Of Men in Suits

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. 

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay. 

Oh, I believe in yesterday. 

Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be. 

There’s a shadow hanging over me. 

Oh, I believe, in yesterday.

A Beatles song has never rang so not true to me. Dang. I’m having to rethink my role models in life now. This is a crucial moment everyone. The Beatles are still up there… I don’t know if I can say #1 anymore though. Tough day.

We were teaching this man when I first got here for a while and then he went to jail for some past court stuff. Good news: he just got out of jail. Gooder news: he’s getting baptized this Friday. Goodest news: he’s getting baptized into the true church of Christ. What a good situation we’re all in.

E Drapes and I teach pretty well together. Best I’ve ever taught with. Most of our lessons we don’t have time to plan out but as soon as one of us starts the other knows where to go. We always have solid lessons. Mostly cause my comp is the best teacher in the mission, I just try to not get in his way. I’m a lucky man to be his comp and learn from him.

It’s the week before transfers. We’ve already had a lot of time in the office reviewing all of the missionaries and realigning districts and deciding which areas to split. My brain is tired. Every once in a while I do this thing where I say “I quit” and lay on the floor for a couple minutes and moan and stuff. It’s funny… I promise. But… I’m trying to cut back on it. It’s mostly a joke.

Zone conference week! I don’t think I fully knew what I’d train on last time I wrote so I’ll give you a little insight into my break out session, as we like to call it. So at one point in zone conference we each go into separate rooms (Sister Bonham, Elder Draper, and I) and we split up the zones into different districts and they rotate between our stations. Mine was in the chapel.

When the districts walk into my room I am standing on the box that kids uses for bearing their testimonies. They usually ask why I’m up there or make fun of me or whatever. I asked if anyone has ever wanted to soap box. Not many raised their hands because they were scared. So I described the rules of “the box,” as I’ve come to name it. I read this in a book somewhere. Everyone gets 1 min 30 sec on the box to preach to the crowd. You start with the first principle of the first lesson and go through the lessons. The next preacher will pick up right where the previous one left off. So you have to know the lessons extremely well. That’s one of the objectives I had of the exercise. There are so many new missionaries and I wanted them to understand the importance of knowing the lessons inside and out, backwards and forwards. After the exercise we talked about the observations we had. There were a lot of good insights. Something that every group said was that they were more willing to listen to a simple testimony than just someone preaching to them. I had a cool experience with this. This is what I focused on: Testimony.

One of the first groups (I had to do this nine times in total throughout the week) was stuck on prophets the whole activity. You see, one of the rules is that the crowd is allowed to heckle a little bit. So this group was bashing back and forth on the principle of prophets in the first lesson the whole time. Bashing, using scripture… the spirit was gone. It was kind of a train wreck and I was going to stop it and gear it in another direction but I thought they could learn something from it. The very last person went up with her companion and stopped answering the questions from the crowd and humbly bore her testimony of the Book of Mormon and of Joseph Smith. She and her companion then sang the spirit of God. The spirit flooded the room. I had the chills. Kind of wanted to cry… then we ended. Stark contrast.

We often get caught up in preaching and not testifying. It’s good to be on the other side of the table and hear what we sound like when we teach. What’s effective and what’s not. Every group that did this observed that testimony was the most powerful way to get through to the people. We need to teach… and everything we teach needs to be backed with humble testimony. I learned a lot.
We gave talks in sacrament meeting yesterday. It was on tithing. Which is tight, because we’re not even keeping that commandment right now so my testimony is flamin’. It wasn’t too bad though… except I bombed the talk. The only good thing that came from it was that someone who is preparing for a mission said it was exactly what he needed to hear. He is going home to look at his bank statements to see how much he owes. Sacrifice. I shared my experience with first “trying out these commandment things I’ve heard so much about.” Turns out they work. I remember my first week or so of college I decided to look at my income for the year and pay tithing on it. It was a big chunk but the next week or so I got a call from the book store and was able to get a job there. I had enough money for that semester of college. Blessings. Pay tithing. I’m car sick.

Progress, or perish

Elder Trent Jay Merrill

Excitement and car sickness

Emotions finally flying in and out of me. Tears of joy and heartache. Excitement and car sickness. The rise. The fall… and not necessarily in that order. It was a good week. Not everything worked out.

Highlight number one: Back to the basics. I started doing this thing where I read my journal writings a year from the day. I’m learning a lot… about how hard it was for me to be out here. I appreciated the little things. I had to. I noticed that I was mostly concerned with relationships and overcoming my pain through connecting with God and others. I’ve lost touch of the little things, to some extent. I’d like to see the beauty of monotony again. Find joy within the mundane. I did it before. I just need to get in that stretching phase again. Life is too good sometimes. I love it. It’s hard and stressful but I’m in a good place. My comp is my best buddy… we’re always having fun. I knew we’d have fun together but… we just get it. Get each other. We get everything done quite easily because we’re on the same page. It’s a beautiful thing.
Not much happened this week… except a new investigator .. and cottage meeting, and our WWU investigator. I’ll go in the order that isn’t really in order.

