Chapter 65: Meta-service

Olo. I've quite thoroughly lost track of all stuff, past, present, and future. But the stuff is definitely there if ya know what I mean, poor in mind as this eyewitness is.

Here’s a cool thing to recount: at the GSD, we did another service project for Tiny Tim’s Workshop, but this time we got to go on-site! I really appreciated seeing a map of the countries they’ve touched, hearing about the immense needs they’re helping to meet, and getting a tour of the process they go through to make their toy cars—using recycled materials, no less! And to think, all that wood would just be sitting in the dump otherwise.

There were a variety of tasks to do on this “field trip”, including tracing car templates on wood to prepare it for cutting, painting faces on the cars, and fitting the cars with wheels. I spent the whole time waterproofing the faces, which was surprisingly fun. One amusing detail was that they had a “wall of shame,” displaying examples of what not to do when painting faces. There are quite a few considerations Tiny Tim’s had to bear in mind to make the toys work for any given country. New cars worthy of the wall of shame are put in the “witness protection” box to have their faces sanded off (very accurate to real witness protection, I’m sure).

It was a funny situation serving there, because Tiny Tim’s is its own service site (I know of at least one missionary in my zone who has served there), yet we were serving there as a part of our service for the GSD. 'Twas an onion-like situation, having many layers (two, to be exact). Meta-service!

A class we held as a continuation of July’s many special events featured “Stories of Faith and Courage” from missionaries’ family history. Before entering the MTC, I was encouraged to have family history stories on hand for my mission, so in preparation for the class, I grabbed one of those to share! Keeping with this email's multi-layer theme, it was sort of a meta-story written by my dad about how three stories from our family history gave him peace and strength during a difficult deployment to Afghanistan. It was awesome having a venue to share that.

Friday was just a fun day. The sun cooked us, but, by the power of being missionaries in Utah, we were insistently provided with popsicles on two different occasions. We also had some fun little encounters while walking between houses. 

Basking in the lovely blazing sky radiation.

Pausing our stroll for a bit of rocknopoly.

One of the more interesting doors we’ve encountered.

No huge updates as far as our friends' progress goes, though.. We sadly might have to stop teaching Vanessa and her family since they've been suddenly unavailable over the past few weeks, conveniently after we extended a baptismal invitation. I thought that last meeting went well overall, and we were on very friendly terms both during and after, but now we're not sure what's going on on their end.😞 

In other news, another awesome missionary just finished! *many tears* That's all. The mortality rate is getting crazy around here.

A small epiphany/observation/thingy from this past week: It's commonly understood that we call something a miracle or an act of God when it is unexplainable. We marvel because it is beyond the scope of our understanding. Yet on exquisite occasions I find myself marveling at something precisely because I do understand it. Having a clear picture of how something is brought about doesn't prevent it from amazing me. Enjoying nature, solving a math problem, manifesting creativity, and pondering the simple intricacies and intricate simplicities of the gospel of Jesus Christ—all of these are things I marvel at, and to me, marveling is another way of glorifying God.

I'll use this subject matter to share one of my favorite talks from Elder Soares, In Awe of Christ and His Gospel. I could go on about that one for ages. 😆

Hey! I also realized a lot of this connects back to Stand Forever by Lawrence E Corbridge if you remember that BYU devotional.

Hope you all have a great week!

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Elder Castro and his new temporary companion.

The grill cat returns!! This time beside the grill instead of on top of it.

An update. . . 

It’s awkward when there are multiple doorbells and you're not sure which to press.
There's a meme template that perfectly matches that situation,
so I had Elder Siddoway recreate the panels a while back
and finally got around to putting them together.