Good day! Or night! Or wherever in between! Sorry this email's being sent a day late.
I have some bullet points to fire at you. So....prepare to be hospitalized?
- We received transfer news on Sunday night! I'll be staying in Rancho Peñasquitos with Elder Meilstrup, so here goes round three! This is the first transfer where everything has stayed the same, and I'm quite content.
- I appreciate how familiar I've become with the ward and area, and there are things we set out to accomplish last transfer that still need more work. The entire Peñasquitos zone does have the challenge of struggling to find new people to teach, but this is well counterbalanced by just how dedicated the members here are to missionary work, between supporting us, reaching out to their friends, and using their Ward Mission Plans.
- More stuff about transfers: Elder Meilstrup is our new district leader! Also, Elder Moulton, who has been in my district for past couple transfers, is moving out of the zone and will be paired with Elder Hansen, my MTC companion! I'm now seeing that part of the fun with transfers is watching different missionaries meet each other when you know them separately.
- On Sunday, our Bishop hosted Ward MTC (a.k.a mission prep) to help the youth get acquainted with teaching gospel principles and start thinking about their missions. We got to help out with that, and there was such a strong spirit in the room, especially at the end. I really enjoyed talking with the youth afterward too, and the whole experience made me reflect on how much I appreciated attending mission prep before my mission. Those classes were honestly just as helpful as the MTC was.
- We had a very successful transfer of social media work! Elder Meilstrup and I were on the graphic design team responsible for making posts and stories for our mission Facebook page, and as a mission we got over a hundred more social media referrals than our previous transfer!
- A friend named Jeff asked for help loading his truck with the remnants of a monstrous tree he cut down in his backyard.
- We enjoyed talking with Jeff, and our casual conversation turned to several deeper topics, including what we believe God has in store for us following this life. Jeff hasn't ever been interested in receiving lessons, but I think what we said about the degrees of glory really resonated with him. Our final destination is not about being sorted into a category. It's about how close to God we want to be. Afterward, as we drove away, we saw some of Jeff's neighbors walking up to him. The next morning, he sent us a text saying we came up in their conversation, and he had given them our number!
- As we walked into a lesson with Brother and Sister Bush one evening, their cat came charging at us (well, charging in a leisurely sort of way). Brother Bush punctuated that with a "Get 'em, Kib!" And called her their attack cat. I asked about the name "Kib", and learned that the neighbor who they received the cat from had a little daughter who pronounced "kitty cat" "kibitty kabidit". This somehow caught on, and the cat was thusly named, Kibitty, or Kib for short. That got some chuckles out of us. Our lesson with them went really well and branched out into many discussions, from temple work to navy stories about triangulation. On one such tangent, we talked about the learning process we go through on missions, and I remarked, "I guess I never fully realized that feeling inexperienced is what makes you experienced in the end". Brother Bush replied, both ominously and insightfully, "That never stops. And though you're each facing difficulty right now, you're going to look back on this and miss how much easier it was. Always be grateful for what you have now."
- I went on exchanges to Rancho Bernardo, north of our area, and during a period of feeling discouraged while tracting and street contacting, I fell into the classic missionary pitfall of expecting rejection from people. But, right as we were heading off to a lesson, we passed by a man walking his dog. At first, we only greeted him and wished him a good evening. Then Elder Blake, my companion at the time, stopped, turned around, and told him we share messages about Jesus Christ. A conversation unfolded out of nowhere, and the man, who we learned was named Craig, opened up to us about his relationship with religion and his pursuit of drawing closer to Christ. He ended up accepting a Book of Mormon from me, heard our testimonies, and committed to reading the introduction. Often times you don't see tender mercies coming. This makes doubt a very difficult experience, but at the same time, it introduces a crucial hope. You never know when you're about to be thrust into the light. At any given moment, it is a possibility.
Companionship study on the grass |
The first half of the work load at Jeff's |
Truck fully loaded! (You may think my tag is crooked, but in actuality, it's perfectly level, and we, the camera, and the rest of the universe are tilted at an extreme angle.) |
Why am I using bullet points if I'm just going to write a full paragraph every time, you ask? I couldn't tell you. Maybe I'm just tricking my brain into thinking the task is smaller than it really is. Pretty handy, now that I think about it. May you find similar tricks to lighten your own tasks this week.
God be with you,
Elder Tolman
The sun hasn't stopped setting, so I have not stopped admiring it:
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