Another transfer begins! I'll be staying in Imperial Beach with Elder Rhodes! Not what we were expecting, but we're rollin' with it. Elder Rhodes only has a couple transfers left in his mission and he's been here for the past two, so we were pretty convinced someone was going to be swapping him out, but nay! That had us cancelling some farewell visits we were planning to make to a few families. False alarm! We did still get together at the Riders' to give Sister Snow a send-off since she's headed up to La Jolla. Imperial Beach will miss her, members and missionaries alike :(. BUT, a brand new missionary will be arriving in her place, so we're excited to meet her and get her acquainted with our inside jokes!
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| Ward FHE ("The Wisdom Club") |
Also at the Riders', for this week's dinner, they gave us the opportunity to cook! They had us tell them the ingredients we needed and we showed up ready to impress. The mission has been a great opportunity to learn some new recipes (courtesy of my mother of course!), so I had a Tuscan Cream Chicken recipe in mind, and it didn't end up being a horrifying catastrophe! In fact, I found myself subject to much flattery afterward (see Jacob 7:4)! Which is to say, they liked it! Elder Rhodes came out swinging with his peanut butter bars, and they were divine. I may have eaten 3 1/2....I should not have eaten 3 1/2....
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| Dinner at the Riders' |
Beyond losing one of our missionaries, there was another tragic transfer...our car! Our zone exceeded its allotted miles last transfer and mission cars are a little scarce right now, so we're back to using bikes. I'm excited about the sheer novelty since this will be my first time biking in the mission, but we're definitely concerned about productivity. Some of the lessons we have require a 40+ minute ride, so a lot of time normally spent contacting and finding will instead be spent on travel. What's more, the other elders in our apartment complex were also switched over to bikes, so we can't ask them for favors. We'll probably be mixing up how our area is run over the next week so the Sisters can cover more families that live on the far ends of the area. This will be an adventure.
As for the week as a whole, it feels very long looking back, and accordingly I think we got a fairly good amount done. We had a final whiteboard finding session on the pier as an Imperial Beach quad, lots of lessons with members--active and inactive, and kept up our routine meetings with Ariel and Francisco.
We taught Ariel the Word of Wisdom, which was my first time teaching that particular commandment outside of role plays, so it was rewarding. I appreciate being able to start with a fundamental doctrine and then let principles and applications spring forth from it. We began by talking about how we should treat the gifts we are given, then taught that our bodies are gifts from God, and should be given the reverence of a gift. Then we introduced the idea that the spirit dwells in us just as it dwells in a temple, and discussed the specific commandments we were given regarding how we should nourish our bodies. Though there are some specific practices we follow almost solely on the basis that God asked us to, the ideas in the word of wisdom flow from one to another so naturally. For this reason I am immensely grateful for the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet and the way it presents the standards we follow. Begin with truth and show how it connects to applications.
Francisco continues to tell us some wild stories and fun facts relating to his job as a night shift police officer. While not the most reverent of topics before a lesson, we're always asking him more questions about it, and it has a unique way of putting what we teach into perspective. We live in a fallen world where injustice and suffering are very real. Francisco has witnessed that to a greater extent than Elder Rhodes and I probably ever will. But our hope is not a naïve one. Our hope, by design, shines into the most profound darkness. We focused on this topic in our final District Council. What came to my mind from that discussion was that hope is joy in future tense. Our faith points to an eventual joy that is eternal, complete, and perfect. Is it any wonder that the hope we are admonished to have isn't subject to the flickering uncertainty of our mortal condition, but is instead described as a perfect brightness (2 Nephi 31:20)? This striking contrast adds to the privilege of teaching Francisco--watching his faith grow in these things despite what is constantly before his eyes. I don't want to put words into his mouth, but consider this testimony, "I know all injustices will be made right, and the injustices I have seen are neither tame nor few." It's the same hope Mormon, Moroni, and Ether each proclaimed as they watched the destruction of their people. It still exists today.
Francisco also told us that his testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown as he's seen more ways it goes hand in hand with the Bible, so we've had a good time upping our game with the daily verses we'll text him. We now do a Book of Mormon verse and then a parallel Bible verse to go with it.
Thursday was May the Fourth, a.k.a. Star Wars day, and we had dinner scheduled with a family featuring four notoriously rambunctious kids. In light of the occasion, we decided to have a bit of fun with the lesson and made it Star Wars themed. We walked through each step of the gospel of Jesus Christ and used examples from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away to explain them. Luke's reliance on the force over his targeting computer related to faith. Darth Vader's redemptive arc related to repentance. The commitment of the Jedi Code related to baptism. The incredible influence of the Force related to the Gift of the Holy Ghost. And the importance of progressing from Padawan to Jedi Master and staying vigilant against the Dark Side related to enduring to the end. It was an animated lesson! Want to know the kicker? They had never seen Star Wars before! 😆😆😆 But nonetheless, they were able to recount some of the events and characters to us. It's pretty incredible how much of our storytelling is modeled after the life and doctrine of Christ, often times without even meaning to. This is a whole tangent, but I'll save some time by inviting you to search on YouTube for the LightBreaksForth channel and watch the video on Evangelium. My cousin expounds on this idea beautifully.
During the weekend we got to do some service for the family member of a friend the Sisters are teaching. He collects various kinds of palm trees and ferns, and his yard is quite the exotic jungle. He needed help cleaning up a bunch of trimmings, and my goodness, the spines on some of those things poked through our jeans and gloves like they weren't even there!
Saturday and Sunday were Stake Conference. We had so many fantastic speakers, including a youth from our ward (who Elder Rhodes and I have dubbed... *Snape voice* "our new celebrity"). Our Stake President kind of reminds me of Neil A. Maxwell as he talks, and I was struck by how in tune with the congregation's needs he was. President and Sister Merritt also spoke during the adult session, and afterward we tried unsuccessfully to pry transfer information out of President a day early (it comes out the Sunday evening prior to transfers...although, on that topic, from now on transfers will be done on Fridays instead of on P-day, so the Sunday night email might change).
I was searching for something on the church's website earlier this week when I came across a cool little article on the Tabernacle Choir blog. I wanted to end by sharing it, cause it sheds some light on the underlying meaning of a word we use on a daily basis.
"While the evolution of “goodbye” isn’t as dramatic of a shift in meaning as the previous examples, it has quite an interesting background. The first known use of the word “goodbye” was recorded in 1573 in a letter by English writer and scholar, Gabriel Harvey, which reads: “To requite your gallonde [gallon] of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes.”" “Godbwye” is a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye.” Throughout the years the word “good” was substituted for “God” due to the influence of phrases such as “good day” or “good evening.”
"The hymn “God Be With You Till We Meet Again”, which was written by Jeremiah Rankin, was composed so his church choir could have something to sing when they parted each week. Rankin said this about the hymn, “Written…as a Christian goodbye, it was called forth by no person or occasion, but was deliberately composed as a Christian hymn on basis of the etymology of “goodbye,” which is “God be with you.” He got the idea for the first stanza of the song when he saw the dictionary definition of "good-bye" was short for "God be with you." The song was written in 1882 when Rankin was 54 years old."
So, goodbye for now!
Elder Tolman
Photos:
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| Someone one the beach was unleashing massive bubbles and they drifted in our direction as we walked away from the pier. I didn't get very good pictures, but it was picturesque nonetheless. |
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