Not So Spiritual Update

Six weeks ago, when Sister Hartshorn and I got our new car (a Chevy Malibu), the tire pressure was low enough for the "check tire pressure" light to be on.  All she had to do was turn the ignition on, and the warning popped up.  [That is, the previous missionaries - teenaged boys - did not take care of a problem that originated while the car was under their stewardship.]  So we went to a gas station and filled it up, but without a pressure gauge.  Luckily, the Chevy Malibu was new enough that it had a digital pressure gauge on the dashboard for us to monitor.  Still, we were a little scared that we were going to over-inflate the tires and lose an eyeball or two.

About one week ago, we were told that we were trading out our Chevy Malibu for a Toyota Corolla.  The Corolla, too, was previously operated by teenaged boys.  We traded on Tuesday morning, and we made sure to clean everything out of our old Chevy Malibu so that they elders would be getting a clean car.  What we got in exchange was a car that probably hadn't been vacuumed in months.  It looked like someone took a handful of hay and scattered it on the interior floor of the car!  It was also missing up-to-date insurance cars.  So we did the responsible thing and texted the Office Elders, who get to develop some pretty enormous "managing a large organization" skills and requested that they send down new insurance cards as soon as possible.

On Saturday, we switched out the Toyota Corolla for a Ford Fusion.  This car was also lacking up-to-date (i.e. non-expired) insurance information.  So we requested a new card from the Office Elders for the Ford Fusion, too.  Moreover, in the glove box, we found the overdue mileage log and receipts from gas stations.  Saturday was May 5th, and we were supposed to mail in the mileage log and the receipts by May 3rd, at the latest.  So we texted the Office Elders and let them know that Baton Rouge North Spanish's mileage log/receipts would be mailed on Monday morning, but that they would probably arrive late.  [Remember, s'il vous plais, that our area is NOT Baton Rouge North Spanish, but rather, Chalmette English.]  

Even though I'm sort of ranting about it right now, I was careful to be significantly more diplomatic when I texted the Office Elders.  But I just wanted to point out that the Office Elders have undoubtedly learned that even when they send out texts in March 2012 asking missionaries to check on their insurance cards, the only way to really know that the cards are up-to-date is to ask Sister Hartshorn and Sister Palmer to drive the car for a day or two.  

I realized today that I've been getting a little bit crankier than is healthy.  I was annoyed at the Walmart pharmacy, I was annoyed at the Walmart cashier.  I was annoyed at a disabled little old lady who was trying to park in the Walmart parking lot, because she was driving closer to my companion than I thought was respectful.  (That's the sort of thing that would annoy a prison inmate.)  And that's not good.  Because my face is an open book, and people can tell when I'm annoyed.  

Not to mention the fact that feeling cranky just doesn't feel good.  

Or that Heavenly Father wants me to love the people of Louisiana, and you can't do that if you're annoyed at them.

Spiritual Update

On Sunday evening, Sister Hartshorn invited Chris to read Enos, which we think will help him understand how it feels to be converted.  

We are meeting with him later this evening, and we will follow-up with him to see if he read it.  If he didn't read it, we'll read it with him, and if he did read it, we'll ask him some questions about it.  

We role-played that lesson today, and during the role play, I learned about two major questions of the soul that I need to learn how to answer as a missionary.  First, how does a person make the Gospel of Jesus Christ a need, instead of just a want?  Enos' soul hungered for his testimony, more than his body hungered for wild beast.

Too, Savior told both the Jews and the Nephites that "blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness."  Food and water are needs, not wants.  The Gospel needs to be as vital for us as food and water, not a mere hobby like gardening or badminton.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is more important than a game of badminton.

For our investigators to know that the Book of Mormon is true, they are going to need hunger for that answer, not merely crave it.  I'm not sure, yet, how we can help investigators transform their desire for the truth into a need for the truth.  That's a big question, and it's one I'm going to have to study on my own a bit.  Do y'all have any suggestions?  If you do, send me a snail mail or an email!

The second question that I thought of is why Enos needed to know for himself.  Why do you have to get an answer from God?  Why isn't it sufficient to just know in your mind, because it makes sense?  I'm not sure if Chris understands why he needs to have a sure answer from the Holy Ghost.  For those of you who were born in the Church, why did you feel a need to get your own testimony?  Write to me!