New Investigator

We met him last Tuesday. We stopped by his house and a lady answered by opening an inch of the door and sticking her nose out to ask who we were. After a few awkward jokes to help loosen the tension she yelled to our investigator to come to the door. He invited us in and gave us some water as we sat and talked about things. Every other word he said was vulgarity and he seemed desperate to change. He talked about his “baby momma” who became Mormon and he’s never seen someone change so drastically. He didn’t understand. He is just out of prison and is trying to turn his life around. He said he’s willing to do anything to change. I believe him. We’ve had a couple lessons with him so far. They’ve been some of my favorite, most spiritual, lessons I’ve had on my mission. I’m learning a lot from him. Almost everything he says highlights a principle of truth that he just phrases it in a different way. He doesn’t swear around us anymore. We didn’t even bring it up he just stopped for some reason. He said he is actually happy in the morning. He has purpose to live. He’s never found that before he met with us. Our first lesson he said, “I’ve seen and talked to a lot of missionaries and never felt connected to them. It feels like I’ve known both of you forever. I can open up to you and tell you anything. I think God put you here to help me.” Or something along those lines… it was a good thing to hear. It will be hard for him… he has a lot to overcome. We set a baptismal date with him for the 29th of September… he doesn’t get off parole until then so it’s the earliest we could set. I love that guy.

WWU investigator..... We decided to set up a “movie night” at our friend Enrique’s place and watch the Joseph Smith movie with her. So we did… and then had a very bold, hopefully loving, discussion after the movie. I told her that Joseph Smith is either a man of God, true prophet of the restoration, or a liar who made everything up and everything we stand for is false because of it. I bore my testimony of Joseph Smith and so did everyone else. We asked her what she now believed of Joseph Smith. She said he was a prophet. I asked if she believed the true church of Jesus Christ was restored through Joseph Smith and is the only true and full gospel on the earth. She said yes. And I asked again, what are you going to with that? She said she knows she needs to be baptized. Please keep her in your prayers. Everything is on the line.

Cottage meeting was last night. I don’t know if I’ve ever explained what that is. Maybe I have. I’ll just do a short version… So the whole mission invites their investigators to the mission president’s home on the second Sunday of every month. We move all of President’s furniture into the garage and set up 100 chairs on the main floor. There are 3 to 4 recent converts who bear their testimony and share their experience of becoming converted to this church. It’s one of my favorite meetings. The investigators really connect with the speakers and can feel understood and supported. Our WWU investigator came and had a great time. Elder Draper conducted. I sat by the door to greet everyone and directed them where to go.. then sat down on the floor behind the wall and fell somewhat asleep… but that last part was a secret.

Zone Conference is starting tomorrow. So we’ll be on tour all week. I still haven’t fully come up with my instruction but… it’ll be good. I think I’ll do some kind of soap box exercise and help with people’s fears and teaching ability. It’ll be intense. I’m starting to like meetings that we have to instruct in. We do a lot of instruction to the mission. I get nervous still but I’m getting better. I even still get nervous when teaching people 1 on 1 but… I love it. Maybe it’s not nervousness anymore as much as butterflies. The good kind.

Gallon a day,


Elder Trent Jay Merrill

Music of the Night

So my comp and I decided pick some black berries across the street while our investigator was being interviewed for his baptism. Adventure time. That’s what we call it. While we were picking the fruity deliciousness I heard a little voice across the small road that said, “Elder Merrill, can we pick some berries with you?”
“Come on up Peyton!” I said with a smile but then realized there were thorns that would cut her bare feet. “Actually I’ll just pick you some good ones. Your feet will get hurt if you come up here…”
“Ok, well… pick a lot for me,”
“Ok but I might eat them all first…”
“Come on Elder Miral… that’s not fair” as she likes to pronounce it.

We were done picking the small handful of black berries and made our way down the little hill. I held out my hand and divvied out the fruitful wages to the six years old and under club. While we were walking back to the church, the sun was just setting and Peyton looked up at me with a cute smile and said, “ahh, it can’t get better than walking with a missionary and eating black berries.” And that right there…. was my awakening. It put some things back in perspective for me. It hit me pretty hard. Our investigator was baptized the next day.

This week was full of teaching too many lessons for our investigator ha. We combined a couple lessons into each appointment to make his desired deadline of his Saturday baptism. We brought members over to the Petersen’s home, who live in the Snohomish ward that he’s known for years. Everyone loves him. He’s a nice, tall, non social butterfly, kind of guy. The kind that smiles at everything and probably doesn’t like being hugged. Maybe he just needs to be hugged. I don’t know. His baptism was short and sweet. The spirit was strong and didn’t skip a beat. The Petersen boy, Marsall, was dressed in white and performed the deed. It was nice. My comp and I (I like saying comp now because I still can’t get natural at calling Mike Elder Draper… but still haven’t messed that up even when we’re just kicking it together. so… good for me for doing that.) So… yeah anyways: Comp. Me. Piano. While the font was being filled we just fiddled around on the keyboard and created some beautiful music. I think it’ll go places. We decided for every baptism we have together we’ll write a new song and play it at the end while everyone is leaving.

Serenity is deliverance,


Elder Trent Jay Merrill