it with someone. I thought "huh, maybe this purchase won't be for me after all".
At the airport and on the plane, I let my timidity and the anticipation of my mission get the better of me, and didn't end up finding an opportunity to give the copy away. Once I began proselyting, extra copies of the Book of Mormon became commonplace, but my MTC copy felt special, firstly because I bought it myself, and secondly because it was a hardcover, whereas the copies provided for us to hand out are paperback. I resolved that it would be the first Book of Mormon I would hand out in my mission (makes me think of The Polar Express when Santa shouts "The first gift of Christmas!!" Just substitute the bell for a Book of Mormon, I guess).
Now, I've mentioned in previous emails that the work here in Calexico has been a struggle. To put that in Book of Mormon terms, in my first 3 weeks, we managed to hand out a grand total of 3 copies, all of them in Spanish. I carried my copy wherever we went, sometimes thinking "today is the day", but to no avail. This past Thursday morning, we finally had the opportunity to sit down with a nonmember and teach a full lesson! I got to teach a good portion of it, which felt fantastic. However, we had planned on having Elder McLean extend the invitation to read the Book of Mormon at the end, so it was his that we ended up giving away.
Afterward we planned on going to a park to do companion and language study, but it was super windy, so we decided to go to the SDSU library instead. As we sat there reading from Preach My Gospel, it struck me just how simply and beautifully the authors lay out the gospel of Jesus Christ there, and I began secretly hoping that someone would overhear us and ask us about it. God basically told me "I'll do you one better", because no one overheard us, but a bit later a young man saw us, walked right up to us, and began asking about our belief in God. Pretty soon, he launched into an in-depth discussion about Christ-like figures in Greek and Roman mythology, the parallels between different cultures' beliefs, classical literature, and the second coming of Christ. My liberal arts high school brain lit up (Paradigm!!!). But it gets better.
As we discussed Christianity, he mentioned that he thought it was interesting that the Bible was written about one specific people–the Jews, and he wondered whether God had prepared that same gospel for other nations. I told him He has!! And that in these times He is gathering together all people to be one in Christ, and that He prepared the Book of Mormon to accomplish this work. Then I whipped out my hardcover and opened to the title page where it says "Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile…And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations." When he heard that he said "Gentile! That's the word I was looking for." It still gets better.
The discussion drove on and we circled back to Christ-like figures in history, and how great men can have a form of godliness in them. He pulled out a book about Cyrus the Great and started talking about his amazing qualities in scriptural terms, and how he freed the Jews. And then it clicked in my brain. "Hang on," I said, "Cyrus, who freed the Jews from their captivity following the invasion of Jerusalem?? The Book of Mormon prophesies that!! The fall of Jerusalem is where it all begins!" The book our friend held was directly intertwined with what we were sharing with him. It still gets better.
Our new friend proceeded to explain that he is a former Catholic, that his life recently took a drastic turn because of signs God has been giving him, and that he's been having revelatory, even prophetic experiences (some of the stuff he was talking about was pretty out there). For this reason he's been reading a lot about Christianity, looking for someone to talk to about it and perhaps a church to attend. He said the day before, he went to that very library hoping to run into someone, but didn't find who he was looking for. So, he tried again the next day and…there we were. After all we had told him, he showed a keen interest in the Book of Mormon and asked where he could get one. I looked down at the copy I had been carrying around for the past 3 weeks, told him I bought it in the hopes that I would some day give it to someone who cares deeply about what it says, and then slid it over to him. He accepted it and promised he would read it! There honestly could not have been a more perfect person for me to give that special copy to. Our lessons with him get pretty wildly off-topic, but he has an incredible mind and love for God, and he made it to church on Sunday!
Thursday as a whole was a miracle day for me and Elder McLean. We did actually see it coming because of all the plans we made for that day in the week leading up, but many of the blessings were still unexpected. Some of our exciting plans fell through, only to be replaced by more exciting coincidences. One of our lessons threatened to fall through, then blessedly worked out. That was our friend Lalo. Super friendly guy.
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| Our friend Lalo |
We planned on having a lesson with him for that evening and confirmed with him in the morning, but when we came to his door, no one answered. We knocked, rang his 2 doorbells, waited in the car trying to call and text him, passed some time by making other calls, knocked one last time, and then tragically started to drive back to our neighborhood. Maybe about a minute into our drive, he called us back, declaring that he was home, and that he just got out of the shower. Delighted, we returned and had a great lesson (in English! Elder Tolman's favorite candy!) where he told us his incredible journey of repentance, overcoming hopelessness, and holding fast to the Bible. At the end, he happily accepted a Book of Mormon from us and committed to reading about Christ in 3 Nephi 11 and meeting with us again. That day, we handed out the same number of Book of Mormons as we did in our first 3 weeks. I also got to teach lessons rather than just smiling and nodding! That felt great. It was honestly the first time I felt genuine joy in doing this work, and like I had a grasp of what exactly we're doing out here.
I was a little worried that all that momentum would die down on Friday, especially because President and Sister Merritt were coming out to the Valley that day for zone conference and interviews, which would take a huge chunk out of that day. Plus, a lesson we were looking forward to ended up cancelling, and an activity we had planned with a nonmember friend ended up falling through. But nonetheless, we were able to schedule a same-day lesson with another friend, taught him the restoration, and did some great tracting in conjunction with nonmember visits that evening. By the end of the day, we had handed out 3 more Book of Mormons with plans to follow up with 3 more friends.
Alright, there's plenty more I could add, but that'll do it! Thanks for reading to the end. This week was just such a dramatic contrast from the first half of the transfer, and I wanted to record the miracles in detail. Finally having the chance to actually start teaching people and have a hand in their journey closer to God has helped me grow more invested in this area and have hope for the future. After a lot of pressing forward feeling a little useless at times, it feels like God has been paying me back by letting opportunities fall into my lap. I hope you can endure to find the same blessings in your life.
God be with you,
Elder Tolman
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| Palm trees make the houses here look so picturesque. |
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| Border traffic. EVERYONE heads down to Mexicali before the weekend. |
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| That cat darts out from under our car every morning when we start the engine. |
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| We've been getting some beautiful sunsets. And God made them for us! "Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart." D&C 59:18 |
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