Chapter 52: A Mess of Busy

OKAY, things are getting absolutely insane. Eek!

Hello everyone! I wish you a splendid Tuesday (perhaps even THE BEST Tuesday). I come bearing updates. Haphazard ones.

Firstly, there is an armada of tasks ‘pon the seas of my assignment at the Global Services Department. Each new day there is like taking a deck of card’s worth of projects, responsibilities, and upcoming presentations, shuffling it, drawing a hand of like 6 cards, setting those as my goals for the day, and maybe getting like half of them done before getting caught in a 1-2 hour discussion with someone, followed by frantically realizing I have no time left in the day and staying overtime to barely finish something. Am I at peek efficiency? ….nooo, buuuuut….

…heh, yeah, I have no defense. I will say everything’s a tradeoff. Some days, my unconquered to-do list truly condemns me, but at the same time I walk away with some crucial insight gained, or a stronger sense of purpose in my personal life. I’ve found everything at the GSD from a dedicated ongoing conversation about the uplifting of missionaries to a solid network for career prospects after the mission.

Wait, back up, I DO have a defense in the face of not getting everything done each day, and that’s that I’m doing so much more lately than I’ve done at any prior point in my mission. I may be relying on grace about the same amount all the way through, but I’m shouldering an increasing amount of weight. That’s the purpose of grace, yah?

If nothing else, I’ve secured the title of Mr. Busy from our director. I’ve had a song from the VeggieTales rendition of the Good Samaritan stuck in my head for some time now. It was sung by those in the story who passed the wounded man by, but I’ve tweaked it so it better serves as an anthem for service:

“I’m busy! Busy! Dreadfully busy! More than a bumblebee, more than an ant. Busy! Busy! Shockingly busy! But not too busy for you.”

—> meaning, you can easily distract me

I shan’t ramble about all the particulars of the work right now, other than to say that the GSD newsletter team has at last stabilized following our last designer’s departure, Elder Lee and I once again got to independently edit and publish department-wide communications last Thursday, we launched a new announcement campaign on Monday for an upcoming change in how we release news (the flyer design we’re using for that took an unreal amount of banging my head against a wall to crank out), and we’ve got some exciting plans as a communications team moving forward.

What’s really struck me lately is just how interwoven this spontaneous communications role is with my missionary purpose. I sometimes worry that a significant portion of what I do for my assignments is closer to “full time desk job” than it is to “missionary service”. But our team recently held a couple meetings specifically devoted to discussing our vision and purpose, and beyond placing a strong emphasis on the Savior and His teachings, these discussions showed me that we do not merely set out to provide information for church employees or build a positive work culture. Our purpose is to minister to individuals and labor with them to further the mission we all share: bringing souls—our own included—unto Christ. These things have been articulated in standing ink from the beginning. They directly overlap with my service missionary purpose, which is to “…minister in [Christ’s] name to the one, just as He did.” I might add that the focus of my service at the GSD happens to line up perfectly with what I’m trying to do for my zone right now! 

Over on the proselytizing side, aside from a little bit of car intervention to speed up an inter-area excursion, we’re back into the full swing of biking! The wind chill thankfully doesn’t make us go numb anymore. Though, I was still charged a fee of pain. After that winter break, and having no padding on my bike seat, I was wincing internally every time I took a seat during my temple shift the next day.

We did have a really cool experience in our afternoon visits. One of the advantages of being a trio of elders is that we are allowed to visit homes with only sisters present—without having to stay on the doorstep, this is. Normally, companionships are required to have another adult of the same gender present at lessons. A couple weeks ago, when we told one of the ward mission leaders in the area this, he lit up and said he had a list of something like 40 widows and single sisters in the ward that would benefit from visits.

We were setting to work on that list when, between visits, we took a quick detour to knock on a door we had no record of. A sister answered, let us know she was a member, and invited us in to share a message. Just as we began to launch into a spiritual thought, she asked if she could pose some questions for us to answer. She pretty quickly let on that she was a returning member and had some deep personal concerns, even electing to share the specific experiences that led to her struggling to remain active. She asked us, “What do I do if I feel like God has abandoned me?” She told us about her prevailing feelings that God had forgotten about her, and that her prayers simply weren’t reaching heaven.

Her worries had me sitting there pondering for a couple reasons. I first thought about the challenges of faith. If people come to believe in God by a testimony from the Spirit, and God is ever-present in all of our lives, why are so many of His disciples left feeling abandoned by Him? I’ve gradually come to accept this as a necessary condition of mortal life, but if that acceptance has been such a challenging and uncertain process for myself, how could I possibly help someone else along it?

Secondly, I noted that as she told the story of her challenges in the church, she spoke with complete confidence that God had been acting in her life. She highlight a tender mercy He gave her, and later highlighted a slightly bitter irony, and said He must have a sense of humor to have orchestrated that. Her belief in providence suggested to me that she had no gripes with the idea of who God is or what He is able to do. The mountain she climbed was that of connecting this great idea with realities of her life. (Between you and I, let’s call that trail a group hike.)

In particular, I wanted to address this notion that God had forgotten her. This is what came to mind to share:

It will not do to say that Jesus Christ performed the atonement for everyone except you. If He truly suffered in Gethsemane, everything we learn of that event declares He did so for each and every one of us.

Therefore, the events that shattered your trust in others and in God were seen and felt by Him just as well as they were felt by you. Their burden and price left a scar upon His heart and nail prints in His hands.

Could He possibly forget that event? Is Christ a forgetful person, particularly with regard to an event that almost seemed to rival His endurance? No! He can’t so much as stretch forth His hand or look down at His feet without being reminded.

Therefore, He will never forget you or what you’ve experienced. Every part of your life is inseparably bound to Him.

All of this was a preface to a well quoted passage of Isaiah,

“But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not.

{I’ll interject here and say this first verse stands out to me because it shows that in spite of resounding truths, the very elect are subject to a sense of abandonment at times. We must be willing to endure instances where evidence seems to support that feeling.}

“For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel.

“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”

(1 Nephi 21:14-16, compare Isaiah 49:14-16)

These verses compare Christ’s remembrance to the strongest bond known to humankind, that of a mother to her child, and tell us that where the worst of circumstances can break even this profound maternal bond, Christ’s bond will not fail.

The sister remarked that that was the first time she actually understood those verses, and by the end of our visit, she was smiling, enthusiastically writing scriptures references down from the three of us. In her, we saw a renewed confidence in moving forward, and she told us we had answered her concerns. As we wrapped up, we were surprised to learn that she normally worked on Friday. She just happened to have that day off, able to answer the door right when a temporary trio of elders unwittingly came to call. I may not know exactly how providence works, but in this, I don’t think God has forgotten her. 

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

I’ve developed an obsession with bulb lights.

I asked for Elder Siddoway and Elder Mackay’s cheesiest, most overdone “friendly elder” faces,
and they delivered. There’s a lot of joking done before door knocks, and at this one we were
talking about how off-putting it would be if someone answered their door to the three of us
on their doorstep with smiles like this plastered on our faces even as we talked.