Chapter 68: Leaning on Grace

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.

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Pictures:

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.)

Another zone activity in the books. Twas a great time with these awesome people.

Spontaneous picture while heading out of zone conference.

Chapter 67: Boomerang Elder (but not Australian)

What a predicament! I’m still a week behind with these. Before the details of 2 weeks ago escape me, I’ll freeze them in bite-sized carbonate here.

“Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

We’ve begun training Elder Tolman 2.0—otherwise known as Sister Abel—at the GSD! She’ll be filling my place on communications and we’re all blown away by how fast she’s picking up on everything. I’m glad I’ll be leaving the place better than I found it….strictly because I’m being replaced by someone cool 😆.

Speaking of which, we just got not one but TWO new missionaries at the GSD who are joining from my zone. *Emperor Palpetine voice* The Jedi are taking over! Sister Bruening from my half and Elder Pedrosa from the other half have both either begun training or will start shortly. That brings the total number of GSD missionaries from our zone up to seven!

We had a spontaneous graphic design project for the west office building that we had to blitz, so I pulled extra help on the media team and we knocked it out of the park. It was a week later that I learned the unknowable cosmic department entities actually disagreed about whether the fruits of said project should be displayed in the office building, and thus the project would shortly be taken down. Womp womp; A for effort.

Transfers happened! Alas, we lost Elder Chatterley. But, get this. In his place, Elder Siddoway got transferred from Herriman back into South Jordan after just one transfer of being away! Craziness. I’ve never heard of a missionary returning to an area that soon. On the occasions where it happens, it seems to be on opposite ends of someone’s service. I was biking to a leadership council on Thursday when I passed by him and Elder Castro knocking a door, and I just assumed he had become a DL or ZL and was on exchanges. Anyways, it’s been awesome having him back! I hope the area doesn’t get too repetitive. 😜

Saturday was the last day my shift at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple was on a three-shift schedule. The group I was mentoring had only two out of our standard three weeks of training, but most of them would be moving to another shift while I stayed on midday, so we regretfully had to bid each other farewell. But, they’ll do awesome! It’s amazing seeing how quickly new temple workers pick up on things and go from being nervous to confident.

Ok, those are the all the big things from that bygone week!

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

This (which is to say that) week’s zone activity.

Chapter 66: Secret Tunnel

(((This is last week's email, which I only just got around to finishing and sending. Doobeedoobeedoo.)))

To you who are reading this, take a moment to pat yourself on the back for taking time out of your day to humor the words of some silly dude posting/emailing in a tiny corner of the internet, solely because he wrote them. I say that not so much to hold these little blurbs up as important, but to point out that all of us are extremely guarded about our time and attention these days, and making room for the trivial little things is a good part of life to hold onto. From time to time I'll skip a turn on my way home from the Trax station and bike an extra block or so to the roundabout in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. I do this just to make a circuit around it and watch as my perspective of the impressive building shifts while my view of Lone Peak in the distant background remains starkly unchanged. If I pick up a bunch of speed, the force of the turn and the wind in my face can make this feel pretty dramatic. Sometimes I'm not really feeling it, and I do it just because. An extra 30 seconds used up in the day for their own sake. Whether with an affectionate grin or a neutral shrug, the most inefficient part of my ride home is probably the part I will remember best.

Anyways, I hope this message finds you pressing forward strong, or perhaps utterly worn down but pressing forward nonetheless. It's been a difficult week on my end, but we'll see what this next one brings to the table.

I think the biggest update from me is that the evolution of our mission's service goal setting program is moving forward promisingly. At its inception, I was excited about the prospect of having five different goal areas to diversify the service our missionaries accomplish, broaden their reach, and help them think outside the box with their calling. But, as much as we tried to present the structure as customizable, the feedback I'm getting has been, "This is cool, and I appreciate the opportunity to help more people, but it's hard not to load myself up with too many goals when I do it, and oftentimes the goal setting just hasn't happened." That concern is definitely understandable, and I think it shows that the goal area idea was only a start. I've found that our greatest success has been the implementation of district accountability meetings, if not to go over structured goals, simply to help missionaries be aware of each others' lives and work.

