Recently, I’ve been bad at sending out emails, so I’ll do my best to wrap up three weeks worth of content into a somewhat coherent email.

Surprise friends at Institute

With our recent influx of young single adult ad referrals, we’ve been doing everything we can to get into contact with these people and invite them to activities. By the end of the night, as we were driving to institute in Abbotsford, we weren’t all that excited that we have all these “interested” friends that are difficult to reach and most of the time aren’t even interested in what they signed up for. Despite that, the work of God is not frustrated. As we put forth our faith we were met with a welcome surprise. Just after the dinner and before the class was to begin, the Spanish sisters walked in with two young friends. We both thought, “oh cool, at least the Spanish sisters have friends tonight.” Naturally we didn’t want to go up and infringe upon their friends. But then the Spanish Sisters were trying to signal that they wanted us to talk to their friends. Once we realized that it actually wasn’t their friends, we got to work. They’re awesome! The Spanish sisters invited their soccer coach, he said that he wasn’t interested but he had someone on his team who may be. After extending the invitation to him, he came to institute with his brother. James and Nathan both love Christianity, one of them has traveled the world and gone on multiple missions sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Very energetic and extroverted, they both loved institute! They were actively engaged and involved by raising their hands with comments and questions. Two of the members knew them from school, which was pretty sweet.

After the class was over, they asked if we could show them a tour around the church. We were like we could, but some of these members would like to give you one! Some of the sisters took the lead and showed them all around. They absolutely loved it! It was a very unique church tour, it felt like a bunch of friends having a good time. So that was pretty sweet, I believe they definitely felt the Spirit. Elder Ellis and I taught them bits and pieces as we walked and as they brought up more questions. Towards the end of the night, one of them asked, “I have this one question; I’ve asked my pasture, I’ve asked my parents, and it seems like no one has the answer: What happens to those who pass away without ever hearing about Jesus Christ?” You can imagine the excitement that filled our hearts when we heard this haha. We shared that we had the answer to his question, but we needed to sit down sometime so we could dive into it. We agreed to do it after the Stake Conference on Sunday.

A legendary member in the YSA gave them both a drive to Stake Conference, and that was pretty good. Other than the audio system being out in the back, making it very difficult to hear, it got better towards the end. They both fell asleep at some point during it. The member explained to them this is not our typical church service, coming to the YSA would be way better, to which they responded, “oh, thank goodness!” So yeah, Stake Conference would’ve been awesome if we could’ve heard it, but they said that they really liked the music so at least we had that going for it! Sadly we weren’t able to sit down with them. They didn’t realize that we wanted to meet just after, they had some plans and had to get going. Ever since then, it’s been a real struggle trying to get back into contact with them, I sure hope Stake Conference didn’t kill them.

Interviews

President opened up my interview with a prayer. It’s not often that he prays in my interviews, if I had to count this may have been the second or third time. In his prayer he expressed gratitude that we are able to live upon this earth and serve in these callings as missionaries at this time. He prayed that I may be able to receive my own witness, and that my prayers may be answered.

After the prayer he told me that I would be instrumental and play a key role in transitioning in the new mission President. He said I’m a missionary who has a lot of experience, seen the changes over the course of my mission, and have been consistent, adding that I will be valuable in stabilizing the transition. I still have no idea what this is going to look like or entail, but I’m praying that I may be helpful and not mess this up.

He shared that he is so grateful that the Spirit inspired him to make me companions with Elder Ellis. He said that Elder Ellis is a really great missionary and he can learn from my example. You can tell that President and Sister Gill love seeing us together as companions haha. It reminds me of when I was with Elder Evans, they were just absolutely eating it up. I’m truly grateful to be with Elder Ellis too, we’ve gotten a lot of work done together.

He asked me again how I was doing with all the responsibilities. I told him, “honestly, things are pretty good right now. If you were to ask me this two transfers ago, it was pretty stressful, but now we’re getting in the hang of juggling all the hats with limited time.” He then said that he is so grateful for the content that I’ve been making for the Christ’s First Light page. He added that he’s felt inspired that my perspective and insights will be very essential for the page moving forward. He’s emphasized that he wants me to stay in touch, and call him if I have any questions or ever need anything.

I was like, “dang, this has got to be like one of our last interviews, how many more do we have together?” He told me that we’ll have one next transfer. “But that’s okay, we’ll keep in touch," he said. He shared, “if you ever are hiking in Provo by the ‘Y’ you are free to come over to my house anytime for a gatorade.” Haha sounds good President, for sure.

