Week 23

Last week we were visited by Elder John Pingree Jr. of the Seventy. He and his wife did a "virtual tour" of the mission, meaning that there was one day where he met with half of the missionaries in the mission in person one day, while the rest of the missionaries watched over zoom. Then the next day it was reversed, with the missionaries who listened over zoom day 1 meeting with him in person. Instead of giving a devotional, both days Elder Pingree basically held a 3-hour discussion about various topics. The missionaries in my zone listened over zoom the first day, and due to the horrible audio quality we could barely understand anything that was said. We couldn't exactly leave or stop watching or anything, so we spent a mostly fruitless three hours crowded together around my phone, staring at a laggy screen and trying to parse out some English from the tortured audio coming out of our old speaker. 

It wasn't my favorite experience, but the in-person meeting the next day mostly made up for it. The people in charge kept forgetting to turn off the smaller microphones when not in use and kept holding them too close to the podium, so we were interrupted in several places by the deafening, horrific screeching of audio feedback. Despite that we had a great time. Elder Pingree presented a bunch of new strategies and tools for doing missionary work more effectively and helped us learn/practice it. There were also a lot of parts where he opened up the discussion for everyone, and at parts it was basically a fast and testimony meeting. Elder Pingree is very personable and there was a remarkably open and comfortable spirit in the room. Hearing lots of sincere, heartfelt testimonies, singing soul-stirring hymns, and being taught by a general authority of the church about things both spiritual and practical was really special.

We've been going around visiting some of the prospective elders in the ward, meaning men who are eligible to be ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood but haven't been yet due to various circumstances. It's been a fairly mixed bag. We knocked on one guy's door and he opened it immediately. He said that he'd been watching us approach from his window, and if we hadn't been wearing our white shirts he would have shot us. I'm pretty sure he wasn't kidding either, the way he was holding up one of his hands behind the door made me suspect he was hiding a firearm back there. Surprisingly, he didn't seem very interested in hearing a message about how we can find hope and peace through Jesus Christ.

He might not have been interested, but we stopped by this other guy (rather appropriately) named Chad. When Chad opened the door he immediately asked if his grandma sent us. Apparently she's been sending the missionaries over to his house for years and he's sick of it. We assured him that she didn't and that we were just going down the names on the ward roll, he calmed down a lot. He said that he hasn't been to "the Mormon church" in like 20 years and he isn't ready to come back. But he does go to other churches and he reads the Bible all the time. He asked if we had any copies of the Book of Mormon and we gave him one, which he was thankful for. We also invited him to the ward's trunk-or-treat, and he took the flyer. He said he'd come and bring his daughter, which is pretty cool.

We went to the park one evening to go contacting. We were walking along and saw these two ladies sitting at a picnic table. We asked them if they were interested in hearing a message about Jesus Christ, and they said they were actually just about to begin praying. Turns out they liked to come together to the park on Friday nights to pray for the soldiers, and they were especially concerned for those involved in recent events in Israel. They invited us to join them, and it ended up being a neat experience. Their style of praying was a little different from ours, they prayed to "Father God" instead of "Heavenly Father" and some of the other terms and stylistic things were different. It was a communal prayer as well, where we all took turns. I wasn't sure if we were expected to also pray but once the second woman ended her part I decided to just go for it (which ended up being the correct decision because my companion tells me they were looking at me awkwardly and expecting me to do something in the second or two after she finished). 

Overall it was nice, it was very kind of them to invite us to join them and it was cool to share a moment of unity and solidarity with members of other faiths. It goes to show that even if our beliefs are different, we're still essentially praying to the same God. After we finished one of the ladies asked if she could say a prayer for us, and she said two of them, one in English and one in Hebrew. I thought that was pretty neat, she said she was trying to learn it so she could pray in a language closer to that which Jesus spoke when he was on the earth. I didn't want to be the guy to tell her that Jesus spoke Aramaic and not Hebrew, so I let that slide.

Thanks for all the emails you sent me this week. I don't always respond to all of them, but know that I read and appreciate every one. 

Yours Faithfully,

Elder C. Calder

Not sure if trying to light one of these is the best idea. But it should prove quite effective at deterring trick-or-treaters

 

Photo with half the mission and Elder Pingree. You may be surprised to learn that the blocking and placements for the picture were not professionally done

One thing to be said about Phoenix is that sometimes the sunsets can be really beautiful

Australian stop sign. Or a N6IS d0_|_S