From Friend to Foe
Weeklies have become the bane of me now. I remember thinking I would send these bad boys every week, and it would be awesome. Then in quarantine it was a walk on some cake, because all we did every Monday was email people, so it was just built into my routine. Then we got to play sports with other missionaries, and yeah, here we are. Writing weekly emails once a month.
Now, last time I sent one out, I asked for some questions, and you already know that this week was AWESOME, and we got to teach people more about Jesus Christ, so it’s been great. And we teach ’em about prophets today, revelation and how we can receive it, the Book of Mormon, all the good things. And it’s such a great blessing to be a part of this.
Here are those questions though, as well as my answers:
From Dad:
Now that you’ve been out on your mission for over a year and a half, do you feel “experienced”?
Kinda. I feel like I know the groove of missionary work, and the do’s and don’ts, but still, you just need to rely on the Savior in everything you do anyway, so your level of experience doesn’t really matter.
How does it compare to when you first went out?
I definitely feel like I know more now. But the most important thing is that I finally learned what a real work ethic is. In the beginning I was pretty much looking for the bare minimum that I could do, as opposed to now, where I just try to do all I can.
What’s your favorite thing about being a missionary?
I cannot fit that in an email. There are too many favorite things. One of them is just getting to serve other people.
Originally you were hoping to be called to serve in Moscow, or at least somewhere foreign. Are you glad you were called to Oklahoma? Why? (Or why not?)
Oklahoma is hands down the greatest place to serve a mission. It’s where only the coolest missionaries get called, and that’s painstakingly obvious if you just meet the missionaries here. We have our mission president and wife, the Christensens, and they are the toppest notch people holy smokes. As cool as it would be to learn a sick language, I’ve met some of the greatest people here, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
What was a really cool experience you had teaching the gospel to someone?
We have this person we’re teaching who we gave a Book of Mormon to, and she was going through a lot in life, and we gave her a single chapter to read, but she ended up reading like, almost 60 chapters the next time we talked to her, and she was just like, “Oh yeah, I know it’s true.” It was so sick. You just gotta read the Book of Mormon, it’s that easy.
From Ethan:
How good are you at spikeball?
Good enough to beat every person that reads this email. (Subject to change based on my teammate)
Do you ever get to eat taco bell with the bajajajajaja blast?
Son please. Of course I do. Why do you think I’m broke out here?
From Kyle:
What is the simplest thing you enjoy about your day that doesn’t involve any other people (i.e., you enjoy sunsets, hot washcloths, whatever super super simplistic thing)
Getting to eat a simple dinner that I like. Like grilled ham and cheese or something.
From Sadie:
Which is better: Five Guys or In-n-Out?
They taste the same
Who is your favorite person that you are teaching right now and why?
The girl I talked about that read almost 60 chapters in less than a week. And it’s because she’s actually willing to do something to learn for herself that the things we teach are true.
From Derek:
Story time, coolest experience being led by the Spirit?
There’s a lot of cool ones, so it’s hard to choose a favorite, but a recent one is:
We were going through our list of people who we’re teaching, just trying to get in contact with them. Then we had this one guy that I had talked to once, about 10 weeks ago, and we’re like, “Should we give him one more call, or just put him as someone that we can’t get in contact with?” We had also tried to stop by a bunch of times to no avail. But we were just like, “Bump it, full send.” And then through a sheer miracle, he picked up the phone, and within a minute, we had a time set up to meet. It’s pretty simple, but it was still cool.
How many Bar S 88-cent hot dogs can you eat in one sitting, for breakfast?
For breakfast? Two.
And there we go! That’s the week, and there are the questions/answers. We’ll see if there’s another one of these next week or not! See ya!
Over and Out