My address is: 

Sister Palmer

3701 Golden Street #3

Chalmette, LA 70043

And my email is ryanwpalmer@myldsmail.net

Missionary Lesson #32: The longer you serve, the more inadequate you feel

We learned last night that one of our recent converts, Jamie G, has some serious misgivings about the temple and the covenants that we make in the temple.  

Jamie has taught me that the longer you serve, the more inadequate you feel.  Sister Hartshorn (my companion) tells me that Elder Bednar said that same thing when he came here in January.  

I'm a little bit stressed out by the need to help Jamie feel at peace with the temple.  I know that I spent four and a half years of my life angry with God, because of a misunderstanding that I had about the temple covenants.  And I also know that the classmate/ward mission leader who explained the nature of covenants to me was inspired by the Spirit when, over three years ago, he resolved my concerns.  Heavenly Father is trusting me to help guide Jamie and gather her into the garners so that she will be safe from the storms of life.  My ability to explain doctrine to her may influence the rest of her life.  What I am doing matters, and if I mess it up, someone else suffers.  

Missionary Lesson #33: The Ten Commandments of Finding

Our District Leader, Elder Dyre, gave an AMAZING instruction this past Tuesday at district meeting.  He had us open up Preach My Gospel and highlight the so-called "Ten Commandments of Finding."  Like all commandments, each of the Ten Commandments of Finding includes a promise.  They are:

1.  Work effectively, and the Spirit will be with you, protecting you and prompting you (PMG 156).

2.  Pray for spiritual sensitivity to recognize opportunities to serve people, and Heavenly Father will put prepared people in your path (PMG 156).

3.  Immediately testify of Gospel truths, and you will find more people to teach lessons to because they will have felt the Holy Ghost (p. 159).

4.  Ask for referrals from everyone, and you will have many people to teach (p. 159).  

5.  Address the importance of family, and you will find people to teach (p. 159).

Caption: If we were to come across this family, we could talk to them about how faith in the Savior will help them to have a happy family.  We could testify that Heavenly Father wants families to be eternal.

6.  Work with members, and more people will be baptized and retained (p. 160).

7.  Develop a "How can I help?" attitude with ward members, and they will trust us with their family and friends (p. 161).

8.  Strengthen your own faith that God is preparing His children to receive the restored Gospel, and He will put people in your path (p. 167).

9.  Serve everyone, and people will recognize us as servants of God and we will have increased opportunities to teach the restored Gospel (p. 168).

10.  Pray for opportunities to do good, and we will be led to people being prepared to receive the restored Gospel (p. 168).

Caption: In this picture, two sister missionaries obey the Tenth Commandment of Finding.

Missionary Lesson #31: The Book of Mormon matters for EVERYONE

I learned this week that everyone needs to gain a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true in order to truly be converted to Jesus Christ.  Here's the story:

Chris Y is the one investigator we are working with who has a baptismal date set.  He is also the one investigator who attended sacrament meeting this past week.  He stayed for all three hours (even Priesthood, which we sisters do not attend!) and has been taught all of the first three lessons and nearly all of the fourth lesson.  (Only four lessons are required before baptism.)  We have not been able to teach him any lessons with a member present yet, but our Ward Mission Leader (Brother Ortiz) and our Deputy Ward Mission Leader (Brother Carapezza) have both committed to help us teach him with members in the coming week.  He's pretty close to being one of those "golden" investigators.  

One thing that I have learned from teaching Chris is that ALL investigators need to understand the role of the Book of Mormon in conversion, not just the ones that are struggling to believe or desire to believe.  Chris wants to be baptized, and he wants to meet with us.  Once we teach him the doctrine (or "why?") of the Word of Wisdom, we are confident that he will be able to live in compliance with that commandment.  He is scheduled to be baptized on Saturday May 12, and we're pretty sure that he will be able to "pass" the baptismal interview.   But we're not sure if he is going to the Book of Mormon as a way to receive personal revelation.  We're not sure if he understands how to receive revelation in general, or even if he knows what personal revelation will feel like.  We know that he needs to have a firm testimony of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon if he is going to stay converted to the Gospel.  So we plan to have a lesson that covers the role of the Book of Mormon and shows him how to use the index in his paperback Book of Mormon to find scriptures that relate to his own questions of the soul.

For all you people back home, feel free to leave your testimony in the comments section on what revelation feels like for you, or how you came to know that the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God.  I won't be able to read your comments until August 2013 (when I return home), but I look forward to reading them in sixteen months!