Draft two of the program dials it back a bit. We've let go of the "goal area" concept and we just have three sections for missionaries to focus on:
1. "Missionary Standards" to track important missionary habits such as personal study and companionship study, which are unfortunately about twice as hard to maintain daily with a service assignment as they are with a teaching assignment (primarily due to not living with your companion and not having mornings conveniently open).

2. "Service Outside of Service Sites" to keep an element of the old goal areas' broadened reach, but with much simpler expectations. This also helps missionaries with more time on their hands practice answering the age-old question, "What do I do after my assignment?" I appreciate that our standards emphasize that wherever we go, our calling is in force.

3. "Personal Development" to help missionaries make new efforts in their discipleship and improve in other areas in life. It's pretty cool that our standards specifically emphasize using this time on our mission to build life skills, and the variety of service opportunities available make that an incredibly fruitful pursuit.

I was nervous that we'd struggle to unify around a second draft when there would probably be differing opinions about what should and shouldn't be included, but we held a brief combined zone leadership council on Thursday, and with a few quick discussion points, it got unanimous approval! Elder and Sister Alston are helping me make the goal setting materials more accessible and user friendly to missionaries, and I've got plans in the works to hopefully involve the mission leadership in creating accountability for each zone/district to hold consistent accountability meetings (so, accountability squared).

That same Thursday, we held a combined zone council in district council's stead and we heard from a guest speaker. Brother Montoya, who has served in various capacities, perhaps most notably as a seminary and institute teacher, spoke to us about appreciating the value of our calling and defeating the tactics of the adversary. The truths he shared were spot-on for the needs of our zone, and he introduced them with a power that I hadn't felt before. A few of the missionaries in the room were former students of his, and he touched on how cool it was for him to see them as missionaries now after witnessing them grow in testimony through high school.

One of the most impactful questions for me in that discussion was, "If your discipleship and calling were to end now, what would be lost?" We brought up a handful of things, from lost opportunities to the fact that needed service would no longer be provided. What came to mind for me to share was that our personal journeys would be cut off. Everyone's journey is a "proof" of something. Paul, Alma, and Zeezrom prove to me that one can become an instrumental disciple, honored by God, even after actively fighting against Him and His people. If they were to throw in the towel partway through, not only would we lose the incredible things they accomplished, but also the possibilities their lives demonstrate. If my mission were to end, say, at its halfway mark, I would not have gone from a despairing elder obsessing over personal failings to one who has taken part in Christ's transformation of failure into success. I wouldn't have proven that my particular mess could be endured and reshaped. Such is the case for everyone's journey. It's precisely what makes a person's unique story valuable.

Apply this to testimony as well. Each person's witness of God isn't meant to be the same golden plaque, copied and pasted with the same list of "I know. . . I know. . . I know. . ." statements etched across the front. Every one of us has circumstances that enable us to glorify God in a distinct way, and that is because it is against all odds that we do so. I strive to believe in Jesus Christ; for me that has meant having a deep focus on learning (keyword: learning) how to avoid agnosticism and enduring new wrenches being thrown at me every time I'm starting to feel at peace. Consider the story Elder Christofferson recently recounted about a young family that was met with tactless reprimand from their branch president in front of an entire congregation. This upsetting situation became an instructive and spiritually-defining one because they showed God, themselves, and us that one can prioritize eternal blessings above wounded pride. They did what some might view as emotionally impossible. They have lived the statement, “I believe in God and His promises, even when I feel betrayed by those bearing His authority.”

So, the mess makes the miracle. The obstacles you need to navigate are your potential for greatness. 2 Nephi 2 and all that jazz. It's striking to me that when it comes down to it, best as we can understand, this is a core purpose of living mortal life.

