New Missionary Day

Sister Vincent had big plans for the newly arriving missionaries. And we so happened to be voluntold to be a part of it. This new missionary day was unlike any other I’ve seen on my mission; this was by far the largest group we’ve seen, totaling around 25 missionaries. The Vincent’s and office staff needed all hands on deck, picking them all up with their luggage. So we picked up a van-load of missionaries accompanied by their luggage and headed toward the mission home. Our friends in Salt Lake had been booking flights pretty early too, so upon arriving they had a full afternoon and evening of hanging out in the mission home. This is what initiated Sister Vincent’s plans: the idea of having all these missionaries hanging out at the mission home with little to do was going to need a new solution.

It was at this point that we were elected to drive our new arrivals touring them around Richmond and giving them the “Canadian experience.” “What might this look like?” some may ask; to which I’d respond, “I have absolutely no clue.” As one could expect, the role we played in this wasn’t communicated until we arrived at the mission home the day of. The Surrey sisters were facilitating it all at the mission home and gave some sort of presentation which was completed when we arrived. Both us and the sisters had to take two groups of missionaries out for a tour.

The first group of missionaries that we hauled consisted of four missionaries, three of which were from Canada. So we were off to a great start. We embarked upon the first and most important stop, the mission office. From there, they completed some important paperwork while we set up and gave out church provided phones to those who didn’t receive them. I’m grateful this process took up most of the time, to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to driving missionaries around for the sake of driving them around. After that was completed, we took them to tour one stop: Tim Horton’s. It was a new experience for one missionary, the rest of the Canadians were just along for the ride. With that, we were out of time and headed back to the mission home for the next group.

At this point, it was almost 4pm and our schedule consisted of traveling back and forth all day picking up missionaries and setting things up. We didn’t have time for lunch, so we both weren’t super excited about touring this next group. We took this group to the mall, and pretty much just walked around. We took the new missionaries to Muji, walked through the store for a bit. The new missionaries weren’t super enthralled by it, so we continued to walk around the mall, essentially just burning time. I am so grateful that I will never have to do this again. Maybe if we had lunch before it would’ve been a lot better.

Once the new missionaries got their paperwork done in the office again, to our relief we headed back to the mission home and dropped them off. We then assisted a missionary with setting up her Facebook account. She tried making a new account previously using her missionary.org account, but it immediately got marked as suspended. It turns out that Facebook doesn’t like missionary emails, plus one to my never-ending list of dislikes for this company. We tried making a new account on the laptop using her home email. Same problem. We then tried making a new account using a temporary email address, with the hopes of changing it afterward. Once we did that, it asked for a face to scan to confirm identity. Oh boy, my list just keeps getting bigger. Despite doing this, the account was marked as suspended again. We had to get going, so this was an issue for another time.

As we were about to leave, the Vincent’s insisted that we stay for dinner. We were so hungry, it was a blessing to finally sit down after a long day and eat. To end the night, we headed to pick up more missionaries from the ferry.

Meeting with the Social Media Crew

When the trio of sisters saw the transfer board, they were confused as to what the special assignment meant. All the areas had been renamed, assignment names were no longer included—which made things a lot more confusing on their side of things. After contacting President and the APs, they finally got the response as to what that entails. They then had a meeting with President and Sister Vincent to learn more about their role and what they should do. At this point, they knew way more than us. We hadn’t heard anything either, we just assumed they were social media sisters. From the information they gathered, they have the same responsibilities as us.

The day after transfers, we met with them in the morning in the office. The meeting was two hours, we covered so much information and it went so quick! We gave them a big overview of the assignment, roles and responsibilities, ensured that they had access to resources, and planned for the future. The meeting was filled with inspiration and the Spirit unified us all. It was a great amount of information to be processed, but we covered a lot of ground and are moving forward. They now have a laptop, camera, mics, and access to the Christ’s First Light media kit and additional resources to guide their editing.

Ask! Seek! Knock!

Elder Badesso made a video to be posted on a ward page. We received a message asking if it were possible to edit it and make it like a food ad. This commission was quite honestly too much fun to put together. We edited it while waiting for our lesson with Partik and in the evening.

The video is already a classic, we’ve probably watched it around 20 times now. Its humor is timeless and doesn’t get old haha.

I totally recommend giving it a watch.

The social media sisters quote it every time they see us haha. We even got a shout out at our weekly PMG Zoom meeting. Elder Badesso shared his experience trying different finding sources and shared that he had us edit it to post.

The Finding Support Coordinators

We are now officially scheduled to have Monday meetings with the Vincents. It only took a transfer and some to get here haha. Both us and the sisters met with them and it went really well. The Lord is preparing a way for the future of His church in British Columbia, and I’m grateful to participate in that. President Vincent shared that in just six months this whole mission is going to be turned over. In that space of time most of the mission will be new missionaries. There is great potential to set a new standard for the mission.

We opened up by doing a scripture study in 1 Nephi 17, specifically focused upon Nephi’s inspiration and zeal to keep the commandments of the Lord and build a ship. The sisters talked about Nephi inquiring of the Lord as to where he might find ore and searching for it in the land of Bountiful. They shared that we are in the land of Bountiful. Each zone has different ore, you have to use different tools to harvest the potential of each zone. I found it interesting that after many days of traveling in the wilderness with great affliction and very limited resources, they finally made it to the land of Bountiful. Naturally, our instinct would be to stay in such a plentiful land. However, despite that pretty soon after they arrived Nephi was instructed by the Lord: “Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord.” Immediately following this was the revelation to construct a ship that would lead them to the land of promise. I bet that would’ve been very difficult. If we aren’t receptive to the promptings of the Lord we may become comfortable, idle, and resistant to change. We would miss out on our land of promise that the Lord has prepared a way to. And not only that, if we zoom out our perspective, think about the countless individuals and generations this affected. If they settled in the land of Bountiful, the Lord’s church may not have been established in the new world. We may not even have the ancient prophecies of the Book of Mormon today. Now the Lord won’t withhold His blessings from His people, He will always prepare a way, but certainly an action like this had an unfathomable magnitude of consequences. May we be open to the voice of the Lord, and not settle for less.

We were asked what the official title was for the guy at the head of the social media meetings for the North America area. We shared that it was the Finding Support Center Specialist. They found it interesting that despite the heavy focus on social media, the official title is about finding support. They noted that that’s exactly what we are doing right now in our roles. We are to support, sustain, and strengthen the finding efforts in the mission. President Vincent has now opted to call our meeting the Finding Support Coordination Council haha. So I guess we and the sisters are now “the finding support coordinators.”

Artificial Sources of Living Water

I was studying some of the names of Jesus Christ, and was looking through living water in the topical guide. I came across this scripture in Jeremiah 2:13 that really stuck with me.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

The covenant people of the Lord were forsaking Him, and turning to false idols. The emphasis on “two evils” stood out to me. The first of these two evils is primarily the forsaking fountain of living waters. The second is forming their own, artificial cisterns.

People around the world are searching for comfort, for peace, and ultimately for happiness. They often turn to or form sources that hold this living water. However, these artificial sources are empty, they are cracked, and hold no living water. Those turning to these sources find themselves dissatisfied and unfulfilled, turning to the next idol rather than turning to the true source of living waters. If we aren’t careful, we may find ourselves forsaking Him and turning to these other sources. President Nelson put it nicely: “your obsession becomes your god. You look to it rather than to Him for solace.”