The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 3 - Learning Forgiveness

This is Part Three of a series. While not necessary to understand this post, if you are interested in the first post, click here.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will  come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I normally change the names of everyone but myself. With her permission, however, I will be using Amanda's real name.

Learning Forgiveness

One day in my first area, we had a man come to church out of nowhere. Neither me nor my companion recognized him. He was clearly not a member of the church from a different area; we could tell that much. But we had no clue who he was. We talked with him a bit, learned his name was Shawn, got his information, and scheduled an appointment with him. A few failed appointments later, we finally got in with him!

Our first visit went all right. He seemed to want to get close with God, but he was clearly not really paying attention to anything new we were trying to say. But, we didn't have a lot of work going on at the time, and he was still coming to church, so we kept going back.

The situation turned from bad to worse, though, when we met Shawn's girlfriend, Amanda, who was living there with him. She would come in here and there, and usually end up berated completely unnecessarily by Shawn within a few minutes. Whether she was giving us dinner, asking a question, or anything else, it was not good enough for Shawn. She didn't talk much, but I can hardly blame her given the situation that she was in at the time.


Bit by bit, we got to know Amanda better as time went on, especially as we made friends with Amanda's daughters who were living there as well. Eventually, we were over there every couple nights to play with the girls. Some of my favorite memories of my mission include running around with these two, playing a strange combination of keep away and fetch.

All the while, though, there was really no progress in teaching Shawn. My companion and I really weren't sure what to do. Even worse, Shawn's treatment of Amanda got worse and worse. My companion and I really didn't know what to do there.

One day, we drove up to Shawn and Amanda's house. She came out to the driveway, and told us that Shawn wasn't home. We initially took that as her inviting us to leave - but she just stood there at our window, looking at us. We carried on a little small-talk conversation, but we weren't really sure what to do. All of a sudden, she says, "You know, I would go to church too if I had a ride." We had always assumed she wasn't interested since Shawn would come and she wouldn't. But we quickly arranged for her to get a ride.

She came on and off for the next month or so, and we got to know her a little bit better as time went on. One day, we saw her at the library, clearly upset. We asked her what was wrong, and went outside to talk. Shawn had just been put in jail for as much as six months. In mine and my companion's mind, we thought it might be a kind of good thing, but we saw her dilemma. He was the only one working in the house. She had two kids at home to take care of, and no real way to pay for them or the house. And, as big of an idiot as he was, Amanda definitely did have feelings for Shawn.

We started making a special effort over there. The girls were really troubled. The older one was convinced

that Amanda was going to be gone as well, any day now, and would have a small tantrum whenever Amanda left the house. The younger one didn't fully understand what was going on, but was quite willing to share that her dad was in jail. We tried to help Amanda as much as we could around the house, while throwing in random spiritual tidbits whenever we could.

I was on an exchange with Elder Jeffries one day and we stopped by Amanda's. I didn't really explain the situation as well as I should have, but I intentionally left out that we had never really had a sit-down lesson with her. I figured we'd see what his naivety could do. Sure enough, after a little small talk, Elder Jeffries asked, "Could we sit down and teach you a lesson?" To my thrilled amazement, she eagerly accepted. Knowing that the classic first lesson about the Restoration wasn't really what she needed, we had a warped lesson about why bad things happen and how we can use Christ to help pull us through them. I don't remember many of the details, but I remember two things: First, she was crying through most of it. Second, Elder Jeffries invited her to be baptized and she accepted on the spot.

We were able to continue teaching Amanda, and it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.  I want to interject here and assure you that I have Amanda's permission to explain all of this. But, as we got to know her more and more, one of the most insane life stories started unfolding before us. Growing up, Amanda had been abused very bad. Anything bad that a father could do to his girl, her father did to her. When she was sixteen, I believe, he was arrested and is now serving about 30 years in prison. From there, her mom decided it was more important to find a new man than take care of her kids, so Amanda filled the role of mother for her younger brother and sister. Also when she was sixteen, she had her first child. She has since had three more from three different fathers,

The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 2 - Let's Go Street Contacting...