Moving on to the weekend, on Friday we had a mini miracle member moment. It was a case where at the end of the day we had no appointments and were relying on impressions to know who to visit. Elder Chatterley felt to drive to a different part of the area, and we soon arrived at a house in my ward that just happened to have two preparing missionaries present. We spent the whole time debriefing our mission experiences in a nutshell, offering what support we could, and even receiving some mission advice of our own from the parents of the household. They let us know that our impromptu visit had been perfectly timed. I later learned that this was true to a greater extent than we realized in the moment. As I understand it, the week leading up to that evening was a particularly difficult one for one of the pre-missionaries where personal challenges had spontaneously magnified. Though the mere fact of our visit may have offered more than anything we said in particular, I hope it helped. In addition, it wasn't often that one of the pre-missionaries was home, and the other didn't even live there. To complete the remarkableness of the Spirit's timing (and to spin the blessings back on us), they had just barely finished making a batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies when we arrived. They sent us out with a bunch in hand, and my GOODness those were the best I've ever tasted.

The work in the temple presses on! I've begun training a group of four new ordinance workers with my partner in crime (...celestial crime), Brother Bassett. Bigger groups like this mean things get quite crowded at times, especially when training them on presenting at the veil, but I appreciate getting to know more people at once, and with four different experiences each time we have them do something new, our debrief discussions become a lot more helpful and insightful. One of the new workers in the group is Elder White, who is in my district and somewhat recently began the service portion of his mission. Temple-service missionaries for the win! We are legion.

Right after my temple shift, we had a zone temple night at the Jordan River Temple, so I felt like I spent more of the day out of this world than in it 😆. With an extra service opportunity that morning to boot, it was a good, dense day.

Lastly, Sunday evening had me in the mission office for a few hours straight. We were holding our second service mission leadership council in the transfer to prepare for our upcoming zone conference (which will be my second to last one!! *otherworldy screaming*) immediately followed by new missionary orientation, which the Mitchells are having the zone leaders and sister training leaders attend now. We've got some fantastic and deeply needed trainings planned, some great discussion on the service missionary purpose and on our roles as young missionary leaders, and some cool possible plans for the mission on the horizon. Final note: I loved seeing the new service missionaries; they'll be totally wicked (but in a righteous sort of way. Hold up...both of those are slang terms, and they both mean the same thing), and the ZLs and STLs in this mission are absolutely brilliant!

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Pictures:

We find it novel to sometimes use the """secret tunnel""" that runs from the church office building to the church history library. Those of us who are "Avatar: the Last Airbender" fans have the time of our lives with it, and those of you who are 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' fans will surely understand why.

Never seen one of these used as a beast of burden before,
but strange things happen in the church office building cafeteria.

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.

Chapter 64: Charity & Explosions

 *ragged gasping* How many unique beginnings/greetings must I commission myself to come up with? The number of emails I’m writing doesn’t even match the number of weeks in my mission, and already my idea spring is drying up! I shoulda made these consistent a long time ago. Here, just imagine this as the most riveting, original hello you’ve ever heard:

Hello!

The momentum of the service ever escalates! As my days are increasingly numbered, I’ve found myself wishing, if only a little bit, that I had the chance to transfer between more service sites in my mission adventure, simply for a greater variety of experiences and for a broader reach in the service I offer. But the site managers just love holding onto their missionaries too much, and in church office building assignments it’s especially difficult to have missionary turnover due to all the training and permissions necessary to bring a missionary up to speed. That’s been especially true of the positions I’ve filled in department comms and missionary media, so much so that my release date has adopted titles such as “the dreaded day” between me, Elder Lee, and Emily. Putting all your responsibility eggs in one missionary basket definitely creates a lot of inertia when filling soon-to-be-vacant assignments. Divvying things up has put me and a few others on red alert over that few weeks, but, thankfully with each new week I’m more confident in the future.

There may be a bit of opportunity cost staying at the same assignment most days, but the upside is the depth of relationships you get to form and just how firmly you’re able to get entrenched in what you do. My time at the GSD has answered my prayers in small ways and fulfilled promises from the Lord in HUGE ways. This past week I’ve been especially grateful for the incredible people there—the caring senior missionaries, the diligent employees and young missionaries, my edifying (and ZEALOUS) supervisor in communications, and so on. They all strike a beautiful balance between focus on the work and focus on the fellow workers. 

