From Holy Week to General Conference to other adventures you may have gone on, I hope you’ve had an excellent past few weeks! Capitalizing on Easter in particular, as my understanding of Christ’s life and mission grows, that time of year becomes more and more meaningful to me. I’m gradually working to follow Elder Gary E Stevenson’s invitation from last year—to give Easter the same reverence and excitement we give Christmas.
On that earnest note, I’d like to add that I’m positively QUIVERING right now. From whence hath this elder of the church reason to quiver? I’ve been waiting for a decent block of time to recount recent events for you, and due to **BUSY**, that block of time was the stuff of mere fantasy…for 3 weeks. Actually, I technically found it last Sunday, but then I discovered that reading was a thing (to my surprise), and theology/history articles evaporated all available time. Remember that Star Trek: the Next Generation episode where they discover anti-time (akin to antimatter)? Well that stuff is real. Point being, I’m currently writing this on the train to Temple Square with .0001 stops remaining, and the rest of this will be penned via wrestling for free moments throughout the day.
*Actually, make that throughout the week. Hi! This is Elder Tolman going back and editing this a week later. :P*
I most definitely do not know how exactly to measure how long I’ve been serving (From my set apart date? MTC date? First day in the field? A cryptic astrological alignment?), BUT, based on my release date, I've passed my 18 month mark! Like 3 weeks ago XD. This means I’ve now been offering service about as long as I’ve been teaching! Transferring definitely messes with your perception of time.
Delving a bit into the past few weeks, Thursday—3 weeks ago XD—was a big day for several reasons! Firstly, most mornings, I have the chance to recite the service missionary purpose alongside other missionaries. It goes,
“Our purpose is to help others come unto Christ by serving them as the Savior would. We serve voluntarily in charitable organizations, Church functions, and within the community. We will minister in His name to the one, just as He did, expressing His loving kindness.”
I joined the GSD missionaries in the purpose that morning as normal, but by district council in the evening, it had changed!
"[Our purpose is to] help others come unto Christ by serving with loving kindness as the Savior would. [We] minister in His name to the one through the power of the Holy Ghost and live as an example of faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, covenant keeping with God, and enduring to the end."
I’m a firm advocate of this updated purpose and I’m grateful to the missionary department for the inspiration they received and relayed. Both purposes maintain an emphasis on Christlike service and love, but rather than articulating the particular venues of service, the new one focuses on discipleship. This helps missionaries realize that their calling is not limited to their service sites. It also confirms the truth of something I’ve been discussing with fellow missionaries; a mission is not directly about the work you accomplish, it is about your relationship with God as HE, through various means, accomplishes His work. Because building that relationship requires taking part in the work, this distinction can be subtle at times, but the mindset is entirely different. This is an oft parroted phrase, but, your most important convert on the mission is you. We discussed in zone conference last week how you cannot beckon for someone to approach somewhere where you are not already standing.
It’s presentation season again! Over the past few weeks there have been several opportunities to subject poor, innocent audiences to the whims of my words.
First of all, at the Global Services Department, we hold devotionals every Thursday, and I got to lead the one just before Easter! The topic I was assigned was but a small one. Only, you know…The Atoning Power of Jesus Christ. No pressure, right??? It took a lot of study and decision making to narrow this literally infinite topic down to 45 minutes, but in the end, I focused on how it is not the event of Christ’s atonement that has power in our lives, per se. Rather, the enabling power of the atonement enables Christ, and the enabling power of Christ enables us. We discussed how His sacrifice perfected His ability to succor us in our affliction and judge us in our imperfection. 2 key points were:
- Christ combines our subjective experience with objective truth without minimizing either side.
- When you bring your sins and failures before God and are suffering from shame and frustration, bear in mind that He has known the exact same shame you feel, as though He had made all the same mistakes you did.
I’ve led gospel study meetings at the GSD a couple times of late, and, ummmmm let’s gloss over those, cause there’s already too much content in this email. But they were good! Well, the first one was good and the second one was enthusiastically okay.
A couple Sundays ago we had service MLC with President and Sister Kotter. This fated council initiated what I will confidently refer to as a mighty victory! The South Jordan Oquirrh zone has been piloting our new service goal setting program (functionally key indicators) for the past several weeks, and with some preliminary data successfully collected, we’re expanding the program to the entire mission! MLC was the venue for informing all the other zone leaders and sister training leaders about the program and getting their reaction.
I expected to have to confine my presentation to only a portion of the meeting so other missionary leaders could give trainings. Nope. We opened the meeting, had an introductory discussion, and then President Kotter turned the floor over to me for almost the entire meeting XD. It was…more of a spotlight than I was expecting. But hey, extra time! What’s more, the program got an enthusiastic response from the other missionaries! For this past zone conference, they each used their breakout rooms to train their zones on the program, so it’s officially in the hands of the mission as a whole. I can’t wait to see how it evolves as everyone practices it and adapts it to their needs. Success!
