Chapter 56: I’m Batman

Hellohellom’kaywe’regonnagetrightintothis.

What a week! Was it a lot? Was it a little? I don’t even know. But in any case, I’m alive halfway through a new one, and everywhere I go there’s intense boss battle music playing, which clearly indicates I’m in the climax of SOME story somewhere, and now is not the time for lollygagging. Yes, these coming days are revealing themselves to be…*reverb effect* D E N S E. So! Let’s see how fast I can throw words on a page.

I had a birthday this past Wednesday! (Alas! I can feel the prime of my life seeping away like water held in cupped hands. 22 years of age! *shudders* Wo is me!)

On Tuesday last week, Elder Lee and I were scrambling to get some projects done before we headed off to one of the West Office Building conference rooms for a communications training. This was to be the next installment in the series of trainings we’ve been getting from Emily, and the plan was to get a rundown of some communications software. I arrived at the conference room. . .only to discover balloons and cake on the table, more people present than I expected, and “Happy Birthday Elder Tolman” on the whiteboard. Emily and her coworkers had thrown a surprise party! There were totally signs that this was in the works throughout the day, but I, in my infinite wisdom, did not pick up on a single one of them. In any case, I was touched! That was the first time I’ve ever been thrown a surprise party. We were also celebrating our supervisor Matt since he got a job in a different department and would be leaving us at the end of the week.

We had a jolly good time popping the balloons and answering questions on little slips of paper inside. The employees even wrote Matt and I cards. Emily remarked that she was excited to see my reaction to mine, and for good reason, cause when I opened the envelope, I discovered that the card was Batman themed. This was an inside joke of ours following an assignment I had to redesign a logo. I had come up with a few different ideas, and when I submitted them, someone in HR noted that one of them somehow managed to look a lot like the Batman symbol. Important detail: The birthday card came with a removable Batman mask, so I wore it in one of our team meetings later that week. 

We had bunch of leftover cake, strawberries, and raspberries at the end, which Matt and I were assigned management of. I dodged the cake and opted to take the berries, which I spent the train ride home feasting upon. As I did so, a gentleman walked up to me and greeted me in the standard way one greets a service missionary. “Elder, where’s your companion?” We talked through the whole train ride and the topic of conversation transitioned from missions to his work to the fact that he had once been in the national guard. When he mentioned that it was specifically military intelligence he did, I asked if he knew a Colonel Tolman. Turns out he did, and they were deployed at the same time! I got to surprise him by showing the name on my tag.

On Thursday we had a mission-wide devotional where we heard from a church historian who wrote a documentary on Joseph Smith. It was being streamed to the GSD so we didn’t have to interrupt our service, and we had lots of charming technical difficulties (please ignore the fact that we are literally the IT division of this department of the church and yet we constantly struggle to get that conference room to work 😆), but between the distorted/muted/out-of-sync audio, there were lots of great insights on testimony and on Joseph Smith’s role.

That evening for district council, we met as a zone and combined with another zone to listen to Brother Atkinson speak. He has served in various capacities, including as a mission president, temple president, and, perhaps most importantly, as an incredible neighbor to those around him. He devoted most of his presentation to discussing the power of temples, and cited A LOT of quotes from President Nelson regarding the many promised blessings of temple attendance. He’s quite the a storyteller, and he shared some jaw-dropping miracles from his experiences.

Back to the GSD: a lot of missionaries tour the West Office Building as they decide which service sites they want to be a part of. In conjunction with touring, we show them a missionary-made outreach presentation to help give them an idea of what we do. A division of our media team has been working on revising and updating this presentation—a looming project indeed. Sister Farnsworth, a remote GSD missionary, happened to be visiting from Texas, and she and I were selected as the new faces/narrators of the presentation. Thing is, that means all of our filming was confined to the few hours we could spare on Monday and Tuesday before she headed back home, AND the project has been in the development/writing stage AS we’ve been creating it. So, ahhhhh! Delivering lines you’re handed on the spot ain’t fun. BUT, Sister Fry, our script writer, has officially declared that I have a narrator voice, so that’s a good sign! Validation! I just hope it all comes together in the end.

