*clears throat pompously *
*throat...still is not clear*
*tries to clear throat again*
*erupts into coughs and splutters before focusing again through watery eyes on a perplexed audience*
We're off to a great start.
Hello! If you're among the 1-2 people reading this, I commend you. You've passed the test. That test of course being:
"Oof, chapter 48 is...11 pages long. I'll add that to my reading list and maybe get to it eventually."
And then,
"Hey look, chapter 49 came out! Well, once I'm past chapter 48, I'll be sure to catch up."
*chapter 49 and all proceeding chapters are tHusLy never opened*
Therefore, I'm assured that those of you remaining are the truly courageous ones. Those who will endure even the most terrible of afflictions in order to press forward. Well done, good warrior. Well done.
And on that note, did I just create the equivalent of 2 Nephi's Isaiah chapters in my letters?
Yes.
And I will take a bow. 😏
Another week, another email! That's a principle I'll work to keep, anyway. Like journaling, these are a great time for reflection and honestly serve a role in helping me feel like I'm focused and on-track in what I do. That'll be helpful in the coming weeks, cause blah!, it's shaping up to be a crazy year. Throughout the latter half of last year I mostly felt like I was drifting, and it was a pretty ugly looking low point--a partial explanation for my radio silence.
Now though, with some added traction from new responsibilities, craziness at the Global Services Department, and a secret diabolical project of mine, momentum has PICKED UP. It has lately felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day, and not enough days in the week, cause there's SO MUCH to do and ALL of it's important.
--> When I make this comment out loud, I'm told this feeling will persist for the remainder of my mortal experience 😑
Ah well. All this is to say, Elder Bednar's teachings on loads offering traction are ringing true right now. Remember that video?
As I hurtle through time and deadlines though, is everything coming along nicely? Nope. We ain't flying, we're falling with style. But style sure makes a difference, and boy is it meaningful.
As I mentioned last week, our missionary media team at the GSD has partnered with employee internal communications to help lighten their load, and in that little change there is a whole world of service to be done. We're essentially honorary members of the Employee Experience Team, which is a combination of HR and communications. It only consists of a few people, so I'm getting to know them better with each new week, and they are just amazing. It is such a loving, gospel centered team dynamic, and they have been so welcoming to us missionaries who suddenly hopped onboard.
The missionary media team consists of the newsletter team, the video project team, and the communications team with odd assignments scattered here and there. I fall into that last section, so it's me and another missionary named Elder Lee who are joining the employees. Elder Lee just happens to be partway through a communications degree, and we are actively getting work experience in department communications, so this is perfect for him. It's also making me really conflicted about switching my major. *screams internally*
Elder Lee and I got to attend an Employee Experience Team off-site training / meeting, which took up our entire day of service, but it was absolutely spectacular! It was this past Wednesday, so Valentine's treats were passed around and decorations were appropriately themed. Here's a cool thing: we held it in the Conference Center media room! That's a room with a window looking into the auditorium for the translation and broadcasting people to do their thang during General Conference and other events. It was quite an experience talking through various matters for hours with the iconic sight of the organ just right there the whole time.
Elder Lee and I with our supervisor Matt in the Conference Center media room.
During the meeting, Jeff--the managing director of our department--talked with us about the direction he wanted our team to take, Emily--the communications specialist we work directly with--gave a powerful training on vulnerability and its necessity in our work, and during other portions of the meeting, Elder Lee and I got to give input on how to increase involvement with missionaries. As Elder Lee said, the Spirit was present though the whole meeting. My goodness we love those people, and my GREATness we've got some work to do.
Oh, by the way, we were served lunch there in the media room! 5 star service!
Alllrighty, I've got a narrative to wordify. It's the formerly mentioned secret plan I've been concocting, and it has at last come to fruition! If there's ever a time for an evil laugh, it's now. AAAHAHAHA!
Let's start off with the context. The context is: service missions. Ya know 'em, ya love 'em. But do all service missionaries love them as much as they could? They were announced back in 2018 by the first presidency. One of their stated purposes was to provide "increased opportunities for young missionaries who have health challenges." It is so amazing how everyone, whatever their capacity, can have a set apart missionary experience of their own. There are some battling crippling mental illness, others recovering from injuries, and even some who are unable to walk or stand, and yet they serve full time for 18 months or 2 years, helping to build the kingdom of God. They are spiritual giants.