Stake Conference

At Stake Conference I received another spiritual confirmation of an insight I had while reading in Luke 24. The story of the resurrected Christ appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, has been one that’s received profound focus lately. In this most recent General Conference, President Eyring focused on this story in his message, “Draw Near unto Me.” Two weeks ago while studying the most recent addresses from the Prophets and Apostles, this message stood out to me. I believe this story is incredibly important and teaches us many things regarding Christ’s nature, the importance of ordinances, recognizing Christ, and what we must do to see him walking in our midst in everyday life. Give it another read, I promise you’ll learn something if you prayerfully ponder it!

Zone Conference

We had our whole lower mainland Zone Conference. And it was super awesome! Especially because we weren’t the ones hosting haha. There were these two members from the Portuguese group who prepared food for all of the missionaries at the conference. It was actually very remarkable considering the amount of missionaries! After the lunch they bore a powerful testimony to us regarding the importance of our missionary service. They said “we are so grateful for everything that you do as missionaries. You bless the lives of countless people. Although we’ll leave, the impact that we make stays. You’ll probably not remember your interaction with Mike on the street. But he will remember you. He will remember the impact you made on his life. So just keep going, what you do here truly matters.” I’m roughly paraphrasing it, but this is pretty much what they said with tears in their eyes.

Due to the sheer size of this Zone Conference, it was a blessing to see past companions and old friends. Some of my past companions were talking to me about how I’ve been making my way around the mission. Sounds like a lot of them have been talking about me and my ideas, so I hope I don’t brainwash the mission haha. From the sounds of it, I think I’ve converted a few people to open source software, how the social media page should be run, and among other things my Christian music haha. I promise that it’s missionary appropriate, it’s just actually good, that’s all.

Tying up Loose Ends

This was our list time meeting with Manuel. It’s been incredible seeing him go from where he was and where he is now. It truly is a witness and testimony of our Heavenly Father’s perfect love for him. When we began our lesson, he said that things have been better than ever before. He’s been praying, reading the scriptures, coming to church, and he even fasted. His mental health was doing so well, he didn’t have an issue of hyper focusing and stressing himself out with the commandments in the scriptures as he did before.

He even said that we went to Mike’s wedding (he used to be in the YSA, but now he’s graduated), and saw a bunch of the old YSA members. He said that it actually was really nice to see them again. He had a good experience.

We asked him, so what’s the next step? We’ve been meeting with you, now you are feeling the Spirit, feeling God’s love, what next? And he said, “I’m ready to go back to the YSA. I’ll attend in two weeks, send me a text to keep me accountable.” So, just like that, our work here is done. I’m so grateful for Manuel. He is an incredible member! It was such a unique experience teaching him, and a pretty sweet side-quest too! It’s pretty beautiful to see the tender care our Father in Heaven has done as he patiently has directed and strengthened Manuel, despite Manuel’s anger towards him. Over time, with the outpouring of His Spirit, his heart was softened. He understood the bigger picture, and God’s timing and perspective in the moments, but that didn’t diminish his anger towards him. Despite this anger, there was personal care, time, and love to help him work through his trials. We are eagerly looking forward to seeing him this Sunday!

MLC

I’m pretty sure I’ve included some of my thoughts regarding the last MLC in my previous email. But there was something that I don’t believe I recorded that I think is worth noting. President Gill briefly mentioned, “in the future, service missionaries will eclipse proselyting missionaries.” This was one of those hidden messages that you don’t quite get if you’re not listening for them, as it was jammed in with a bunch of other messages and wasn’t the focus. I believe it’s quite an interesting remark. There’s likely to be points in the future where they have to pull back proselyting missionaries, and naturally it makes sense that service missionaries are going to be very needed in those days.

Conclusion

Recently I’ve been feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love from God. I feel exceedingly blessed to be a missionary and I’m grateful for the blessings that I’ve seen from that service. I wasn’t expecting all these blessings, I didn’t think they would be already coming, even though I haven’t completed my missionary service fully yet. But I can only thank my Father in Heaven for everything. Serving a mission is truly a gift. I can’t express in words the personal experiences and learning I’ve received from God by serving. Every mission is completely unique to the individual, and I can bear witness that time and time again I am overcome with the Spirit. Just with how these experiences are representations of God’s perfect understanding of me. He’s truly in all the details, no matter how insignificant those things are, if they matter to you, they matter to God. He’s truly like a loving father who wants to spoil his children, all he asks is that we follow him.

Elder Anderson mission.plug-world.com photos.google.com