Welp, it’s already been three weeks of silence from me and before it becomes four I better summarize recent events.
Brain…not working, so, list format today:
•The missionary department assembled a committee of service missionaries to work on some special **top secret** projects (SHOCKING things, I promise. Definitely not just a few needed improvements to missionary tools), and I was pulled aboard a few weeks ago! …and as of yesterday I’ve disembarked XD. Too much to do in the West Office Building. And, more importantly, the things I want to focus on with the missionary department pertain to projects the committee isn’t working on yet. Now instead of meeting with the think tank, I’ll be in separate meetings to present what we’ve been piloting in the SLC South mission.
(We’ve discussed this before; “list format” just means I put a dot at the start of each paragraph. Never trust me with a list.)
•We had Zone Conference! MORE trainings for Elder Hanson and me to give (we’ve both resigned ourselves to being zone leaders probably for the rest of time and maybe eternity). AFTER zone conference, we finally got official STLs after a long stretch of having very few sisters in the zone, so we’ll be divvying up the fun more in the future. We had a fantastic final training from President and Sister Kotter, who are finishing their callings this transfer. The topics of the day ranged from spiritual habits to centering our service on Jesus Christ to applying Elder Dushku’s talk on “Pillars and Rays”.
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| Sister Kotter’s mission report |
•The SLC South mission will be splitting soon! I’ll remain in the South mission and in a few weeks I’ll have the chance to meet my third mission president, President Mitchell. The East mission will be led by the Potters (the Pokémon evolution of the Kotters XD; they’re even both from Georgia!). Though I won’t be under the Potters, I hope I run into them at some point, cause President and Sister Merritt from San Diego reached out and told me they know each other!
•Elder Lee and I have been thinking a lot about zone unity and culture, which is tricky since (1) our zone meets in separate halves and (2) it’s hard to gather service missionaries together when their schedules are so different. We called for a combined zone leadership council after zone conference, and it went super went! We established a needed vision for what we want our zone to be and came up with action steps to get there. And we’ve already seen some results! My own companionship has improved, and we’ve had solid attendance at zone activities for the past three weeks.
•While proselytizing one Friday, we encountered a cat that was relentlessly following a couple boys, lagging a few meters behind them and meowing insistently. This continued all the way up the street until they were out of view
•My bike became possessed in the temple parking lot and I had my first crash! *party horn* The right half of my shirt was blackened from the asphalt so I had to strategically angle myself while knocking doors afterward. We also had a lesson before I had the chance to change it, so I chose my chair with care and spent the whole time wondering if it would be noticed XD. It wasn’t pointed out, in any case.
•We’ve been meeting with Vanessa and her daughter consistently, and lessons have been going very well! Vanessa recently had a miracle take place in her family, which has strengthened her faith. At one point, we were surprised to hear her daughter recount a dream she had about interacting with Jesus, which was an unexpected confirmation of her desire to draw closer to Him. We pointed out to her that the Book of Mormon and the many miracles that take place throughout, in a sense, began with a dream (1 Nephi 1:7).
•One afternoon, we were talking to someone through their camera doorbell and only getting the occasional distorted reply that we could barely understand. It took…longer than it should have for us to realize that the sounds the doorbell was making were literally just short recordings of what we were saying played back at us. We were having a conversation with a malfunctioning doorbell turned parrot!
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| Found another SureLoc deadbolt! |
•We had a very sacred experience one Friday evening that I won’t recount, but that I want to mention for if I ever look back on this email. One takeaway was: you rarely know what’s really going on in someone’s heart. A stony doorstep interaction is never a lost cause.
•I got approval to join my family on a trip down to St. George, and we attended an endowment session the St George temple and did sealings in the Red Cliffs temple. It was my first time seeing the latter temple, and I’m in love with it. That trip also constituted the second time I’ve led gospel study at the GSD from St George.
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| St. George Temple |
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Red Cliffs Temple
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•We’ve been losing missionaries left, right and center! I attended the mission reports (a.k.a homecomings) of Elder Sahlin in my zone and Sister Kotter from the GSD, and was present for the GSD sendoffs of even more (these are mini devotionals we do at that service site to recognize missionaries who served there to the end). One of the desks near mine is now a sorry scene of vacancy. At the same time, at the GSD, we’re doing our best to recruit as many as we’re losing (especially sisters, cause it’s hard enough for them when there’s only a handful, let alone like two to three). We basically abducted one missionary from the North Office Building just as another missionary was getting released, and it sounds like she’s loving it so far! Mwahaha.
•No stories from the temple come to mind, but training workers and coordinating initiatory continue to be very rewarding! To put it simply, the temple is just a good place to be. Oh! Here’s a thing. I met a brother in a nearby stake for member lesson one Friday evening, and we’re now serving on the same temple shift! That’s actually the second time that’s happened. Small world! Or rather, small South Jordan!
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| Missionary Temple Visit (+2 future missionaries) |
•I was called to be on the YSA committee in my Stake! We’ve got quite the task ahead of us—figuring out how to fellowship a multitude of young single adults in the area who we haven’t met yet. This’ll be interesting.
•Last week I got to help teach mission prep in my stake! I talked about lifelong discipleship, the variety of missions available to add to that discipleship (from teaching missions to service missions to senior missions and beyond, each subdividing into a broad variety of opportunities), and the journey of preparing for a mission. We had an awesome turnout and the message was well received.
•Continuing a major project at the GSD, I recorded some voice lines to help inform new service missionaries about what we do as a service site. So, I’ve officially been a voice actor as a missionary! Well, it’s not quite acting, but still!!
Thanks for reading! To put a cap on the updates, here is an epiphany that occurred a few months ago and resurfaced in a recent discussion: what you see around you is heavily influenced by what is inside you. Fill yourself with gratitude, and many gifts will suddenly present themselves. Ruminate over the negative, and you will see its beady eyes glinting out of every shadow you pass. This is true down to the language your brain deciphers. Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new word, it suddenly seems to turn up all over the place?
This could lead well into a “focus on the positive” message—look for miracles, and you will find them—but, for me, it also stirs up a concern. If faith-weakening experiences turn up when I look for them just as much as faith-strengthening ones do, how do I know it doesn’t all just come down to an illusion of perception? After all, “positive” does not always mean “true”. When should someone trust what they are seeing?
God, unlike us, can see truth perfectly, and, thankfully, He actively pursues a relationship with us. Yes, whether we see His hand may depend on the content of our minds and hearts, but the greatest blessing of mortal life is that we need not be the sole residents there. The Holy Ghost, we learn, literally dwells inside us. By default, the world reflects our own paradigm back at us, but when God is within us, the world likewise reflects Him.
God’s presence in what you experience leans upon the promise that the Holy Ghost really is there. We covenant to make Him our constant companion, assuring us that when we uphold our end, He, with perfect integrity, is there upholding His.
“Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” (1 Timothy 4:14)
What you perceive in the world is an indication of what is inside you. Through a covenant relationship, when you see God in the world, that is an indication that He is inside you.
God be with you,
Elder Tolman
Pictures:
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| A good table for Elders |
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| Zone activity |
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