#MissionaryStoryMonday: Doorstep battle with JW's

In my third area we were teaching this one sister and things were going pretty well...until we found out she was meeting with missionaries from the Jehovah Witnesses too. We found this out because one day when we showed up for our scheduled appointment with her, the JW's arrived 2 seconds after us for an unscheduled appointment with her. Talk about awkward.

The lady answered the door but didn't let us in. She didn't let them in either so it was all good. My companion at the time liked to bible bash (moron) so he started getting into with the JW's. I had a moment of weakness though and responded to one of their "attacks." They had said that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost were all one person. They were very snarky and condescending about it and I couldn't help myself.

I got very smart with them and did not use my nice missionary voice. I read the account of Jesus's baptism from the New Testament and pointed out that we had: 1. Jesus in the water, 2. the voice of God coming from heaven, and 3. the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. I held a finger with each person as they were mentioned and then looked at my hand in "shock" afterwards ("Oh my, would you look at that, three separate beings!"). I then also counted each of my fingers for them in a very...well, what's a good term for I treated them like they were a bunch of naive little children.

Looking back on that day I'm not super proud of my actions and know that is not how the Savior would have acted. The lady we were teaching did let us in that day and not the Jehovah Witnesses so that's one thing, but she didn't end up getting baptized at that time either. I hope my actions did not impede someone from being able to take advantage of the rich blessings of the gospel.

Moral of the story for current or future missionaries: the Lord wants us to speak boldly of his gospel and preach repentance with love, not bible bash and cause contention with bad attitudes.

#HastenTheWork: Best of #LDSBroadcast

#MissionaryStoryMonday: Judging and Horchata

My first area on the mission was in this small little village in the middle of the desert. There was nothing going on there and the largest body of water was the baptismal font. It was also a very poor part of the country and most of the people lived in mud brick houses.

I still remember my first Sunday in the field as my companion and I were out visiting some of our investigators. We went to visit this one older lady and her children and their home was more humble than most. She offered us some horchata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horchata) which in that part of Mexico was a warm mix of rice, milk, and cinnamon. Its is extremely tasty.

This particular woman made the horchata and raw cinnamon sticks which she left in the drink itself. Being very naive and not recognizing it as such, I thought it was a twig from a tree that she had used to stir it since she didn't have a spoon. I dutifully drank my horchata and covertly threw the "twig" outside while no one was looking.

Some months later I was serving in another area, this time in the city and in a pretty well to-do part of the region. This guys weren't rich or anything, but they had cement homes and could easily support their families. So I was much surprised to find that one day one of the families served us horchata and there was the "twig" again! It couldn't be! This was a well-off family who didn't need twigs to stir.

I shared these observations with my companion after we left and boy did I feel embarrassed. He explained to me that this "twig" was actually a raw cinnamon stick that I didn't recognize, because truthfully, I had never seen one before. It taught me an invaluable lesson though about judging people unfairly and keeping an open mind because you don't necessarily know everything (only Heavenly Father does).

#MissionaryStoryMonday: Homeless Convert

There was this homeless guy who we helped get baptized and he faithfully attended church each week. This brother stayed in a small village approximately 10 miles outside the city and would scrap together enough money each week for the bus fare to attend church. The stake patriarch would then give him a ride home afterwards and some food to eat. I have always been impressed by his faith and dedication.

Shortly after returning home from my mission I went back to visit. I flew into Mexico City and stayed with a former companion. We were there for a few days and then rode a bus to our mission and specifically where we served together. This is the same area previously mentioned where I was there for 1 year (again, that is literal and no exaggeration).

Throughout the week that we were there we were visiting with some of the families from the ward and our converts, almost all of whom had stopped coming. Also unfortunate, since this wonderful homeless brother did not live in the city and I actually had no idea where he stayed, I wasn't able to meet up with him at that time. But on Sunday I saw him.

My former companion and I were late to sacrament meeting because we had stopped by and picked up some of our converts to bring them to church with us.* So they open the doors and we walk in. I see this amazing brother there with so much faith sitting on the back row. I sit down next to him and see his eyes light up when he sees me. He reaches over to gives me a big hug and the spirit can be felt. He then looks me right in the and says, "You're late."

*The full-time missionaries there at that time had zero investigators there that day and zero reactivations.On the other hand, my former companion and I brought back 4 people who hadn't been attending. Slackers!

I love that guy.