Immediately after a “Celestial Zone” (a sendoff ceremony we do for departing missionaries)

An explosive highlight—quite literally explosive—from this past week was a 4th of July party hosted by Elder and Sister Cima (a senior couple at the GSD). …It was held on the 3rd of July, but we can go ahead and move past that plot hole. Many missionaries and former missionaries from the GSD came, and afterward we walked up to Eaglewood Golf Course to watch a spectacular firework show they put on each year. I think I heard that 30,000 people attended. Traffic was terrible afterward, so a lot of us stayed at the Cimas’ to wait it out until a VERY unmissionarylike hour, sitting in their front yard in an undead stupor. BUT, things were livened up when a New Zealander named Aidan and his girlfriend strolled up to us, asked what we were all about, and conjured up a deck of cards for an impromptu game. As that happened I sat among spectators to simultaneously be shown butterfly comb tricks by the appropriately named Elder Coombs (I literally only just made that connection 😆).

Waiting for the roads to be drivable with a dandy NZ duo

My teaching area had zone leader exchanges last Friday, so I got to work with Elder Chatterley and Elder Mackay! It was fun having the latter gent back in the area. The dude’s memory is on-point, so he was right on top of our resurrected inside jokes. It was also pretty interesting seeing the intersection of two different halves of companionships I’ve joined before. Guess that’s always been the novelty of exchanges/transfers.

Friday proselytizing time (we finished off the day by knocking my family’s door 😆.
We pride ourselves on how exceptionally hilarious, clever, and original this joke was)

Between Independence Day and Pioneer Day, we’re in a month of honoring the sacrifice of those who came before us. At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on how, in a positive way, I’m not only blessed by, but made up of charity from those around me—family, mentors, friends, etc. In cases where immense discouragement weighs me down and I can’t see the worth of my effort, this thought has helped me keep going: “Honor the gifts you have been given. On a temporal level, other people have toiled, building you up to be who you are, and on an eternal level, you are not your own.” (See 1 Corinthians 6:19)

Remember too that the incredible sacrifice of those who have given us the lives, culture, and possessions we enjoy is only a darkened reflection of our Savior’s sacrifice, which encompasses every blessing and every hardship, even extending infinitely beyond them (2 Nephi 9:7).

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Keeping up the bulb light obsession (the other elders have to remind me
that I have this quirk…when they don’t, my bulb light selfie collection stagnates :P)

Chapter 63: The Angel and The Cowboy

We meet again! Let’s see what words appear on the screen this time (I rarely know where this is going to go).

First, big, flashy news from my main assignment! For the GSD missionaries, July is known as the "Month of Pressing Forward", featuring a greater variety of service and devotionals than we normally have, in honor of the latter-day saint pioneers. We kicked it off this past Wednesday with a service project for Tiny Tim's Workshop, which provides toys for children around the world.

We were given 400 unfinished wooden cars to sand and oil, and we spent the day hopping back and forth between the stations we'd set up for that and our usual service. Both Wednesday and Thursday were set aside for this, but we ended up finishing in one day! This was the first of two projects we'll be doing for Tiny Tim's. Next week we'll be helping them out on-site instead of going to the West Office Building, so that'll be interesting!

Service project for Tiny Tim’s Workshop

We held a sendoff devotional for two more amazing missionaries at the GSD on Thursday: Sister Fry and Elder Cleverly. Sister Fry was on phone support and was also one of my awesome media team designers. She helped us with some script writing and made custom desk tags for incoming GSD missionaries to help them have a little more ownership of their space (she made a middle earth themed tag for me 😆).

Elder Cleverly was an HR missionary handling ***SECRET INFORMATION***, served as a group leader (at the GSD, we have groups of missionaries for purposes of gospel study meetings), and has been such a Christlike example to everyone. There were so many instances where something would go wrong and he'd be right there to calmly and cheerfully pick up the slack. He was also well-known for doing funny accents when leading morning devotional—most notably, a cowboy voice, paired with an accordingly themed presentation.

