Chapter 57: Unsuspected Significance

It snowed again! I’ll have to remember to stop joking about that possibility in May / late April, cause Utah always overhears things like that.

Another week gone by! Elder Lee keeps saying “another day, another dollar”, then remembers we have no income, and amends it to, “another day, another blessing”. We got a lot done this week! I’ve had a stronger focus on missionary media projects of late rather than communications projects, though the two are right up the same alley. I still haven’t been able to return to missionary IT work, but I did find time to join the Mission Support team’s weekly devotional on Thursday, so that was good to be a part of!

On the communications side, we recently had a revolutionary technological realization where we came to understand our whole life has been a lie, and we had to make a drastic (which is to say minuscule) change to how we do things. I will say no more on this subject.

A loose end I was scrambling to wrap up at the end of my week’s GSD service was a small media project for Mother’s Day. This week, leading up to Sunday, we want to decorate our portion of the West Office Building for the occasion, so the manager over the GSD missionaries requisitioned a bunch of posters featuring mothers from the scriptures. It took a little finicking to make them look fancy, but the concept was fairly simple. On each poster, we’d have the mother’s name, a painting of them, and a meaningful verse about them.

Finding mothers in the scriptures and verses for them was not hard; what WAS hard was getting images for each of them without violating copyright. SHEESH. I managed to track each of them down eventually, aside from one. Sarah: no problem! Rebekah: check! Rachel? Nothing. NOTHING on the church website or the image archive we use. I combed through church articles, I sifted through galleries, I gave her my blood, sweat, and tears, and her portrait remained as nonexistent as my aforementioned income! To let the Batman theme of last week’s email carry over, I was reenacting the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight with my computer. “WHERE’S RACHEL?!” In the end, I had Hannah take her place, so it was all good.

I ended up staying overtime to complete the project, which I felt a little guilty for, since (a) it disrupts my evening schedule when I do that, and (b) it’s become a habit. But, the project came together, I sent it to our manager for approval, and I was off. On the train ride home, I got a message back from her. She had been out traveling that day, but had remained active on our messaging software. She replied, “Elder Tolman you made my day. These are beautiful. Your best yet!! I am sitting at the airport and I am in tears looking and reading these posters. They are beautiful. This was my Mother’s Day gift from you.” Her extremely complimentary words were a huge gift back to me! I was so glad that such a simple thing like a set of poster designs could bring such joy to someone. In addition to that, I was glad to learn that though the afternoon wasn’t going according to plan, I was spending the time well after all.

Friday was a day of silliness. Vanessa’s daughter was sick and Dean had a family event going on, so no lessons with them 🙁. We did drop by Vanessa’s, talked with her on the doorstep, and reminded her about church on Sunday. I’m not actually up to date on whether they made it, so I’m excited to find out! Beyond those lessons not happening, we went to a member lesson at the end of the day only to discover that they had cancelled, but the text had slipped past the teaching elders’ notice, AND in the would-be lesson after that we discovered we were actually scheduled for Tuesday, not Friday 😆. I didn’t make fun of the elders too much (I don’t have access to their scheduling app, so I count myself as an innocent and slightly amused bystander…well, technically my IT permissions let me sync into any missionary’s app, but doing that outside GSD work seems like dangerous territory).

So, 4 lessons defeated. Silly silly. BUT, I discovered something cool on Sunday. We had a quick unscheduled lesson with some other members soon after the last one didn’t happen, and this family happened to be in my ward. Their kids were headed to bed, so we just said an opening prayer, played a brief gospel-related game with a spiritual thought, asked for referrals, and said a closing prayer. I didn’t really think anything of that mini lesson, but when I returned from the YSA ward on Sunday, my parents let me know that the father in that family mentioned our visit in fast and testimony meeting. He said we had visited at just the right time. One of the adults there who I assumed to be a relative was actually a friend of theirs who had gone inactive in the church. Our reach there was just a bit further than we knew!

Saturday was great! It consisted entirely of helping another ward clean the chapel, working in the temple, and holding a zone game night. We don’t have unified p-day activities, so that last item has been our weekly attempt to build some zone culture. In the temple, I got to spend the full shift as initiatory coordinator, and it went very smoothly. It was good to get back into the groove of things after being in different positions for the past few weeks. Also, the past couple shifts have been a little bitter sweet because with the temple district boundaries shifting as Taylorsville opens, we just officially lost a bunch of workers to Jordan River. Our former assistant shift coordinator came in to do initiatories though, so it was good to see him there.

We had mission leadership council on Sunday with President and Sister Kotter as well as Elder Sellers, one of our Area Service Mission Specialists. We discussed the type of missionaries we need to be as zone leaders and sister training leaders, Elder Hanson (my counterpart from the SoJo Oquirrh area) gave an insightful training on being enough in our calling and on searching for rays of light (inspired by Elder Dushku’s talk from this past General Conference), a sister gave a training on focusing on Christ, and we made plans for our upcoming zone conference.

A comment in Sunday School yesterday yielded an insight I wanted to share. Over the course of many many gospel discussions, you start to pick up on certain verses getting quoted over and over again. Ether 12:27 is one such verse. It makes sense that this revelation is so compelling. It affirms that our mortal weakness, which is a subject of concern on pretty much everyone’s mind, is woven into God’s plan, and is even instrumental to it. I’ve wondered before why this message about weakness is so important to us while simultaneously taking up such a minuscule part of the scriptures. Much of the standard works instead appear to focus on laws, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and God’s promises and subsequent blessings.

Over time, however, I’ve seen that this principle of weakness turning into humility and strength is echoed across all of God’s dealings with His children. It was present for prophets like Moses, Gideon, and many others who felt dwarfed by their callings. It was present for Paul, who learned to be grateful for the metaphorical thorn in his side (I hope it was a metaphor, anyway). And, as someone shared in Sunday School, it was present for a blind man in the New Testament.

“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:1-3)

Jesus proceeds to heal the man, so I think in the past I’ve assumed that last phrase, “that the works of God should be made manifest in him” essentially meant, “he’s blind so I can perform the miracle of healing him”. I’m not a master at interpreting King James Version language, so I won’t necessarily rule that interpretation out entirely, but I can’t help but think, “What if Christ had never crossed paths with this man, and what of the many blind people who never did? Is this purpose only realized at the resurrection when Christ heals us all? Surely the divine intent behind infirmities like this doesn’t come down to just enduring for the sake of God eventually removing them.”

No, I think this little story is Ether 12 in action once again. At least for now, Christ doesn’t manifest Himself in the removal of trials nearly so often as He manifests Himself in the midst of those trials. In fact, difficulty has a curious capacity to enable Christ’s work, just as blindness can be a conduit for God’s wonders. A child of God who isn’t at their '”100%”” amazingly seems to be a more fit servant and disciple than one who is secure and proficient in all they do. There may be barriers in mortal life, but these barriers are reflective. At the right angle, we discover divine light shining off of their surface.

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

I call this poster printer “The Beast”. We’ve had many a battle.

Random office photo!