Study Recap: “My Ways Are Not Your Ways” By Elder Clayton M. Christensen

Title: “My Ways Are Not Your Ways”
Author: Elder Clayton M. Christensen
Source: February 2007 Ensign
Link: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2007/02/my-ways-are-not-your-ways?lang=eng
Rating: 5/5

Favorite Points

• Many of the Savior’s most profound teachings are counterintuitive. “Love your enemies” is an example. The solutions that our minds are prone to develop are often different from those the Lord would have us pursue. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).
•  When we encounter roadblocks in our efforts to build the kingdom, the reason often is that our solutions are grounded in the wisdom of men—which is foolishness to God (see 1 Corinthians 3:19).
• The Savior taught that good shepherds go after individual sheep that don’t return to the fold. Yet we frequently focus on the ninety and nine, leaving those who are lost to continue wandering from the Church. In every sacrament meeting, for example, our clerks count the number of sheep who returned to the fold. They store this number in a safe place for the quarterly report, and then we go home. If we conformed our ways to God’s ways, we’d list the names of the individual members who could have returned to the fold on that Sunday but didn’t come. Then we’d go find them.
•  We should be careful not to offend members who deliberately do not want to attend. But helping each member who only occasionally returns to the fold on Sunday to feel needed and feel our love is a simple practice that every ward and branch can begin. Many less-active members got that way because they didn’t return to the fold one Sunday and nobody seemed to notice.
• Some wards and branches suffer from inadequate leadership. The reason is often that we rely on the same qualified people to fill key callings, denying others experiences in which personal growth can occur. When a branch is just emerging and there are no alternatives, leaders extend callings to people who don’t fit the traditional mold of talented, capable leaders and invite them to assume important responsibility. During such periods, the branch and its members often grow in exciting ways. Many times, however, there comes a point when a group of talented, experienced leaders and teachers has coalesced. When there are capable people available to ensure that Church programs run efficiently, we often stop drafting people from the periphery of capability into the positions of responsibility in which they can grow. Because they seem less qualified than those in the experienced core, we leave them on the periphery. The experienced leaders and teachers play musical chairs, exchanging positions of responsibility. This is not the Lord’s way.
• Building His Church on the backs of the simple and weak (see D&C 1:19) was not a temporary, stop-gap staffing plan to tide the Church over during its early years until enough experienced, committed, qualified leaders had arrived on the scene.
• The Lord deliberately weakened Gideon’s army so that Israel wouldn’t get confused about whose power had led them to victory (see Judges 6; 7). None of Jesus’s original Twelve Apostles had evidenced adequate experience or commitment when He called them. Enoch, Moses, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Amos, and Joseph Smith were unqualified by the world’s standards when the Lord put them to work. But God transformed them.
•  ...the focus of many parents and youth leaders is to help our youth find their lives. Too often we define strong youth programs as those with a large “critical mass” of youth, well-planned activities, and opportunities for Latter-day Saint friendships. These are good things to have. But while we work so hard to provide enriching experiences for our youth, we sometimes deny them the most important opportunity of all—the chance to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel.
• The Savior’s formula for converting our hearts to His cause is unambiguous. He instructs us to lose our lives in His service.
• A strong youth program is not defined by the numbers of youth. Nor is it defined by the charisma of youth leaders. Rather, it is one that gives every young person the opportunity to lose his or her life for the sake of the Savior.
• The youth whose lives leaders need most urgently to influence are those whose parents do not regularly enroll them in the Savior’s service. A strong youth program isn’t one that coddles these at-risk youth. Rather, it will give them opportunities to sacrifice in the service of God, to feel needed in the Church and feel the Spirit as they serve.
• If the reason for attending church between ages 12 and 18 is fellowship and fun, then Relief Society and elders quorum can be a shock: they aren’t very fun.
• The burden of adult discipleship looms heavy if young people have never shouldered the Savior’s yoke.
• Long ago I had concluded that it was quite simple to administer the mechanics of missionary meetings, but I could not lead that work with passion and credibility unless I could speak in present-tense verbs and first-person pronouns about finding people for the missionaries to teach.
• When Moroni foresaw that many in the last days would believe God had ceased to be a God of miracles (Mormon 9:15–20), perhaps he had in his view not just those of other faiths but some of us as well. When we are doing all we can and our leaders ask us to do even more, miracles are the only option. That is why the Savior asked us to forsake the rational limits of our adult minds and employ the faith of little children instead.
• I once felt passed over when another man was called to a leadership position I had felt I might receive. In the crisis of self-confidence that ensued, I realized that because our minds are finite, we create hierarchies and statistically aggregate people. We perceive stake presidents to be higher than bishops and Primary presidents higher than Primary teachers because they preside over more people. But God has an infinite mind. He needs no statistics above the level of the individual in order to have a perfect understanding of what is happening. This means, I realized, that the way God will measure my life is not by the numbers of people over whom I have presided but by the individual people whose lives I have touched with His love and with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
•  There is a calling far higher than that of stake president, bishop, or Relief Society president. It is to be a doer of good, a disciple of Christ, an intermediary through whom God answers others’ prayers.