Some details of missionary life

This week has been humbling simply because of the large number of tender mercies and miracles that we experienced that we as missionaries did not fully deserve, but which Heavenly Father decided to bestow upon us anyways. I kinda feel like he blessed us on behalf of the people that we interacted with, because they deserved the blessing.  

Sister Hartshorn suggested during our weekly planning that we look in our the "Potential Investigators" section of our Area Book to identify referrals who were marked for follow-up but may not have been contacted by the previous missionaries ("Stinky elders!").  We have gradually inputted their names and addresses into the GPS that my parents sent me, and each evening we prayerfully decide which one referral we will try to contact the following day.  We don't feel the need to sprint, when all we have been axed [sic] to do is to "press forward with a steadfastness in Christ"2 Nephi 31:20.

This practice helped us find two new investigators who live in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans (but still within our area). 

This practice also helped us to be in the right time to open our mouths and talk to a young mom who was taking her kids for an evening walk in Chalmette.  She recently moved into the area and is looking for a good church to take her three children to, so that they can grow up with good morals.  We left her the Gospel of Jesus Christ brochure and she sounded excited to read it.  We have an appointment to see her on Tuesday afternoon.

Our "Mission Culture" goal (i.e the one thing from our Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission Vision on which we are going to raise the bar) this week is focusing on helping people to RECEIVE the restored gospel.  We realize that as well as we might communicate the message of the Restoration or of the Atonement, all we can do is communicate that message UNTO them.  Ultimately, it is the Holy Ghost that carry that message INTO their hearts, so we need to do everything we can to create a spiritual environment in which the Holy Ghost can work.  To do that, we need to get out of the way, listen with love, and testify of the truth of our message, with emphasis on the doctrine of Christ. 

The ward has decided to have a trip to the temple on Saturday, May 12.  

We are excited because there are several new converts and reactivating members from our area whom we can help go to the temple to feel the Spirit there.  I know from experience how key it is for new converts to get a taste of the temple soon after baptism so that they know what they’re fighting for.  (Ever wonder why Mormons go to the temple so often?  Find out here: http://mormon.org/family-history/)

We taught a guy (Kevin W) this week who reminded me of the [evil] KKK Gubernatorial candidate from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"   He kept saying that churches these days are filled with "hippo-crips" [sic].  Ah, Louisiana, how I love you.

Here's something you might not expect: we have been asked to spend six hours a week on mormon.org, lds.org, and youtube.com/mormonchannel.  We have been promised that if we increase our use of media in our ministry, our effectiveness as missionaries will also increase.  In practice, we go to the library for an hour a day on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  Sometimes we'll go on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we normally don't have time for the library on the former day because of district meeting or on the latter day because of weekly planning time.  (This last week, Sister Hartshorn and I were extra speedy during planning and we needed only 2.5 hours to plan our week.)  

We get to see some pretty cool videos.

Here's one video that made met think of my Aunt Barb.  (My Aunt Barb recently made a trip with one of her good friends to the Grand Canyon and other southwestern classics.  She sketch the whole way there, and her sketch journal is an AWESOME record of what she saw and experienced.)   

Disclaimer: It's one of those "I'm a Mormon" ads that people sometimes make fun of because they think the point of the ad is that only Mormons do cool things.  (WRONG!!!)  I like them because they show that even though we Mormons all believe the same thing (i.e. faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end), we express that faith and live that faith in different ways. The videos are reassuring because they shows that Mormons get divorced and go through hard times the same as anyone else, but our faith in the Savior can help us view those hard times differently than if we did not have faith in Him.

The Meaning of Life

I have learned the meaning of life.  No, it's not 42.  And no, I am not taking the Seminary Student Cop-Out Answer("to have joy!").  

Before you get all mad at me and start exclaiming "false doctrine!" let me reassure you that I still know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  The verse I quoted above (2 Nephi 2:25) is 100 percent true.  Moreover, I also know that President Hinckley was acting as the mouthpiece of the Lord when he instructed us that life is meant to "be enjoyed, not just endured."  We are meant to be on this earth so that we can obtain a fulness of joy.  But how does one do that?

The answer to that question is what I have learned in the last two weeks.  

We fulfill our purpose as human beings when we live in a way that allows us to emulate the Savior.  We can emulate Him by striving to be exactly obedient to the commandments of God and by striving to love our brothers and sisters the way that He would love them.  Every time that we help someone to do something that they could not do on their own merits, we are emulating the Son of God, whose perfect Atonement enables all of us to live with Him again one day.