Elder Daniel Tolman: Chapter 24: Triple Zone Conference

Happy Pi Day! Hope you've had a good week! Here are some rapidfire bulletpoints:

We randomly drove by a giant pile of burning trash that filled the road in front of our local police station. It was right behind a garbage truck, and we're not sure what the story behind it is. The blocked road definitely caused some funky rerouting that day. We were basically doing laps around that area as we made our visits.

We went on exchanges with the Black Mountain elders on Friday and in one of our lessons I got to witness one of their friends express his belief in prophets when that had been a hang-up of his before. We also held a sports night that evening with the youth in both the Black Mountain and Rancho Peñasquitos wards. We'll be doing that weekly now and are excited to see the friends they invite.

In the past week, 2 youth in our ward have each given a Book of Mormon to their friends. They've absolutely blown us away with their dedication to sharing the gospel. We even got to meet one of those friends and answer a question they had about the Holy Ghost.

We had a huge breakthrough with a family in the ward we've been trying to connect with for some time!

Saturday was Elder Meilstrup's birthday. He got to call his twin brother (currently serving in Louisville, Kentucky) and we celebrated with IBC cream soda and Hawaiian pizza. The latter is simultaneously Elder Meilstrup's favorite and my archenemy. I committed to giving it another try, and barely escaped with my sanity. Jk, it's not that bad...maybe through sufficient meekness and diligent prayer I can learn to love it. See Moroni 8:26.

Sunday was a bit of a tragedy cause we were expecting two families at church and were super excited to see them grow closer to the other ward members, but one got sick and the other was thrown off by daylight savings.

On Sunday evening we went down to Chula Vista for a devotional with Elder Sabin of the Seventy. As a missionary choir, we sang I Stand All Amazed and a medley of How Great Thou Art and I Feel My Savior's Love, both of which we've been practicing for the past few weeks. Elder Sabin shared a lot of the same things I heard from him when he came came to our zone conference last year, but this time it was condensed down to 45 minutes instead of literal hours. It was cool getting a review of those insights and watching a new audience take the same things in. Between hearing from Elder Slaughter a couple weeks ago, our zone conference last week, and Elder Sabin's devotional, we've basically had 3 zone conferences this transfer. 😆

A friend of ours took us to Chipotle as a thank you for some service we've done for him!

We had an awesome district counsel yesterday. Elder Tausinga gave a training on finding new people to teach and viewing them as our brothers and sisters. As he quoted the scriptures during this training, there was a moment where it felt as though Christ were speaking through him. Christ's words hold the same power no matter who speaks them, so long as we seek Him through them. To add to that, Elder Meilstrup made strawberry pineapple crisp for everyone and we had a unique roleplay where we practiced teaching over facebook messenger, rather than doing a face-to-face scenario as usual.

We have had to take so many trips outside of our area this month that we've used over half our allotted miles in the first two weeks. We were about to give up all hope when one day we suddenly got a call from our vehicle coordinator saying that we were getting a new car! We triumphantly let go of all stress about miles, feeling a bit like Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie as he majestically steps off his sinking boat onto the dock. When we arrived at the mission office this morning to pick it up, we excitedly moved our stuff over to the brand new Nissan Rogue, and as we did so, the vehicle coordinator said "And be sure to move your mile log over as well." *tender mercy retracted* We sure are in dire straits now!

This is SO unusual, but there are gospel insights I want to share, and I'm very much out of time to do so. To keep it brief: God often speaks through a still small voice, and hearing this voice takes not only listening more intently, but boldy seizing onto any good thing that brings you closer to God, even if you don't intuitively recognize it as revelation. There are some important things I'd add to that, but that's the core of it. Sometimes intuition and profound feelings are enough to reveal the Lord's hand, but other times He waits on us to reach out with our agency. This is one of the most difficult things about having faith, and it's a battle I continue to fight.

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Photos:

All these are from a hike this morning. It was very refreshing!