#MissionaryStoryMonday: Drool

Shortly after arriving in the actual mission field I was in my first area with my trainer and we were knocking doors. Since I was still in the early portions of my mission my language skills were still developing and I contributed less to the lessons. I would teach a principle here and there and testify when needed. But answering questions and addressing concerns? Not so much.

So most of the time I was a bump on the log. Very boring stuff. So anyway, we knocking doors one day and a nice elderly couple invites us in and we teach the first lesson. I play my part and then my companion takes over completely at the end to address the wife's concerns which were many. So I'm sitting there in the penetrating heat of a Mexican summer in the desert, bored because I'm following everything that's being said, and tired because we walked an average of 10-15 miles per day.

In the middle of this, I fall asleep at some point and I'm not quite sure when. All I know is after some undetermined amount of time, I slowly open my eyes and notice that my head is down over my lap and a string of drool is leaving my mouth and hitting my backpack which was in my lap. My brain takes a few moments to process what's going on and when the moment of realization hits, I jerk up and wipe the drool from my face.

I do a quick check of my surroundings and assess the other people in the room. My companion is turned away from me and engaged with the wife still. She has not noticed anything and isn't looking my way at all. I look over at the husband to see if he's upset by my sleeping only to notice that he feel asleep too! I felt so relieved (and some validation that I wasn't the only one who found my companion extremely boring).

I looked back at my companion and the wife and realized they would still be going at for a good while longer (my trainer wasn't very good at picking up when people weren't interested) so I put my head back down and joined the husband in some quick shut-eye. Very refreshing.

#MissionaryStoryMonday: Mexican Coke

There are few things better tasting in the world that Coca-Cola from Mexico. They use real sugar instead of corn syrup which gives it a better (and more addicting) flavor. Now I stopped drinking caffeine by personal choice a few years before my mission and was a little shocked at first as to how many members and other missionaries were drinking Coke (how can that be!?). My first Zone Leader is the only guy I met on the mission staunchly avoided it all cost.*

But then one day I had one and it was awesome. The best was when the family you were eating with had Coke to drink for you. Now things are a little different where I served and most of the time the family did not actually sit and eat with us. They would've eaten beforehand or they ate in another room. I'm still not sure why they did this. Anyway, since they were not there it was just you and your companion plus any other missionaries that happened to be with you.

One day we were with another companionship and eating in the home of one of my converts (the one mentioned in a previous post). She set down two 2 liter bottles of Coke on the table and we all began salivating like Pavlov's dog. We completely forgot about the amazing enchiladas she made us that day because we just wanted Coke.

One of the other missionaries that was there said something that I had not realized before that day but immediately knew it was true. He said that we shouldn't freak out because there was Coke because what happened every time is that we would become so fixated on it instead of the food and would try to drink more of it than someone else before it was gone. Guilty.

We all stopped for a moment to appreciate the truth bombs he was throwing at us. But then I looked at him said, "You're just saying that so we'll drink less of it so there will be more for you." And thus began the frantic race to drink Coke.

*This guy would sing the follow lyrics to the tune of "Choose the Right": Choose the Sprite, when the coke is place before you!

#MissionaryStoryMonday: My Second Area

I love my mission and every moment. Even those three months with the companion from hell that I would punch in the face today if I saw him. Most of my memories though are from my second area. It's not just that I had a great time there and was able to accomplish a lot of work, but I have a lot of fond memories from there because I was there for so long. And by long, I mean long.

I'm not exaggerating this one bit, but I was there for literally one year. HALF of my mission was in this one area. Companions and other Elders in the house would come and go, but I would carry on. And this was a small area. I would estimate approximately 2 miles by 5 miles. I really did knock on every door and most I hit twice. We could be contacting someone and then I would cut my companion off and we would leave. When my companion asked why, I told him that the person gave us a bad address because that's how well I knew the streets.

