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