Elder Daniel Tolman: Chapter 55: TWICE THE POWER

Ideas are hard to have. *Actually, they’re easy to have when they are completely unnecessary, but hard to have when someone is relying on you to have them. I’m leading off with this to say it’s been a week of putting my brain through an oil press to squeeze out suitable creativity for the work I’ve been doing in my assignments. I hope you on the other hand have made it through the week with an intact thinking apparatus!

No major narratives this week. Aside from pushing through some personal anxiety as I served, the most dramatic twist in the week was taking my bike in for a tune up to make the back tire stop singing opera, only for it to break out into song again the very next day. Betrayal! Still, it’s a lot more quiet and infrequent. Maybe the bike shop negotiated with it by just asking it to sing a softer piece.

We got a couple new missionaries in our half of the zone in recent weeks! Elder Jensen and Sister Davis both transferred from teaching, and they bring a lot to the zone. At the same time, we’ve also lost / are losing quite a few people :(. A couple to the end of their missions, and a few to the difficulties of serving a mission. We’ve been gearing up to make our study companions a more significant part of our missions, and now all of the sudden I’m without one. *cue tragic music* The zone will be a little smaller for a bit, but with another school year wrapping up, hopefully we’ll have more of an influx soon.

I’ve begun training ordinance workers in the temple! A trainer in training, I have become. Things have gotten crazy in the temple with how many new workers we're bringing in to replace everyone we're losing when the Taylorsville temple opens. We've never been in a position where we've had to come up with several hundred new workers in such a short time, but the response to our call for aid has been miraculous. Almost all of the shifts have everyone they need (Saturday midday is a hard one to fill, so we have a little ways to go there), and we're training more people at once than ever before, unless things were like this when the Oquirrh Mountain Temple first opened.

Thankfully, our ratio of trainers to trainees remains reasonable, but I've heard some wild reports of how many workers other shifts are trying to train in one day. At first it was a bit nerve racking being responsible for another person's performance as they administer saving ordinances, but our apprentices are doing fantastic. My counterpart trainer had his last shift in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple this past Saturday, so I'll be flying solo this upcoming week. Hopefully nothing blows up!

An Elder in our zone is finishing his mission soon (one of the aforementioned casualties), so he hosted a farewell game night this past weekend that I carved out some time to join in on. We saw a former member of our zone there who completed his mission a few weeks ago! I decided to forgo hosting our typical zone game night which would normally happen the following evening, but then I jumped aboard /another/ game night, this one hosted by a GSD missionary. "Hmm, I’ll cancel this activity. That way I’ll have time for...the exact same activity!"

President and Sister Kotter held a service missionary devotional at the mission office on Sunday evening. For the first time we had all the service missionaries in the mission gathered together in the same room, along with our parents, and we were LEGION. This surprised the Kotters a little XD. I was asked to conduct the meeting, and it was a profound perspective looking out over all my fellow missionaries and their families from the stand. The remarks that evening were centered around three items the Kotters gave to each of us at the end:

1. Ministerial Certificates

These are small cards given to missionaries as something of a "ministering license", affirming that we are in full faith and fellowship with the church and that we have authority to do what we do. I think they are primarily needed in places with strict laws about proselytizing, or to enter places with restricted access. Up until recently, they weren't a thing for service missionaries, but no longer!

We were given a specialized service ministerial certificate (largely the same as the teaching ones with a couple changes in wording) and Sister Kotter took some time to speak on their significance. The discussion was similar to others I've been a part of about the missionary tag, emphasizing that we bear two names on our chests: Christ's and our own. The certificate is similar, but it includes an additional name: the president of the church. It reminds us that we stand right alongside President Russell M Nelson and other servants of God in our joint purpose of bringing others to Christ.

Sister Kotter also gave me a slightly new perspective about our own name's role in our calling. On the tag in particular, only our surname is printed. Christ is not the only one we represent in what we do. We also represent our families.

2. The Living Christ

We received small booklets with a different paragraph of The Living Christ on each page, accompanied by artwork of the Savior. The Kotters focused on the document in a training a couple zone conferences ago and they wanted to provide a tool to help us keep it at the forefront of our minds. They affirmed that the truths therein have sustained them through the entirety of their mission here in South Salt Lake

3. Preach My Gospel

We all got our own physical copies of the second edition of Preach My Gospel!! When I heard that news, I was briefly translated. Those have been a little hard to come by, and accessing PMG through Gospel Library isn't my favorite. We discussed the promised blessings of using Preach My Gospel and expounded on how the new subtitle is "A Guide to Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ" instead of "A Guide to Missionary Service", making it clear that it’s a tool for all members of the church.

Back to the ministerial certificates though; since I got one for my teaching assignment prior to entering the MTC, and I just got another for my service assignment, considering the first hasn’t expired, that gives me TWICE THE POWER. Not actually, but I think it's hilarious to imagine so. Double the certification! Someone can walk up and challenge my authority only to be confronted by a dose of officialness in the form of a little card. Then, when they grab that and tear it in half, thinking they've bested me, I'll just pull out another one! AHA!

The remaining events that come to mind are typical Friday shenanigans while proselytizing around the area, and some good conversations in the mix while contacting people around Oquirrh Lake and on the street. Wahoo.

I've been thinking recently about the concept of being still. The story of Christ rebuking the storm makes me associate this phrase with peace--the promise that I will be comforted in my storms. Yet, if we're using this as a map through the pain of life, though we learn of Christ's absolute power, what seems most relevant is the question Christ poses to His disciples. "Where is your faith?" I read that as, "Discovering that I am able to remove your trials is not the only lesson you could have learned here." Faith in Christ means trials do not have the same sway over us. His comforting influence can have a hand in this, but what I'm coming to understand is that peace is not always what He offers.

To “be still” in the face of trials is not to feel the emotion of peace, but to realize that no matter how agonizing your experience is, emotional or physical, it cannot shake your foundation. And as that realization is confirmed again and again through experience, you start to notice that the noise of the tribulation, though it certainly remains present, doesn't enthrall you like it once did. You find yourself able to listen to other sounds, much sweeter than the blaring ones you’ve been trying so hard to stifle. And soon enough, what once filled your headspace is nothing more than white noise to you. Those subtler tones reveal they have far, far more to offer in depth than in volume.

I believe this is a part of the power of fasting. Taking one of our most basic instincts--the drive to eat and sustain ourselves, letting it sound loudly within us, and not heeding it. Your body cries, "We need to eat! We can't function like this!" And you reply, "We will soon enough, but we have things to do in the meantime." You reach a point where, though you are objectively hungry, the instinctual voice quiets, and you might notice things you hadn't when you were so fixed on your instincts.

I think there's a reason Alma the Younger and others cite fasting combined with prayer as the source of their incredible capacity to receive revelation. They each did work, hard work, to train themselves to listen. The principle is applicable elsewhere: in being meek in the midst of pride, in being chaste in the midst of desire, and in being still in the midst of fear--for us, that last one often means learning to experience anxiety instead of quickly attempting to numb ourselves of it. I'm practicing, and I've got a long way to go, but I suspect I'll come to know that hearing a still small voice requires not only a quiet space, but a listener who can endure a loud one. This refining endurance is made possible through Jesus Christ, whose hope permeates all noises.

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

A completely normal handshake.

A day where a bunch of us chose the M&M Steve Harvey on the "Which Steve Harvey are you today?" board (we had eaten a lot of sugar). It ain't often we pick the same one.