I had four companions there and we each enjoyed success. In fact, I was more successful as a missionary towards the end of my service there compared to the beginning. You would think it would the other way around due to burn-out from being in the same small place. But no, just the opposite (I was burnt out though).

The bishop there was great. The ward was great. We had an awesome apartment. Everything about the place was amazing. I was there so long I consider myself an honorary citizen of the city.

I always wondered though: why I was there so long? Other missionaries would joke around and say my picture of the Mission President's wall was behind the door so he always forgot about me. Now I had some thoughts as to why, but I was never sure. So during my exit interview with my Mission President before going home I asked him, "why was I in [INSERT AREA HERE] for so long?" I'll never forget his response: "I don't know, I thought you knew."

This has always stuck with me. The Lord has everything happen for a reason and each experience we have, whether good, bad, or neutral, is for our benefit. I also know that He will indicate to us the why behind it when we are ready and if we ask for the answer.

Missionary Story Monday: Carpet

I served my mission in Mexico. I loved it there and the people. They have a rich culture and the best food in the world (plus Coke with sugar instead of corn syrup). But one thing they don't have: carpet. I saw carpet a total of two times during my entire mission.

The first time I came across it was in my first area at the church building. I was serving in a small branch and some how they had gotten a building built even though they had fairly low numbers. And not only did they have this nice, big building, but there were two parts of it that had carpet. One part was on the stage in the sacrament hall. The other was this small little room that could barely hold one table and a few chairs. Not sure how, but that became the "missionary room." This carpet was course, rough, and industrial strength but I loved every fiber of it.

Fast forward more than a year later in my second area. My companion from Idaho and I are knocking doors and this elderly gentleman invites us in. We're talking with him when we see that one of the rooms in the house has carpet. and not just any carpet, the lush, soft, "I just want to take a nap on it" stuff. We were mesmerized. My companion and I looked at each other and then to the guy. I asked, "sir, would you mind if we touched your carpet?"

The guy just looked at us kinda funny and said, "You can walk on it if you like" and shrugged his shoulders like what are these two gringos smoking.* But my companion and I were beyond caring what this guy thought of us because we were ecstatic! It was like Christmas come early! Now our shoes were extremely dirty because of where we were serving so we took them off before walking on this heavenly piece of joy. It was like walking on clouds. It is one of the best memories I have from my mission.

*the guy never invited us back

Missionary Story Monday: The Fogotten Book of Mormon

One day in my second area my companion and I had just left the apartment in the morning to start working and hadn't even made it to the end of the street when my companion realized he forgot to bring his Book of Mormon to give away. We stopped for a second and debated whether or not to go back for it. I had extra in my bag so we didn't need them. We also gave away few of them per day because not many people knew how to read so they didn't want to accept them.

But something told us to go back and we did. So we go back, get them, and then head back out again. As we reach the street corner and are prepared to cross to the other side we see this lady standing there looking at us timidly. I could see her mustering up the courage to say something to us. She finally found her voice and called us over (we would had gone over anyway with that type of body language). Turns out she had spoken to missionaries before and had been looking for us. She was walking down the street that day and saw us as we came to the corner. She baptized two weeks later along with her two kids.

Now I often think what would have happened if we didn't turn back that day to get my companion's Book of Mormon. Our paths wouldn't have crossed with that sweet sister and her family could have been delayed in getting the gospel. I'm grateful to our Heavenly Father and all the little things that He puts is place so that His purposes can come to pass.

FYI: we never ended up needing that extra Book of Mormon we went back for.

Missionary Story Monday: Rope a Dope Prayer

One day as my companion and I were walking a woman stepped out of her house and called us in so we could speak with her son. She thought he needed some help from hearing the good word of God. We said, sure, we loved to help and share a message with him. She declined to join us.

So we go in and see her son who is about 25-30 years old. He was polite and willing to listen to us. We began to teach the first discussion and everything was going very well. He was listening attentively and responding to questions in just the right ways. We talked about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the atonement, Joseph Smith with the Book of Mormon, and even baptism. The guy seemed very open to everything.

As many RM's will recall, what was the 6 discussions at the time included covering the topic of prayer during the first discussion. We reviewed this with the brother and showed him the flip-chart outlining the steps*. He said he would love to say the prayer but declined to use the flip-charts. He said he knew what he was doing.

So this guy starts praying and begins things correctly by addressing Heavenly Father and expressing gratitude. In fact, he did all the steps perfectly. But what he said during each of the steps is not what we expected. He thanked God that he was better and smarter than use and not fooled by stupid beliefs. He asked God to make sure we never came back again to darken his doorstep. After saying amen he looked up at us with a polite but condescending smile and pointed to the door for us to leave.

