9 days

Monday, August 26, 2013

So, I have received a 90% confirmation that I will be leaving my area in 9 days. I have spent so much time here, and now don´t know what to do anymore. I am positive that this branch will be closed before I get home next June. We were seeing such progress, but it has dipped to where it was when I got here. It just does that and I don´t see much changing. I am sort of at a point with the members where I just sort of tell them what´s on my mind now, and that mostly has to do with them not coming to church. Most of them don´t take it to well. I feel like a parent here. I have tried to be so nice, but if you don´t understand, it´s hard lovin time. I have razurared, or shaved, quite a few members. Not for anything stupid. It's for stuff like, they choose to go to iron clothes for money instead of come to church. Or they say that they don´t want to come anymore to 2nd and 3rd hour because they don´t want their calling and are mad because their daughter got released from being the primary teacher. Or they say they just want to come and sit and listen, but don´t want to take part in anything.

My response is almost always, if you want that, go to any other church.  Here the lord asks of us. And we just give. We just do. Not because we understand it. Or because it makes sense. Or because we want to. We just do. It's just how it works. I haven´t quite lost my patience yet, but I am getting very stern with a few people. I am just fed up. I think I am getting a taste of how God feels when he was to chastise his children. He doesn´t like to, but he does due to their disobedience, and it's to make them depend on him. So it's for a good cause. 

Also, in respect to what I said last week about being a horrible missionary, its not that I was trained bad. I had a great trainer. I am saying horrible because I have been doing things not the Lord's way, and Christ says that he who is not with me is against me. I feel like I had not made good use of the Lord's time. Remember Elder Oaks talk on Good, Better, Best?? I was doing good things. but I couldn´t even see the better things, and I am working towards the best things. 

Speaking of that stuff, my week was hard. We worked Tuesday like normal, and then were told that we had to be in Teguc on Wed for a training. So that ate the whole day. Then Thursday I did divisions with Elder Edwards, one of my good buddies. He left for the temple early Friday morning with Elder Sol, as I stayed in the bathroom throwing up the bad mayonnaise I ate the night before. Then Saturday I finished divisions in the Villa of San Fransisco doing baptismal interviews for half the world.  I did four last week, and I am finding that if I do them right, and try to be the most in tune with the spirit I can, it is a little taxing. But I love it. I don´t know where I will go this change, but I can imagine I will still be a DL. Which is fine with me. 

Yesterday we fasted, and the Lord is seriously trying our faith. Everything we had fell through horribly. None of our citas were there, nobody wanted anything, and I am stressed because other elders in Yuscaran had a baptism that fell. And the ZLs were pressuring me to pressure them. It was a nuts weekend. The whole zone, or at least my district, is really struggling finding people to teach right now. The ZLs are super concerned, and I really don´t know what else to do. But I am sure that God will bless me. I don't understand, I don´t know how, and sometimes I feel like I don´t want to, that it´s easier to not to. 

 

Two quotes that have gotten me through this area have been,

"Do your duty: That is best. Leave unto the Lord the rest."

"It takes maturity to do what we ought to do whether we want to or not."

I feel like here, I have done that.

All I really know right now is that God will bless me, and that after this place, I can do anything. 

Dad, I don´t know if you remember the first time we went on high adventure to the Uintahs, on that hike. I don´t know if you remember what happened as we were leaving. I just remember you and I were in the back of the group, and something happened. I just remember being so tired and sore and sick of all the stinking priests and everything else. I vividly remember crying...and just feeling like it would be easier to just stop and do nothing. You picked me up, looked at me, and said, ¨Then you stand.¨ and you pushed me off to keep walking. That is what this area is. I am at my wall. I don´t know how much more I have to give here. I feel like the next week I would rather sit in my house and study all day. But, I just think of that quote. I think it is from that one Rascal Flats song. 

From what I remember the chorus goes something like

Cuz when push comes to shove you learn what you´re made of

you might bend till you break cuz its all you can take.

on your knees you look up, decide you´ve had enough

You get mad, you get strong

wipe your head shake it off.

Then you stand.

that typifies this fifth change here.  I feel like God has pushed me to my breaking point. Last night, I honesty didn´t know how much more of this I could take. but I know that I will stand for one last week, and do everything I can to leave here knowing I did everything I could. 

 

I will survive Yuscaran.

Zach