Elder Daniel Tolman: Chapter 21: The Father of Lights

A spectacular Tuesday to you! Here's the latest episode of Time Seems to Have Lost All Meaning. Contrasting the final weeks of last transfer, this week has gone by a lot slower, and I can't really say why. I feel like my brain just flips a coin after each P-day to decide how it's going to perceive the day to day progression. I suppose that does provide some contrast in how I reflect on my time here. Sometimes my memory gives me a condensed view of the week as a whole, while other times I can look back on individual sprawling days.

As far as the content of the week goes, things have been pretty good. No sudden momentum in nonmember lessons, but we've had some cool opportunities all throughout. We also set up exchanges with each member of our district and got the first pair of them done with the Rancho Bernardo Elders this past Saturday and Monday. I went up to their area both times and bade our car goodbye. RB is small enough that though they have bikes, they prefer to walk everywhere and focus on street contacting along the way. That's always a refreshing change from RPQ, cause between studies, driving, and lessons, we sure do spend a lot of time sitting, which is only broken up by a little time walking around parks and between doorsteps.

On the first exchange, Elder Cox and I were sitting down at a park to start a brief companionship study when a member walked up to us and asked if we wanted play baseball with her kids. We said absolutely and walked with her over to a nearby baseball field where her son and 2 daughters were waiting, all of them elementary school age. She proclaimed "I've recruited some Elders!" and we spent the next part of the afternoon hitting over-dramatized homeruns and turning a blind eye to everyone's numerous strikes. It was lots of chaotic fun. A pleasant little highlight before the main chunk of our proselyting time. I spent part of the walk to our next destination learning some baseball lingo from Elder Cox, who played in high school.

Getting to go on a another exchange to the same area just a couple days later was a cool opportunity, cause it provided some second chances. Elder Cox and Elder Blake had been trying to reach their progressing friends Tristan and Maya for a while, and we stopped by their place on Saturday evening with no answer. BUT on Monday evening, right at the end of the day when we were playing the "hmm, we should probably head home about now....ooor we could knock another door" game, we were in their same apartment complex and decided to swing by once again. They were home! We had such a fun conversation with them and we got bit more info about their schedules so they could meet Elder Cox, who was in RPQ at the time. Speaking of which, I gotta say I'm a little jealous of the stuff going on in RPQ when I was away. They had an awesome service opportunity that we spontaneously set up with a member Sunday night literally as we were heading out of a lesson with them. A tiny downside of exchanges is not seeing the payoff of events you set up. I also missed out on a long anticipated lesson with Brother King on Saturday and then again Monday.😢 I'm certainly glad they happened though!

Ok, one other thing from that Monday exchange. We had a dinner lesson with a member who served in the Tokyo South mission and was also into anime, and he shared a pretty funny set of experiences as a result. Every time his favorite shows would depict Tokyo, he was literally watching an anime version of his mission! He talked about various moments where he would think something like, "Wait, that library in the background....we did studies there!" The idea of watching a story play out in an animated version of areas where you've proselyted is just super disorienting to me.😆 On a different note, I'm still feeling spiritual aftershocks from the topic of that lesson. We discussed how the first principle of the gospel is faith, but not just faith as a general concept. Specifically, faith in Jesus Christ. We read the account of Christ walking on water in Matthew 14, and how it was Peter's focus on Christ that allowed him to step out on the water too. Peter didn't just say "I want to walk on water, and I believe I can do it!" As we read in verses 28 and 29, his express purpose is to draw closer to Christ. In Moroni's discussion on faith in Ether 12, he lists various examples of miracles throughout the scriptures and points to faith as the means by which they were worked. But in verse 18, he expounds on what exactly he means by faith. "And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God." Straightforward? Yes. To be taken for granted? Not at all! We use faith everywhere in life, but the message of the gospel is that the most powerful place to rest it is in Jesus Christ.

We got to help set up for a service project with Days for Girls at the stake center, and it's been really cool seeing each new event increase in scale. Rather than having a few groups of tables here and there like last time, the gym was absolutely FILLED with them by the time we were done. Various expanded stations for materials, sewing machines, sergers, quality control, and so on. Nearly a hundred people made it that evening to help assemble feminine kits, and there was a pretty good nonmember presence as well! The event was not specifically run by the church, but Sister Bush took special care to arrange the layout so people would pass by pictures of Christ as they entered, as opposed to prior layouts that had people enter through the church kitchen for convenience. It was a great subtle way to bring the Savior to the forefront of peoples' minds as they, knowingly or unknowingly, accomplished His work. We weren't involved in the actual project since the Days for Girls organization is modeled around women and girls joining together to support other women and girls, but we appreciate being able to contribute in our own way with each new event. Sounds like they anticipate around 300 people at the next one!

That same evening was a memorable one for us. We had a dinner lesson set up with Bishop Hilton's family, but he unfortunately couldn't be there due to a meeting. Since we're not allowed to enter someone's home without another man present, we ended up having dinner with the rest of the Hiltons in their backyard, with ribbits from a nearby pond providing some nice ambience.

The next day as we did visits between lessons, we dropped by an absolutely awesome member family to see if we could liberate a youth for an important upcoming lesson. We pulled up to their house and as we stood by the driveway doublechecking something in the area book, Sister Crowther came out to greet us. She teaches seminary and was the mastermind behind that awesome airplane lesson I mentioned a couple months ago. We've continued to let her know we love participating in classes like that, and as we talked with her, for whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind was to ask again if she needed any help with seminary, even though our primary purpose for visiting was different. She replied with a, "Yes actually! Would you be available tomorrow morning?" Apparently we caught her at a time when that exact topic was on her mind. She would be teaching two classes combined into one and planned to divide the students into discussion groups, but was a little concerned about running all of them singlehandedly. It worked out perfectly! We headed out bright and early the next morning and got to go from discussion group to discussion group, helping the students deep dive into scriptures and teach each other about them. We also had the opportunity to share a couple of our own insights, and Elder Meilstrup shared something he's told me about before, but it felt especially powerful in the moment.

A hasty picture as we walked out of seminary

His favorite name for Jesus Christ comes from James 1:17. The Father of Lights. Not light (singular), though that's also true (He is the Light and the Life of the world, and our source of light), but lights. This could be interpreted in multiple ways. For example, there is considering the various forms of light we see and knowing He is behind them all. But I especially love when you combine this with Abinadi's insight that Christ, in a way, is our Father (Mosiah 15:2-3). He is the Father of Lights, and He stands as a Father figure to us. So what does that mean about us? We are the lights to which that title refers.

Our ward's primary president invited us to join the junior and senior primary classes on Sunday! We helped out with a couple of the activities, sang with the kids (there are few things better than jumping up to Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam in missionary attire, tie and clip-on tag flying about), and got to share simple testimonies about how we shine our light as missionaries. My invitation to the kids was to shine their light by smiling at everyone they pass. It's something I sometimes need to be better about too, and though small, it can work as a tender mercy in anyone and everyone's day. I'll extend the same invitation to you!

I have a really cute story to share with you from a lesson that evening, but I'll have to promise to throw it in my next weekly, cause I'm out of time!

Final tidbit: we got to attend the temple this morning! I had a LOT to think about in the Celestial room after the new presentation of the endowment. We also ran into two youth from our ward there bright and early at 5 AM to do baptisms. And two ward members happened to be in our same session!