Needless to say, both my companion and I were a little shocked. The lesson was going so well and then the guy didn't just ask us to leave, he prayed for us to leave with us right there. He reeled us in and then got us with a sucker punch when we least expected it. Silver lining: he still helped us reach our target goal for number of lessons taught that week.

Study Recap: Decisions for Which I've Been Grateful by Clayton Christensen

Title: Decisions for Which I've Been Grateful
Author: Clayton M. Christensen
Source: Devotional at BYU-I on 08 June 2004
Link: http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/Transcripts/Devotionals/2004_06_08_Christensen.htm
Rating: 4.5/5

Favorite Parts

• I had prepared a talk, which I thought was going to be a good talk for you. Then yesterday, as I flew out and tried to prayerfully think through how to deliver that talk, it became apparent that I had prepared the wrong talk. So I have put something together, and I hope that whoever you are, for whom this talk was intended, that I can do a good job for you.
• ...I use my knowledge that the Book of Mormon is the word of God many times every day of my life. In all of the education that I have pursued, that is the single most useful piece of knowledge that I ever gained.
• I love to return to Oxford. Most of the people there are either students or they’re tourists who have come to look at a beautiful university. But I love to return there because it’s a sacred place, and I can look at the windows of that room where I lived, and I think that that’s the place that I learned that Jesus is the Christ, that he is my living Redeemer, and that Joseph Smith was the prophet of the restoration for the true church.
• ...I even had less time to try to finish a very ambitious degree, and I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I’d better ask the bishop to release me because it would just take too much time away from my study.’ But then I thought, ‘No, if I know the Book of Mormon is true, then I better do what it says,’ and it had told me in 3 Nephi 13:33 that I should seek first the kingdom of God in His righteousness and all these things would be added unto me.
• ...I knew that if I had gone and done the things that the Lord commanded that he would open a way for me...
• And the lesson that I learned from this is that when Heavenly Father invited us to seek first the kingdom of God, and promises us that all these other things will be added to us that He was dead serious. That is a promise that we can bank on. And I incite you, my brothers and sisters, that when you find yourself confronted with a conflict between the pursuit of a career and the pursuit of magnifying your calling in the kingdom of God, that if you will believe God, and trust in Him, He will bless you in ways that are beyond your comprehension.
• So I went back into my hotel room after that game and knelt down and asked Heavenly Father if it would be all right, just this once, if I played that game on Sunday. As I started my prayer, really before I could even utter a word, Heavenly Father put a full-sentence answer in my mind, and it was “Clayton, what are you even asking me for? You know the answer.”
• But you know, as time has passed, and that was a decision I made now almost 30 years ago, it looms as one of the most important decisions I have ever made because it would have been very easy to say, in general, keeping the Sabbath day holy is the right commandment, but in my particular extenuating circumstances, it’s okay, just this once, if I don’t do it. And the reason that decision has proven so important to me is that my whole life has turned out to be an un-ending stream of extenuating circumstances, and had I crossed that line just that once, then the next time something came up that was so demanding and critical, it would have been so much easier to cross the line again.
• The lesson is it really is easier to keep the commandments 100 percent of the time than it is 98 percent of the time.
• The next year, 1984, I was listening to General Conference, and Elder M. Russell Ballard gave a talk at that time where he invited us as members of the church to set a date, a point in the future, as a commitment to our Heavenly Father. He invited us-don’t pick a person that we were going to share the gospel with but to set a date. He promised us that if we would do all that we could to engage in conversations about the gospel, with as many people as we could, that God would bless us by that date, that we would intersect with somebody who would accept our invitation to meet with the missionaries.
• And I told my students, “You know, now you are graduating from the Harvard Business School. And a lot of you in your personal lives are going to do the same thing.” I told them that “none of you have a strategy to leave here and go get divorced, and raise children who are alienated from you and become unhappy people, but that is actually the strategy that many of you are going to implement, because as you have opportunities to spend your time and energy, your very likely to spend them in pursuit of career success because it offers them most immediate and tangible evidence of achievement.” And I invite them not to do that, but I tell them, “but in order for you to figure out how you’ve got to spend your time and your energy, you need to figure out what the purpose of your life is.” Then this year I told them about the experience that I had had dedicating an hour everyday when I was a student at Oxford to figuring out what the purpose of my life was. And I invited them to do the same thing.
•