Service missions are, by nature, flexible and accommodating. You can stay with your family. You decide on your service sites and weekly schedule. You have a certain amount of liberty in how you spend your free time. It's not exactly what most people envision when they hear: "mission".
This, combined with the fact that service missions are the destination for many who expected a teaching assignment but did not receive it, and even more who began as a teaching missionary, but faced unforeseen circumstances and decided to transfer, makes for a widespread condition I've dubbed, "Plan B Syndrome". It is the voice that says, "Your work may be good, but it's not as good as it could have been had things worked out the way they were supposed to." and "You're not in the ideal assignment. To teach and baptize is far more important and respectable than the participation award you're settling for." This voice is real, it is widespread among my fellow missionaries, and it is absolutely crushing. Suffocating.
Step one in undoing this plague of the mind is taking a step away from the original purpose for creating service missions. Fundamentally, they are not merely a destination for those who, in one service missionary's words, "didn't make the cut"--whether due to health challenges, concerns with emotional resilience, or other reasons. They are a part of the same work that all missionaries accomplish, each with a different focus based on their assignment. Where teaching assignments manifest the voice of the Lord, service assignments manifest the hands of the Lord (though, with the integration between the two, even that distinction doesn't quite capture it). What we are still coming to understand is that each area of the work has its own advantages, and the advantage of service missions is not that it is the more comfortable option. Getting comfortable is a choice, no matter where you are.
No, the power of a service mission that I see is the way it links an intensive and focused discipleship to an otherwise pretty normal life. Consider the contrast from a teaching assignment. Yes, one may demonstrate exceptional faith and diligence by stepping away from their loved ones for 18-24 months, exploring unfamiliar areas, and gritting their teeth through an uncertain but marvelous work, but what about when they return? If problems are left behind, they will often still be there on the other side, and in a place so ordinary as home, whatever you learn out there with a companion and missionary standards and the adventure of finding and teaching may not stick so well as life crowds around you. When I visit people who have fallen away from the church, many are RMs.
In a service mission, you practice the lifelong application immediately. You take the distractions you are surrounded with, the family and friend matters to attend to, the daily expectations of service sites--which take the place of employment and schooling--and you make your discipleship work. You find time in the day to hold studies, you pray constantly, you go about with a smile on your face ready to talk or help wherever an opportunity arises as a representative of Jesus Christ, you make sacrifices in how you enjoy yourself, and you prepare for the day when you take that badge off, D.I. your ten thousand white button up shirts, and carry on upholding the same virtues, habits, and Spirit you did before, like nothing even changed. Do I get the exhilarating experience of stepping off the plain into the RM world, finally seeing loved ones after years of separation? No. Because my RM world will hardly be different from the one I serve in now, other than the change in me that will continue to take place.
Step two in the war on Plan B Syndrome is just as crucial, and it is to make service missions live up to all that they can be. This is where my narrative begins. Yep, I'm only just starting the narrative, cause everything so far has been a tangent, and I like tangents. Whatever the role of a service mission, when it comes to comparison, it's hard to get past objective observations, and mine has been that young service missionaries often do not do as much as those on the teaching side. This is not a matter of quantity of work, but instead of fulfilling the measure of the calling. It's easy to slip into a habit of simply going into your service assignment each day, and then effectively taking the badge off when you finish, leaving evenings and days without assignments to what is essentially everyday life. Even crucial daily habits such as personal study, companionship study, and daily planning are neglected by some. Upon transferring to South Salt Lake, I struggled with all of this, and it deeply troubled me.
Jump to a zone conference I attended last October, and President Kotter was giving a training on key indicators. These are the metrics of success used by the church, and by extension, teaching missionaries, such as new people found, people attending sacrament meeting, and people baptized and confirmed. Companionships set weekly goals for each of these, and missionary leaders hold missionaries accountable for their goals. It was an important thing for President Kotter to touch on, but he was faced with a problem: zone conference is an integrated event, and service missionaries don't have key indicators.
