I hereby summon every remaining faculty that hasn't yet been yeeted out of my increasingly hollow skull to put forth words on a page. Wigh iz thiss sow dihfikalt? 
A week has happened this past week! I can attest. In fact, let's just contextualize this whole email by establishing that it's me on a witness stand as the week is on trial after being accused of not actually existing. We're getting abstract today.
First item of evidence, and perhaps the highlight of the week, is that I got to meet with President Mitchell and Elder Sellers (our Area Service Mission Specialist, or ASMS, because there weren't enough acronyms before with SML, OSSM, ZL, STL, DL, AP, MLC, ZLC, GSD, MWA, MWS, PSD, SPS, TSC, COB, WOB, ROB, NOB, ...and now I'm getting sidetracked. Where was I?). The purpose of this meeting was to approve the tools I mentioned a couple emails ago to help missionaries magnify their service and spend their time more intentionally. It was super helpful to get input from both of them and we are launching forward with increased momentum! We settled on a few particulars and decided to create a training video to release to the mission (since the topics of the upcoming zone conference had already been planned) and potentially to use while onboarding other service missionaries in this mission. My zone is also about to start piloting these changes in the meantime! Hopefully nothing explodes!
Beyond that, we're forging ahead with GSD media and communications. Sister Abel continues getting settled in her new position (and got to have just the time of her life dealing with a mini technical fiasco today, as is customary for getting initiated in this assignment), and it turns out my spot will now be filled by two missionaries, so we've pulled Elder Tolaini off of his position on phones and onto comms. We got four of us now!
I think I've given a similar sentiment in a previous email, but I have been overwhelmed with the love and support shown to me by the people I serve alongside, now even more so than before. This past week was not a good one overall. I'm not sure if it's burnout, or the lazy natural man taking over, or some other concern, but in the midst of a pretty sizable workload I found myself completely overtaken by distractions and downward spirals to the point where I was essentially suspended in limbo for a few days straight, trying to do GSD work remotely instead of in-person, leaning a lot on my temple shift as an anchor. When I made it back into the West Office Building, the weight of dropping the ball on so many things and the shattered hopes of holding to a higher standard had me pretty down.
Elder and Sister Cole, who are on-site service missionaries (senior missionaries who help service sites run), spotted this pretty quickly and pulled me aside to talk. Between their encouraging words and a positively rousing pep talk from Emily in our 1:1 meeting, I made it to the end of the day realizing more deeply just how much the people over me cared about the person here rather than the nametag or the capacity for work. It's a process, not obsessing over how much you feel like you haven't earned, but "unearned" is a hallmark of grace. Funny how grace is simultaneously comforting and scary. Comforting because of the gift and relief it is, and scary because you have no control over it, unable to rely on your own effort and intellect. On a broad level, the world teaches that safety lies in control, whereas the gospel teaches that safety lies in accepting grace and being changed by it. Where the one emphasizes securing what you have, the other emphasizes simply being grateful for what you've received and trying to learn for next time. I'm thankful for the adamant care of the earthly ministering angels around me.
Friday was a pretty light day of proselytizing, but it was a lot of fun going about the area with Elder Castro and Elder Siddoway, catching up a little bit with the latter. No particular stories are coming to mind, so I guess that's all I'll share.
We've officially moved from three shifts per day to four at the Oquirrh mountain temple! Pretty weird finishing the shift an hour earlier than I used to, but it gives me a bit more time to catch up on the week's work and start to get moderately sane, so that's a plus. Training ordinance workers is going to get funky now that our usual three-shift timeline has three hours shaved off of it. I was about to improvise the training for one new brother, but I think there was some confusion about which shift he was on, cause he didn't make it. Aside from a few minor hiccups like that, the transition has been seemingly smooth!
Each day since has been packed with work to do and stress has been running high, but overall things have been going okay. I got preparations for zone conference together just in time, we completed a poster campaign for President Nelson's 99+1 invitation, and I've started tending to post-mission matters. The next few days will be dense.
I'll finish off by recapping zone conference, which was today! Today being Tuesday, though I'll probably send this later. It was our first regular zone conference with President Mitchell and I thought it went very well! We started off by sharing miracles from our service over the past six weeks, then we had an impactful and detailed discussion on the service missionary purpose.
After lunch with the teaching missionaries, we went into breakout rooms which the zone leaders and sister training leaders taught. In ours, Elder Richardson and Sister Eldredge gave what might have been the perfect training on companionship study. I feel like our zone got such a boost from that and it was very needed. Sister Davis and I then taught about sharing the gospel as service missionaries. I enjoyed breaking down all the ways in which it factors into our purpose and Sister Davis went into more of the how.
We finished off the meeting with all the missionaries together. President Mitchell shared a great many things he's learned about personal revelation. It stood out to me when he touched on how our need for personal revelation is not any different on a mission when compared with regular life. My takeaway was that if certain circumstances and responsibilities cause you to feel more spiritually in-tune and reliant upon the Holy Ghost, that's not so much a singular time in your life as it is an awakening meant for your whole life.
One more note I wrote from President Mitchell in the conference: "We talk a lot about numbers on the mission, but the number that matters most is one."
We had departing testimonies right at the end, which was sweet, but also big sad.
And that's a wrap! Both to zone conference and the email.
Elder Tolman
Pictures:
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| District council (Elder Alston can be seen in his pilot's uniform to the left. He flies for Delta on top of his calling, and he went straight from the airport to the meeting.) |
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| Another zone activity in the books. Twas a great time with these awesome people. |
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| Spontaneous picture while heading out of zone conference. |
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