Whenever we do sendoff devotionals, the directors of the GSD missionaries give some comments. During said comments, one of the directors, in heartwarming fashion, referred to Sister Fry as an angel, and then affirmed that all sister missionaries are angels. He then said, "So, here we have the Angel and the Cowboy" to the congregation's energetic approval. When he added, "Someone needs to write a book called that", an elder and a former missionary in the room, both of whom attend a writer's group, exchanged a delighted look.

Elder Cleverly and Sister Fry’s send off
(the cowboy rides off into the sunset with the silhouette of an angel
barely visible above in the golden light)

Gearshift: For SOME reason we have a silly policy about district council where we don't hold it if we have zone conference in the same week 😜. So, as a leadership council, we decided to take advantage of the open time by holding an informal event for the zone at the service mission leaders' house. Since our zone is divided into two halves with separate SMLs and separate meetings, this was a great opportunity to feel more unified as a zone. Elder and Sister Alston hosted this one, and they knocked it out of the park!

Combined zone activity at Elder and Sister Alston’s.

The blessings of heaven have rained down upon two particular elders in the past week or so,. For, lo and behold, the local teaching area is now a car area! No more biking for Elder Castro and Elder Chatterley (for now). They're not sure how long this will last, but they were delighted, and it made things on Friday quite a bit more efficient. I find it funny how many areas are now car areas in this mission—which recently shrunk, mind you—when, last I left San Diego, they had an increasing number of biking areas, and my last zone was so short on cars that I had to ride in the trunk just to make it to zone conference!

The teaching elders in their rolling metal fortress
(they handed me a pair of shades to complete the vibe)

Friday featured a prominent but unintended bible bash on someone's doorstep. We stayed quite civil, but it's one of those cases where the more I reflect on it, the more the arguments raised bug me (in a facepalmy sort of way 😆). Elder Chatterley stayed mostly quiet for the 20 or so minutes we were there, and afterward he revealed that he was FUMING and had been holding it in the whole time. That's some mad willpower right there in multiple senses of the word. We debriefed, blew off steam, and joked about it as the day continued. Elder Castro had me dying with laughter over a comment that was shot at him.

If nothing else, it was a good opportunity to listen to another Christian's beliefs and to practice clarifying a couple of our beliefs without actively trying to change their mind. Although, it was pretty disheartening to not at least find confident common ground in our belief in Christ. It's been a prominent topic on my mind of late: it is SO important that all Christians unite with each other in these latter-days, differences in belief and all. It was concerning that some semantic difference in doctrinal points and the topic of "Trinity vs Godhead" could bring someone to the point where they adamantly refused to accept members of the church as their brothers and sisters in Christ.

I LOVE what the Book of Mormon teaches about children of God being judged according to the knowledge they have (Mosiah 3:11). Can we not have confidence that God has allotted everyone, through their culture, family, and life experiences, every piece of knowledge necessary for them to get what they need from mortal life, regardless of whether all of it perfectly matches His complete truth (Mormon 8:12)? He gives every one of us the most important resources for us to grow, and He ensures—through the sacrifice of His Son—that if we are good stewards of what we were given (Jacob 3:5-7), and seek Him when given the opportunity (Alma 9:16-17), our eternal progress will carry on (2 Nephi 28:30).

Imagine for a moment, whatever faith you belong to, that, on the day we all come face to face with God (whoever He may be in this hypothetical), He turns to another church, reveals to all that they were the true church all along, and utterly condemns everyone else for choosing the wrong religion. I can't find words to express how horrifying a reality that would be. After a life of seeking and searching for truth, struggling to hold onto what you believe to be right, taking comfort and counsel from a unique conception of the Divine, your work, faith, and connection to Him are unceremoniously invalidated because of a reality you were unaware of.

No! I can't accept such a stark fate for myself, or anyone else, no matter their religion or lack thereof. I do hold fast to the idea of objective truth, and I choose to put faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that its teachings and authority can connect me with a key portion of that truth, but in order to hold the view of God that I do, I must believe He has a hand in everyone's life, no matter how distant from my faith they are.

We all play some role in God's plan that is beyond my awareness, even in the absence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. All are invited to take part in the restoration of the gospel, but that particular work can't devalue anyone else's journey. “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. … It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people” (Elder Orson F. Whitney, quoted by President Dallin H. Oaks).