This is Part Two of a series. While not necessary to understand this post, if you are interested in the first post, click here.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I will be changing the names of everyone but myself.

Let's Go Street Contacting

I said in my previous post that most of my best stories take place when all of our appointments fall through. I mean it. Most missionaries get down when all their appointments fall through. I'm not saying that I don't get flustered by it, but there's always this little idea in the back of my mind that says, "Ah man!! We're going to find this crazy-perfect prepared person right now!!" 98% of the time, we don't. But this story is about one of the 2% instances.

Our area essentially took up that big open area
that doesn't have any towns in it big enough
for a dot...

I was serving in the Freedom area. Last post I talked about how small Warsaw was. Well, Freedom is even more rural. When appointments fall through in Freedom, you're really in a bind, because it's not like there's a neighborhood to go tracting in or a member of the Church right around the block.

But, alas, one night they did fall through. My companion and I were at home eating dinner when we got call after call cancelling on us. I'll admit, I don't pray as much as I should. I'm a fairly prideful guy, and quite often have to remind myself to humble down a bit. This night, though, we did pray. My companion and I knelt down and asked what the Lord thought we should do with our time. Almost instantly, I told my companion, "We have to go street contacting!"

The look on my companion's face was completely justified. Essentially, it said, "You're an idiot. We live in Freedom." Street contacting (which is exactly what it sounds like: contacting people on the street), works in big cities where people are bustling around, not in farmland.

Still, we didn't have any other ideas, so off we went! We drove out to Delevan, which was a little more of a community. We started walking around, it was nighttime and probably around 35 degrees so we weren't exactly comfortable, and lo and behold.... we saw no one. We walked a good hour, and still saw no one. Finally, frustrated, I decided that we would just walk to the gas station so I could buy a Dr. Pepper then call it quits. (Lesson learned: ALWAYS get a Dr. Pepper. Haha that's not really the lesson here... But I do like Dr. Pepper a lot.)

So you can fully understand the street that we were on, here is a screen shot from Google Maps:

Tiny.

Well, we walked to the gas station, and still saw no one. We got my Dr. Pepper, and were the only ones in the gas station. Then we walked out into the parking lot... and someone was walking towards us! 

As we walked up to him, I just extended my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Elder Allen!" To my surprise (in all honesty, even when people are outside, street contacting isn't too effective) he shook my hand and said, "Jerry Miner." 

"Do you know who we are?"

"Yeah, you're Mormons!" (I realize that when reading this, it could sound rude. It wasn't. He was a gruffer guy, but definitely had an intrigued voice.)

Disclaimer: This isn't me. Or Jerry. And it wasn't bright and
happy and green outside. But it shows missionaries
randomly contacting someone, so it works.

"Have you ever talked with us before?"

"No, I can't say I have."

"Well... would you like to?"

"Sure, how about tomorrow at 11:00?"

Anyone who has ever served a mission know that that sort of thing doesn't happen. People rarely invite us over, especially when the conversation is as void of substance as ours.

We went over that day, not really sure if Jerry would even be there. Sure enough, he was! We started talking to him outside, and he explained that he'd actually trained to be a pastor at one point, but got frustrated when one of the first books they handed out was about how to do the church's accounting. "You know," he said, "I sometimes don't even know if Christ's church was around after people killed Him and the apostles!"

For those unfamiliar with the LDS doctrine of the Great Apostasy, click here. For those of you who are familiar with it, you understand why that will grab a missionary's attention.

He continued, "In the Bible, people always had prophets to keep things together. We need a prophet!"

Again, if you aren't familiar with why my jaw was dropped as far as my sternum, click here.

We started teaching Jerry a little about the Restoration and about Joseph Smith. He was liking what he was hearing, when he interrupted: "You know the problem with a lot of these churches is that they aren't teaching out of the Bible anymore. They all have their own books now." My heart sank a little, because I thought for sure this was the end of our conversation. Latter-day Saints use the Book of