Hey everyone! This week flew by!! We had lots of awesome things happen this week including zone conference, multiple service opportunities and a decent amount of teaching and finding!
For service this week we went to the Greenwood Cemetery as a zone and helped do yard work there again. It was a really good bonding experience I think I had a good one-on-one conversation with pretty much everyone in my zone! I absolutely love the missionaries in this zone!!
Other service we did was for Kelly, a lady who responded to our FB service page ad we made a month or so ago. We have served her multiple times but are still hoping for that normal and natural way to bring the gospel up. She is a super awesome lady, has some pretty crazy life experiences!
We went and had a workout with our friend Jermazio at a park on Saturday. That was pretty fun, he worked us pretty hard and we were pretty sore the next day. We are hoping this will turn into a regular thing!
As mentioned above we had a Zone Conference this week as well. I got to see some of my favourite missionaries Elder Winn and Elder Kimball who were both past companions. I wish I got some pics with them but it was still soo good to see them and many others who I've served around in the past.
This zone conference was all about repentance. One thing that someone from our staff said really stood out to me. She said something along these lines:
"Give Christ our change and keep the change"
The gist of that is when we repent we give Christ change, we tell him we will change. However once that happens we can't stop the growth we've started we can't fall back on old habits after awhile we need to keep the change! Powerful to keep in mind!
We had a really interesting interaction with a man named Brian in our apartment complex. He doesn't completely abandon the idea of there being a God but he doesn't accept it either. A huge part of that is he has experienced some pretty rough stuff in his life and he wonders why it happened to him being the good person he is. He is also super huge on evidence, hard core, feel with your hands evidence. It is hard to see and there were many times I felt kinda sad and a little upset that he wanted a sign. He literally said during our lesson that if we could call God down into our presence he would believe.
It made me think. What I feel it comes down to- now I'm not trying to be mean about Brian he is a great guy- but ultimately he doesn't want to put in the work to find God and find truth. He wants it to just be given to him straight up.
This reminded me of a quote by Jeffery R. Holland which says: "Salvation is not a cheap experience"
It made me reflect on my past few months of being on my mission. I went through a real rough time and I feel like in a way I was like Brian, I wanted a sign. I wanted God to just tell me what to do. But as I realized some things and talked to the right people things got better. However it took WORK and still does every single day!
This week had it's better days and not so good days and I was going through a not so good day. We were started a companion study and I was just not really having it, I was feeling frustrated with myself over a couple things. But we were reading out of "Adjusting to Missionary Life" great resource by the way for you missionaries out there. Anyways we were reading in the section which talks about being self-critical.
This point really struck my this time through: "Realize that everything you do can't be above average. You still want to work hard to improve, but no matter how good you become at something, you will preform below your personal average some of the time. This is not a cause for alarm."
I was having one of those below average days and this just hit me. I made the connection to professional athletes who spend countless hours training and practicing but yet still have off games or who make mistakes. Elder Storment and I got talking, well if professional sports players make mistakes, it is 100 percent ok that two very much beginner missionaries can make mistakes and perform under average days. It was a great realization to have right when I needed it the most.
Well if you've read all this thank you, pat yourself on the back, sorry it was super long! Anyways, I'd love to hear from y'all!! Elder Spencer
Sweet Corvette that pulled up at our complex
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