In a stroke of inspiration, President Kotter searched through the service missionary standards and came up with key indicators of his own for us based on what he found. We had, "Render Meaningful Service", "Study", "Pray", "Follow the Example of Jesus Christ", and "Build Life Skills". He gave the training, using those as an example of what service missionaries might focus on in their goals. This left a deep impression on me, and I realized what was missing. Though the flexibility of a service mission is its greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. We needed structure! Structure that would help us recognize how we should spend our time, hold each other accountable, and celebrate our victories, but that simultaneously accommodates the differing circumstances and strengths of each missionary. The things President Kotter found in standards were good, but they felt like only a baseline, not something that showed missionaries how to go above and beyond.
I whipped out my notebook and began coming up with service key indicators of my own, and they flowed onto the page almost immediately. 5 areas service missionaries should focus their efforts. "Serve at Your Assignments", "Serve Your Ward", "Serve Your Neighbor" (meaning in public, in your family, and online), "Serve Your Fellow Missionaries", and finally, "Serve Your Life" (both temporal and eternal). Missionaries would come up with specific goals in each of these areas every week, be it many or few, grand or simple, and then report at the end of the week, including unexpected opportunities they stumbled across. Suddenly, the possibilities of how we could serve others seemed like a creative adventure with a thousand potential routes to take, each of them applauded by peers when accomplished, just as a baptism would be when teaching.
I developed the ideas a little with some missionaries at the Global Services Department, and it turned from a jumble of notes to a slideshow presentation. I realized that this wasn't just something I was going to dream about and then tuck away. I intended for this to impact other people who were struggling with what I was. Service missions as a whole, if possible. A list formed in my head of people I needed to talk with. Service mission leaders, mission presidents, other missionaries, maybe someone from the missionary department. And with a clear plan in place, almost as if it had been downloaded into my head, the journey began.
To start, I shared it with Elder and Sister Alston, my immediate service mission leaders. It went over so well and they added some ideas of their own! They connected me to Elder and Sister Sellers, who are the service mission leader trainers, and I presented again. The reception was better than I ever could have hoped for! They asked to meet with me again, and this time, at the last minute, they brought on Daniel Ware, who heads service missions in the missionary department! I got to share the presentation with him, he gave me a little more feedback, and he even asked for a copy of it! I then presented to President and Sister Kotter, and I again received overwhelming support. I'm trying to train myself to value and expect criticism, but I've gotta admit it's encouraging when the response is, "I can't think of a thing I would change." They gave me approval to start this as a pilot program in our zone. Then, once we have a transfer worth of data from it, we have the go ahead to share it with all the zone leaders in the mission! A couple Sundays ago I also had the chance to present in front of all of the service mission leaders, and there were definitely some more conflicting opinions there, but overall it went great!
\Presenting my utter insanit- I mean, ideas to the Service Mission Leaders at the Mission HomeThe real battle though, after the undertaking of developing the idea and getting it approved, is the implementation. I had made two different presentations at that point, and I knew neither of them was really suited to the missionaries themselves. So, in addition to adding some thoughts on how the work we do is not what makes us enough--we are already enough if we are turned toward Christ--I ended up restructuring the whole presentation. . .around Star Wars and Marvel. This past Thursday I had the whole zone gather together for a zone council instead of district council, and amid the training, a clip of Anakin getting blasted with lightning from Count Dooku served as the catalyst for a discussion about always going in with a plan. When we got to looking at the service goal areas (the unofficial service key indicators), I presented to the missionaries the Infinity Gauntlet, and introduced each goal area as an infinity stone. There are 6 infinity stones and only 5 goal areas, so I used the last stone to cover accountability. The presentation had the exact effect I wanted, and with handouts and resources now distributed, the pilot program has begun!
Training the zone on service goal areas at our combined district council meeting.
The Service Mission Infinity Gauntlet
Our zone is moving forward with weekly planning & accountability meetings, and though making this suit all of the individuals is going to be quite a process, I'm excited to see the tender mercies that will make it work. I believe that from the beginning, this plan has really been the Lord's plan. Once this is firmly ingrained mission-wide and has the chance to evolve a bit, my hope is that it will be a good model for the missionary department to work with, and that it will inform some of their decisions with service missions down the road. In the meantime, I shall just be fighting to keep this alive! XD
Ok, long tangent and narrative complete! I've just got a quick story from last month and some notes on this past week and then I'm done.