Speaking of zone conference, that was ANOTHER recent presentation I gave—and, thankfully, the last I shall be mentioning here. Elder Hanson and I initiated a debrief of the our experience with the goal program thus far, and then we gave a slightly fiery training on communication and obedience. Thus far we’ve tended to err on the side of comfort-focused messages, but this one was a little more of a hustle (hopefully with love shining through). Active communication is SO important, especially when it comes to having a unified zone. It’s crazy just how hard it is to get a group of people to reply to you, let alone participate in something.
Joining the teaching elders on Fridays has featured mostly door knocking and an unfortunate quantity of cancelled lessons. We’ve got some promising people though. On the topic of door knocking, I’ve got a fun detail. Fun, pretty much exclusively for me XD. I came across 2 Sure-Loc hardware doorknobs! That’s the hardware warehouse I used to work at. I spent one afternoon training Elder Siddoway and Elder Chatterley (who just transferred in) on hardware finishes, and the sheer uselessness of the information is gloriously entertaining. Anyways, that brings my “familiar hardware count” up to 3.
On a slightly more interesting note, I’ve been at a crossroads when it comes to career choice, and a lot of helpful conversations have been popping up about that. We tracted into a former church member who was a software engineer and had a great conversation with her. Soon after that, we had someone join us for a visit, and I talked with him about the communications field. I feel like I’m benefiting more from this calling than the people around me are XD. Other highlights from my Fridays include:
- We visited a prospective service missionary and I got to help give him an idea of what to expect.
- We went knocking doors around not only my own neighborhood, but my own WARD. It was wild. I pointed at my family’s house and managed to briefly convince the Elders that an aggressively inactive family lived there.
- Flat bike tires are the kryptonite of productivity.
- Cold. (But not anymore!)
- The Spanish elders moved out of the 4-man apartment, so Elder Siddoway and Elder Chatterley turned their room into a fort.
- The three of us happened to pick matching ties one day!
Communications projects fill my time at the Global Services Department, and though the details aren’t interesting enough to delve into, I’ve been enjoying it! I want to find time to start doing missionary IT work again, but that’s looking unlikely at this rate. We shall see. Three highlights for this service site:
- Emily, the main employee Elder Lee and I serve, has taken it upon herself to give us IN-DEPTH training on communications. Like, she’s been creating presentations and blocking out time to train us in various areas, AND we’ve been able to interview a couple people in prominent comms positions. We're super grateful for her!
- For one of our Thursday devotionals, we heard from Brother Tad R. Callister and his wife! They gave a message focusing on how the Book of Mormon enriches our understanding of Jesus Christ, and how Christ overcame obstacles to our salvation with His sacrifice. At the time, I had developed a question about the atonement in my recent studies, so it was cool to have the opportunity to step up to him afterward and talk with him about it.
- I got to write a brief article for the GSD's weekly announcement page! We include spiritual thoughts there every couple weeks, and I signed on to provide one. Though the communication I help with is internal to the department, we do have employees all around the globe, so if I REALLY want to brag, I can technically say I've had a worldwide reach! XD I'll throw a copy of it at the end for if your eyes are somehow still intact after finishing the email.
And now I come to the topic of General Conference! Wow. That might be all I need to say. Beyond being transfixed by some very well formulated talks (which I'll refrain from attempting to debrief), I found what struck me the most were the promptings that came to me as I listened; action items that were only tangential to the topic at hand. Being uplifted and reassured by these messages is good, but leaving conference with a game plan is crucial.
One other thing about conference: the focus on temples, and, notably, the temple garment, caught my attention. That just happened to be the exact topic of the zone conference we had just had! The conferences have teamed up! And both worked together to leave a strong impression on me.
This past week, Elder Lee and I had lunch with the GSD HR team in the church office building. On our way in, we passed by a nondescript car, and a moment later, one of the team members said, "...that was Elder Cook...". We flipped out in a dignified manner, and then proceeded inside. The table we selected in the cafeteria was situated right next to the hallway leading out from the underground parking garage, so our backdrop was filled by people walking to and fro. Then, who waltzes into that backdrop, but Elder Patrick Kearon! Over the course of the next 15 minutes, he was followed by Elder Rasband, Elder Gong, Elder Soares, Elder Christofferson (who waved at us!), and Elder Stevenson. Half the quorum, just moseying on by! Others apparently also saw Elder Renlund and Elder Soares. So that was epic! To add to that, as we were heading over to the church office building, Emily and I were remarking that we had never seen a member of the quorum of the twelve there before, as people sometimes report. I guess God heard us and sent the apostles on a special mission XD.
Last thing, and then I'll put an end to this madness. I've been looking for more creative ways to serve beyond my assignments (partially to bring this service goal program to its full potential), and I noticed a lot of litter between the West Office Building and Trax station. So, one morning I brought a trash bag with me and picked up what I could as I walked. Another missionary even joined me! We arrived for morning devotional, and the topic just happened to be taking care of the Earth God gave us.
Thanks for reading!
God be with you,
Elder Tolman
Copy of GSD Article: "When the Heavens Seem Closed"
Bubbles provided by Elder Castleton
No comments:
Post a Comment