Your Next Divine Appointment

On my exchange with Elder Stewart I emphasized that the people that you meet at any time, anywhere, is your next divine appointment. God has put us in the path of these people, and it’s always for a reason. I often forget this, as I get focused on the task at hand. But more often than not, the task at hand isn’t the purpose of why we are there. This principle was illustrated clearly towards the end of our exchange, when we went to a small Italian pizza restaurant. The lady who was serving us recognized that we were representatives of Jesus Christ. She commented on how cool it is that we are out sharing the message of Christ. After we ate, and paid for our food, I gifted her a Book of Mormon and shared briefly what it’s about and the joyful message of the restoration. I shared that we are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ two-by-two just like the Apostles in the New Testament. She had some questions and was curious to learn more, she shared that she was Pentecostal and wanted to hear some of the key differences in our church. We brought up that we believe in modern revelation and that God has continued His work by calling living Prophets and Apostles on the earth today. I mentioned that we were here on behalf of the Apostles doing the same work, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. We invited her to take some time to read the Book of Mormon and promised that as she sincerely and prayerfully studies it, she’ll know by the power of the Holy Ghost that it’s the word of God. She was very interested and grateful to meet us. I hope that she takes some time to ponder on the joyful message of the Book of Mormon.

I shared with Elder Stewart that she was ultimately the reason why we went there. Not for the pizza, as good as it was, but for her. This all arose, as he mentioned towards the end of the exchange on our way home that his parents wanted him to take me out to eat. Despite my lack of funds left, he insisted and shared that his parents wanted him to pay for me. I gave him my phone and told him take us wherever you’d like. He definitely made an inspired decision for picking this restaurant, and I commended him for that.

He’s an awesome Elder! We’ve been able to spend quite a bit of time on exchanges together. Each week when Elder Ellis goes to Farsi class I go on two-hour temporary exchanges with him. He’s only been out for three weeks now, and it’s been good to get to know him and share a thing or two that I’ve learned in my missionary endeavors. It’s definitely been an adjustment, and it reminds me of my experience as a new missionary. I pray that something I said or did may help him in this adjustment.

Zone Conference

Elder Ellis played a musical number on the piano that’s a combination of many different primary hymns. He did an awesome job, the Gill’s loved it. After the Zone Conference, President Gill approached Elder Ellis, and asked him, “Did you realize that your musical number is chiasmus? He then asked, “does everyone think I’m crazy?” We all laughed, and we reaffirmed to him that we think it’s awesome that he and Sister Gill find chiasmus in everything and always talk about it. I will never be able to look at chiasmus and not think of President Gill.

Interviews

My interview with President was pretty good. He told me that I could do anything in the mission. He then asked me if there was anything that he and Sister Gill could do to help support me. I was like, I think you are doing a great job, I don’t have anything in specific. We talked about the temple shift schedule that we’ve begun working on. We then counseled about how we will get the missionaries numbers that will be scheduled to the temple workers to distribute to those that are interested in learning more.

We had our AP exchanges, I was with Elder Davies and Elder Ellis was with Elder Watkins. It was a good exchange! We talked quite a bit and counseled about things happening in the mission and in the zone.

Rolling out the Temple Shift Scheduler Program

Over the course of a few days, I spent some of my evenings programming a system that would automatically create a temple shift schedule and send it out via email to all missionary companionships participating in it. Each Sunday it automatically sends out personalized emails that details when the missionary set’s shifts are and highlights them on the schedule. Early on in creating the system I quickly found great success and was surprised at the pace I was able to create it. Everything seemed to be coming together very nicely. It’s pretty incredible what the guidance of the Spirit does to your programming. Especially in a language that I’m not super comfortable or familiar with.

This isn’t without challenges though, just as I thought I had the system rock solid and ready to go for Sunday, everything came crashing down that morning. Sunday was the day that the schedules were supposed to be sent out automatically. I ran into a multitude of errors that day. And thanks to Google Apps Script faulty debugger, it led me on a wild goose chase to find what the actual underlying issue is. The debugger would often point me in the wrong directions, and things that I thought were broken, were actually functioning just fine. Despite my frantic efforts to fix this before church began on Sunday, I had forgotten the solution that the Spirit revealed to me very clearly the day previously.

As I was going to bed yesterday, I was caught up in the thoughts of the date time system. I realized that I always ran the script ahead of Monday, and it had to work its way backward to grab the date of Monday. This train of thought led me to the idea that the script probably wasn’t equipped to be run the day before Monday and would result in errors. Needless to say, that’s precisely what happened; and I completely spaced this Spiritual prompting the next day, it wasn’t until I was sitting in ward council that the original prompting came back to my mind. After church, I hussled and fixed the date system. The emails were now sent out and the schedule was done.

MLC

Fast forward, we are arriving at MLC. On our way in, the APs stopped us and were asking me how I was able to make the temple shift system. We were previously coordinating with them, and I sent them a screenshot of what the email looked like. They were pretty impressed with it haha, they shared with us that they showed President Gill and he was very surprised as well.

President and Sister Gill shared that they attended a sacrament service in Surrey 3rd ward, and the sacrament prayers were given in Hindi and English. Both the priests would kneel, giving the same prayer in both languages one after the other. The deacons were almost like the United Nations as they had a variety of countries represented in the meeting, through the variety and diversity of their backgrounds. It’s pretty incredible! It reminds me of what President Bragg said when he spoke to our mission about ten months ago. Here’s what I wrote previously about what he said:

“He said the Canada Vancouver mission is the greatest representation of the gathering of Israel in the North America West area. It’s the most diverse mission in the area because of the diverse set of missionaries and the diverse areas, and people. He said last night his eyes were opened, there’s so much opportunity in British Columbia, so many people are moving here and it’s growing so much.”

The Gill’s also brought up that Elder Bednar shared with them a deeper understanding of the word “let” as used in the scriptures in an interview in January. He discussed that “let” is used in terms of Priesthood leadership. Let those who are less qualified be enabled and learn from the assignments that are given. Elder S. Mark Palmer brought this up with them as well yesterday. Sometimes the word let actually means stand back; and allow someone else to step forward. There’s a fine balance between what we do and what we let.

They also brought up what Elder Neil L. Andersen said during the General Session of Stake Conference, that we think that there’s more signs and more things that must be done before the Savior’s return and millennial reign. However, he shared that there’s nothing holding it back, the signs are here, we need to be ready. He shared that it’s much sooner than we realize.

Lesson with a Return Missionary

We had a lesson with a member after church on Sunday, that went really well. He had to return home from his missionary service early due to some health concerns that he is still currently experiencing. He’s been facing several trials in his life through those experiences; I’m grateful we had the opportunity to meet him and get to know him better. He shared that during his mission he learned love. Love was loyalty to him previously, a duty that he must perform to those he is indebted to. He shared that as he entered the mission field, the unconditional love that everyone showed and greeted everyone wasn’t something he was accustomed to. Throughout those experiences, he learned how to love.