March 4, 2019 The Wind Blows Harder when You're Walking Against It
Let me just let y'all know. I love my mission. It is fun. It is exciting, but most importantly, it is a place of growth for me beyond my expectations. My letters sound difficult and sometimes discouraging because I always learn more from 1 hard experience, than I respond to positively, than 10 easy experiences. Truth is, a mission's hard, but frankly, it's so worth it.
Well. I've finally reached the point where I'm still not even close, but that's the fun part. Here are some notes from my agenda:
On Monday, all I really wrote was first, I bought some tang, which is fruit juice powder for my water, and that's made things a lot more exciting, and I also wrote the phrase, "We ain't talking marshmallows", not really sure why. On Tuesday we did cambios for a day. I went to a place called Congo and stayed with Elder Pastrana. We had a really productive day there, from finding lots of people prepared for our message to helping a family hold a family night. We also saw a guy chopping wood, so we stopped to help him, and we were there for about an hour. Elder Pastrana chopped and I taught (he also almost chopped my leg with the axe. That was pretty funny). On Wednesday we had our Weekly district council, and while Elder Pastrana and I were taking the bus there, they started playing 80's music, like "I want to know what love is" and "I almost died in your arms tonight", and wow, I was not ready for that. On Thursday I tried something called a Mango Maldura. It's a mango that's really stringy with a huge pit. After eating it, I felt like a pumpkin. I also discovered a new shooting mode on my camera that lets you overlap 2 images, and we had some fun with that, and while we were walking that day, this sneaky fly made its way right into my eye and stayed there for a good minute or two. On Friday all I wrote was we got to ride in a bus with a big whole in the bottom of it. I guess having a floor isn't one of the priorities here. On Saturday I finished reading "Our Search for Happiness", which was a pretty good read. That morning, we headed over to finish painting someone's house, and the other elders told me they took up the challenge to translate the Book of Mormon from English to Spanish, writing word for word between the lines. One of them is trying to learn Spanish better and the other is trying to learn English. That night we had a baptism for Winston. It was a really special experience for him, and I'm glad we were able to be a part of it. On Sunday we went out to visit people with one of the young men who's preparing for a mission, and that was a cool opportunity. That night we received information on our cambios. My first transfer is officially over, but since I'm still in my training, I'm staying for another 6 weeks. Elder Perez (from the other companionship in our area) will be leaving though. Also I don't know if anything changed on Sunday, but almost everyone that we visited stopped what they were doing at some point and said "Wow! Your Eyes!", and all I could say was, "Wait, you speak English?"
Gracioso:
Nothing super big, but something that I always get a kick out of is there's a big company here that makes socks, and all the people that work there have T-shirts that say 'El Salvador SOCKS'. I'm pretty sure that's the name of the company, but I always have to read it twice because the O looks really similar to a U on the T-Shirts.
Importante:
Oh I remember now. Out here in the mission there's a great need for patience, in a lot of things. Patience with the language, with the people, with the Lord, and with myself. I've learned too that without trust, patience a lot of times is void, so I've been expanding my trust in the Lord and exercising more patience in all things - trying to, anyway - and it's been paying off. But it has taken, and still takes time, and constant effort, and especially constant action. I am reminded of the experiment mentioned by Deiter F. Uchtdorf conducted to test the patience of little kids. They were left in a room with a giant marshmallow on a plate, and they were told that they would be left alone with the marshmallow for 10 minutes, and if they could wait, then they would be given another marshmallow. It is so similar out here in the mission field, and in a lot of things. Only here, we ain't talking marshmallows.
We've been leaving passages of the Book of Mormon with people we're teaching so they can have something to work on and think about before we come back. This week, the most common passage was Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life in 1 Nephi chapter 8. I love that passage, because it's about us, only we get to decide what part of the vision we want to be. We can be those laughing and mocking in the great and spacious building, or we can be those persevering alongside the Iron Rod. It's interesting to me that there are two types of people who make it to the tree of life, and only one stays. The other is overcome by shame, inflicted by those on the other side of the river, and inevitably joins them. There's only a small difference between the two. One is 'clinging' to the Rod of Iron, and the other presses forward, "continually holding fast". We have, and will, face unbelievable amounts of opposition in all things, and the winds sure seems to beat harder when you're walking against it, but keep walking. You cannot cling to one spiritual experience or story in the past when times get tough. That is how you fall. There will always be erosion by the forces of the world, and that's why we always need to keep building our foundation. Every day. I like reading Alma 5:26 and if I answer no, I just think, "What changed?", cause God didn't. When Parley P. Pratt nearly left the church due to personal feuds, he came across one of the men he baptized over a decade ago on his journey away from the saints, and the man simply said, "Parley, if the church was true 10 years ago, it's true today." But it's our job to study it out every day, because a 10 year memory won't due much good against 10 years of tribulation. Sometimes the act of persevering is simply preserving what we have. It's really tough sometimes, but it's possible, and always worth it. We know how happy those were in the vision that continued despite the fog and the mocking and the overall pressure. Every day is a battle out here, but I know that every day that I've been willing to go battle was already a triumph. That in no way means it's been easy. I love the words spoken regarding the Lucifer that say something like "I will place enmity between thee and man, that you will have power to bruise their heel, but they will have power to crush thy head." If I'm being honest, in this fight, I've bruised my heel pretty bad, but you should have seen the other guy. ;)
Elder Olson
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