In my list of things to cover, I just wrote "Spook Dude" for this item. I was out tracting with the elders in my area when we came to a house with broad windows along the porch. Inside the house, a TV room with couches around a coffee table was clearly visible. A man lay on the couch watching TV when we rang the doorbell. When he heard the ring and saw us through the window, his immediate response was to roll off the couch and fall behind the coffee table. Because of how sudden it was and since he seemed to be an older gentleman, there was a drawn out moment where we were genuinely concerned that we had given him a heart attack. Upon having that thought, we had no idea what to do, so we knocked again and stayed on the porch for quite a bit longer than we normally did for other houses, trying to nonchalantly get a glimpse of whether he was just hiding. Eventually, we saw him peak out at us. He was totally just trying to pull a mission impossible stealth move! This is now ranked among the most comedic "No answer" doors I've gotten.
Speaking of old finding stories, there was a Friday this past December where I got the hiccups...while out knocking doors and as a lesson was coming up. Literally the worst time imaginable XD. It doesn't stop there though, cause I got them FOUR separate times that day.
"Hi, *Hick* we're the *Hick* missionaries in the area. Want to *Hick* hear a message about *Hick* Jesus *Hick* Christ?"
What made it a real phenomenon was that whenever they stopped, it seemed to be right before someone answered the door or we had a lesson. I'll call that a blessing. I bring this whole thing up because, as divine privilege would have it, it happened AGAIN this past Friday! I join the local elders, we go tracting, and by evening: boom, hiccups. This time I was afflicted with them only twice, and again, one of the times when they stopped was right when we knocked a door. Weirdness.
Elder Makay snuck a selfie as Elder Siddoway left a message on someone's ring doorbell
Our wet shoes are our paintbrush, and innocent unsuspecting porches are our canvas.The elders I currently teach with are Elder Makay and Elder Siddoway. The latter used to be Elder Wolfgramm, but emergency transfer chain reactions have meant that Elder Makay has had 3 different companions in less than 2 transfers! No, he's not the cause 😂. Anyways, teaching prospects in this area have been picking up over the past few weeks! Sadly, no one has yet started consistent Friday lessons like Emma did, so I only get a glimpse of the people, but I recently met Kenzie, Montez, and was about to meet Alex and Daniel if they had followed through with their appointments :( *many tears*. The first two took a tour of the stake center this past week though!
Quick note: it was an exceptionally smooth temple shift this past Saturday! I got to serve as initiatory coordinator for the first half and as an ordinance worker for the second half, and it was a much needed contrast from the hassles of the rest of the week.
And finally, we had another zone conference on Tuesday. We've started arriving earlier so the Kotters can give a service mission focused discussion with us, and that really made a big difference in the experience this time around. I really appreciate the love and focus they give us. Elder Hansen and I led a breakout room, so it feels like I've been giving about a million presentations of late. Everyone must be quite tired of the sound of my voice at this point😆. We discussed divine identity, pairing consecration with celebration, and personalizing our missions.
There's much I could share from the conference as a whole, but considering this email is approaching the previous one in length (Sorry! I've had a lot to catch you up on, but that should be everything!) I'll leave it at this:
When we make a bunch of poor decisions and mistakes, we're inclined to not even give ourselves credit for what we did do well. "Who cares about this miniscule success when I should be ashamed of all I did wrong? That's all other people will notice, anyway. A small victory, if you can call it that, doesn't matter in the face of this mess." When teaching the missionaries to celebrate in their consecration, we taught them not only to joy in their accomplishments, just as God repeatedly notes the goodness of his works in Genesis 1, but to not withhold that joy when repenting of other mistakes. Our mistakes do not cancel out our victories. Each side must be given its own attention: one healed, the other rejoiced in. To capitalize on this, let's take an extreme example and test it.
Let's say someone is unrepentant all the way to their death, does not accept the gospel when given the chance, and has to taste the bitterness of Godly punishment. The most final of final judgements. Literal condemnation, at least for a time. Are their successes totally swallowed up and forgotten in their misery? No!
"The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God, and after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation." (D&C 138:58-59)
Both sides will be present in the end. And as far as mortal life goes, repentance is a process that lasts the whole of it, with no clear marker that says, "Okay! You're allowed to celebrate now!". If glorying in the little successes is shunted to the side or delayed till after an arbitrary point, there will be no joy. But we are that we might have joy.
God be with you,
Elder Tolman
Zone game night
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