At the end of the day, my confidence can't come from being dogmatic in the doctrine I've been taught, bold as we need to be these days. It must come from trusting that God holds in His hand every flawed perspective, He condescended and atoned to experience each one, He can reconcile all of them with the truth, and He entrusted me with my own.

The application? Christ taught in His ministry to the Nephites, "there shall be no disputations among you, as there have hitherto been; neither shall there be disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been. . .this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away." Seems simple enough when the Savior is right there to spell out His doctrine in no uncertain terms. "Here's the truth. Follow it and stop bickering over it."

But what about when people start to interpret things differently? What about when they dispute what Christ actually said, and question which records are actually true? Disagreements do arise, and we can't spontaneously decide to be likeminded on so many particulars. When Christ commanded the Nephites not to dispute His doctrine, I think it was not only an exhortation to hold fast to the simple things He taught, but also a way of saying, "When you disagree, if you are arguing about who knows me better, the reality is that neither of you know me. Just work together to draw closer to me, finding whatever common ground you can, realizing that no matter who has their facts in better order, I have a plan for both of you, and you will both equally rely on my grace."

"We are too diverse and at times too discordant to be able to come together as one on any other basis or under any other name. Only in Jesus Christ can we truly become one." (Elder D. Todd Christofferson)

I live my life all-too-aware of the fact that it's a possibility—if nothing else, just a possibility—that I could be entirely wrong in my beliefs. In a world of far, far too much information to parse through to obtain objective truth, the evidence and character of Jesus Christ are the greatest hope I have.

Aaaaalrighty, just a pinch more recounting to do.

Also on Friday, we met with a returning member named Dillion, who I've visited once before, and he wanted to talk about preparing for a mission! We had a fantastic discussion, and better yet, he's trying to determine whether a service mission or teaching mission would be right for him. I was grateful to have had both experiences to bring to the table there.

My temple shift on Saturday was entirely spent coordinating initiatory, though it was spiced up by the opportunity to train another brother in that position. However, a fate so tame as being initiatory coordinator isn't what's on his horizon. No, something far more fearsome awaits him. He'll be a shift coordinator once the Oquirrh Mountain Temple moves from three shifts per day to four, so he's getting some familiarity with E V E R Y position. *cue lowest note on the piano*

We held Service Mission Leadership Council at the mission home on Sunday! It was a great chance for the zone leaders and sister training leaders to touch base with President Mitchell as he and Sister Mitchell have been acclimating to their new calling. We talked about what's been working well and what needs improvement in our missionaries' experience, and my zone's leadership got to share some of the success we've had with building zone unity, adding to a great discussion from everyone.

I also checked in with how the mission's goal setting program is going, a little worried that it's faded away by now, but I was happy to discover that it's still on everyone's radar, stronger in some places. weaker in others. It'll need some revision soon, so I might have my work cut out for me. Eek!

Toward the end I led a teaching moment on serving with loving kindness, and I felt like it went very well! Ain't nobody got time for me to recount that though. Bottom line for the meeting as a whole was that we're all increasingly excited to work with the Mitchells.

Clearly I'm assisting you with the goal you may or may not know you've set to do more reading today. Congratulations and you're welcome!

God be with you,

Elder Tolman

Pictures:

President Mitchell after SMLC. We took this picture for Bryce at the Global Services Department, who I sometimes serve in proximity to. I found out last Tuesday that he and President Mitchell got their MBA together!

I let Bryce know President Mitchell instantly remembered him at SMLC,
so we took another photo to bring it full circle when I see Pres again.

Service project for Tiny Tim’s Workshop

Our ingenious attempt to recreate the Tower of Babel.
Thankfully our language wasn’t confounded.

Whenever we aren’t at service sites or otherwise occupied with our calling, our remaining time is referred to as “agency hours”, which are on us to spend well. For some of his, Elder Anderson in my zone decided to invite friends and family to his own outdoor concert, so I got to attend (heh, while scrambling to get my weekly planning done :P). The man’s confidence is unreal! 

sUrE-LoC HarDWaRe