On the communications team, we’ve known for some time that we’re going to have our work cut out for us in May, but at the end of last week, that reality hit me like a brick wall. One moment, I’m peacefully noting just how light my to-do list has gotten, and then in the next, I’ve got an absolute swarm of tasks buzzing around my head. Feels like I’m balancing on the edge of a knife now, but things are working out so far!

On Friday, Elder Siddoway, Elder Chatterley, and I had a couple really promising nonmember lessons! One was with our friend Dean, who is skeptical, but wants to better understand some of his children and grandchildren who are members. The other was with a woman named Vanessa and her daughter, who want to draw closer to Christ and are looking for the best way to come to know Him. I hope they continue to have lessons on Fridays so I can join! It’s a joy to be involved in those discussions.

That evening, with only about 20 minutes left in the day, we were trying to decide on a member to visit and we ended up dropping by the elders quorum president in my home ward. He and his wife invited us in and accepted our offer to share a message. In this impromptu visit, we didn’t go in with a lesson plan, and whenever this is the case, one of us usually takes initiative with a scripture, and then a discussion naturally grows from it. When we sat down, the first thing that came to my mind to ask them about was their son, who is currently serving a mission in Colombia. I expected that we’d just chat a little about him and other topics before transitioning into a spiritual thought. It turned out that he was actually on the forefront of their minds, and they’d been very worried about some challenges he’s been experiencing. We spent the entirety of our time there offering advice and thoughts on the mission experience, and that turned out to be exactly what they needed at the time.

This situation was surprisingly reminiscent of Elder Bednar’s teachings on how we recognize promptings from the Spirit primarily in retrospect. In the moment, all you can do is what you deem to be good, and sometimes later you get a glimpse of just how much you were really doing. Then, the impact of your actions just doesn’t seem to square with how little you understood what you were doing, and the idea that God constantly has a hand in your life becomes just a bit easier to believe.

Now, the trick is to resist the temptation to view serendipities like this as isolated instances of divine intervention. Instead, see them as glimpses into a reality you are constantly living in, but are often unaware of. Recognize that ALL good you accomplish is enabled by God, not merely this coincidence here or that miracle there. Such extraordinary things are set in motion by the same spiritual energy with which you smile at someone, or render service, or offer forgiveness.

Most importantly, as you see this, your heightened perception of goodness does not remain dormant. You find that just as you can access goodness better, goodness can access you better, and it changes you. You see what you could not see before. You feel what you could not feel before. You do what you could not do before. Something wonderful, it seems, is reaching through the good to act upon you. As you sense that, you rely on evidence less, and you are able to trust more.

^If absolutely none of that made sense, just give Alma 32 a fresh read. He’s cooler than I am.

Two final updates:

1. I finished my third week of training temple workers this past Saturday, which means I’m officially trained as a trainer. A mentored mentor, if you will. 

2. This past Sunday, Elder Duran in my zone gave his mission report (a.k.a homecoming talk). He did a fantastic job and has racked up quite the service resume. His sister finished her mission right around when he finished his, so we got to have a double feature sacrament meeting. Whenever I mention Elder Duran to my dad, he jokes about the band Duran Duran. With the two of them sitting up on the stand that day, we did in fact have (one) Duran (and another) Duran present, though no pop rock music was played in the chapel. 😆

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Our Quotes of the Week board is 50% spiritual, but we take liberty with the other 50%. Also I’m super happy with how this TV slides project turned out! It definitely siphoned off some of my soul.

Egotism 😊

Surprise birthday/farewell party with HR and comms!

Look out, he’s got a knife!

Some ominous yet friendly elders. Last Wednesday they took to just pointing at me and chanting, “Birthday. Birthday. Birthday.” It started small, then I got swarmed.

I'm Batman

Cat on grill. A marvelous sight to see while knocking doors.