Transfers: I Hate/Love Them

One of the things that I really hated as a missionary were transfers. Every six weeks in the mission field I would spend an entire Saturday morning waiting for a call to see what was going to happen during the next six weeks of my mission. Would I get a call telling me that I was staying in an area that was struggling? Was my good companion going to be leaving? Was I going to have to get used to a new guy with all kinds of weird habits? Was I going to find out that I was leaving a good area and a good companion to head off to some far off area? Would I need to spend time packing up my suitcases that Saturday night and prepare to hop on a van to my next destination on Monday?

As these questions rushed through my head I would stress out. I just wanted to find out what was going to be happening with my life and whether I would like this change or not. Every time the cellphone rang or we received a text I would ask my companion whether it was the Zone Leaders letting us know what was going on with the upcoming transfer. Most of the time it was only other missionaries in the mission asking us if we knew where we were going yet.

A nervous transfer day in Eugene.

Finally the call would arrive from the Zone Leaders. At times the call came very early in the morning, but usually the call didn't come until sometime in the afternoon. The hours waiting for the call were way too long for me. When the call would finally come my stress didn't usually end, most of the time the stress was made worse as I listened to the news of my future. If I was leaving the area I usually stressed out about having to go learn how to work in a new area. If I was staying and getting a new companion then I started stressing about how I was going to get along with the new guy. The only time I ever felt really happy about a transfer call was when I found out that I was staying with my companion in my area, but that wasn't always so great either.

The next few days after the call were always stressful. Saying good bye to people that I had come to love, packing up my few possessions, and not getting much sleep as I stressed too much. Finally the transfer would come. Nervous and sweaty I would get in the van the mission used for transfers and head off to my next destination. Once in my new home I would spent the next two weeks getting used to all the new things. Finally at the end of the second week my fears would be assuaged and the stress would be mostly gone.

Now transfers did have some perks to them. Sometimes I wanted to get a new companion or head to a new area and a transfer would give me that. If I was getting transferred then I figured that I had completed the job that I had been called to do in the area that I was currently serving in. But the best thing that a transfer could bring was the chance to learn more. Every time I was transferred to a new area or received a new companion I learned something new from my new area or my new companion. From my companion Elder Bradley I learned the value of working hard, from Elder Michelsen I learned how to plan effectively. In Lakeview I learned how to work with people from small towns and in Junction City I learned to treat everyone that I worked with as a Child of God. Even though transfers were hard I learned to appreciate them as times to learn and to grow. 

Saying good bye to some of our friends.

Now at this time in my life I am going through another change, another transfer. As I prepare to go back to school there is the same nervousness that accompanied every transfer on my mission. How will I get along with my roommates? Will things be any better at college than they were at home? Will I make new friends? How will I be able to do all of this? I know that the answers are out there somewhere along with a couple of important lessons to learn about myself. 

Transfers and changes come into all of our lives. Some will be welcomed and others will be downright miserable. But no matter what the change might be we can always learn something. For we cannot learn something new without experiencing something new.

Online Missionary Work

Even though I have only been a missionary for a little over a year and several months I have seen a lot change in missionary work in that short span. During the first few months of my mission my companion and I would come in every night and spend thirty minutes pouring through the contact information of people willing to meet with the missionaries. When we had filled our day with actives we would then take up to another thirty minutes writing down the contact information of the people we had met with that day. Keeping this information up to date was always important in case new missionaries came in and needed to know who to visit. I can remember having to get really good at writing really small to be able fit in the needed information.

At the beginning of my mission I can remember spending a lot of time talking to people on the street and going from door-to-door looking for people to share the Gospel with. A lot of times it seemed as if our results didn't end in much and it could be very frustrating. I had been told right before I entered the mission field that soon missionaries were going to be able to use Facebook and iPads. I really wanted to use an iPad and a couple of times shared with my first companion that I couldn't wait until it would be announced that missionaries would get these devices. My companion was amused by my wish and told me not to worry too much about getting iPads and that we probably we're going to be using one.

For awhile my companion was right. For six months we went along using our old paper records and our old methods of spreading the Gospel. But at six months into my mission it was announced that we were going to be allowed to use Facebook for proselyting purposes. Then after Facebook was announced the missionaries were all given iPads. The iPads helped to take a lot of stress out of the stressful life a missionary. I can remember how much easier it was to keep records updated on the iPads as we could update it anywhere. We were able to make our bags lighter as we carried our scriptures around on the iPads and could now share videos with people. Most importantly the iPads allowed missionaries to be able to access Facebook so we could share the Gospel to an even wider crowd than before.

At the beginning of my mission we were pretty limited with who we could share the Gospel with. We were left talking to people on the street and on their front porches. Like I've said before it was very frustrating trying to share the Gospel that way. With Facebook we could now share our testimonies of the Gospel with people thousands of miles away. This has helped with missionary work considerably as people who might not answer their doors can now have the Spirit testify to them of the truth of the Gospel in their own homes as they scroll through their newsfeed. It's amazing to see the effect that iPads and Facebook have had on missionary work and it's amazing to think about how many more tools are out there to share the Gospel.

The best part about all of these tools that are coming forth to help spread the Gospel is that they aren't just tools to be used by full-time missionaries. Every person who has access to the internet now has the ability to share the Gospel with their friends around the world. Sharing the Gospel can be as easy as sharing a Mormon Message, a simple testimony of a restored truth, or a scripture. On top of that members can like and share others' statuses, or share their own testimony through blogs. The possibilities for sharing the Gospel are endless with a little bit of creativity and a free Facebook account.

Now people may wonder what good does it really do to share their testimony online or to invite others to learn more about the Gospel? The thing is sharing our testimonies online does more than any of us can imagine. The simple truths of the Gospel are more important to the world that "like my statuses for a truth" or random comments from our days. The simple truths of the Gospel are eternal and when read by those online give those people a chance to feel the Spirit in their own lives. Out of the 300 or more friends that most of us have on Facebook at least one of those people will feel something different from posts made about the Gospel and will want to learn more.

Sharing the Gospel is so much easier than it used to be. The Lord Himself said:

Behold I will hasten my work in its time.

D&C 88:73

Truly that time is now as the Gospel begins to sweep across the world into places that it has never been to before. The work will continue to hasten and to pick up speed and the Lord is giving us a chance to take part and to share the Gospel. Blessings will follow in our lives and we will experience great joy from laboring in the Lord's vineyard.

Faith With Works

On my mission I've learned to see the importance of work. Before I came to Oregon I had been kind of lazy. I always did my chores at home, but it usually took a lot of prodding from my parents. I just didn't see the point in making my bed, pulling weeds, or mowing the lawn. The weeds and the grass would soon grow again and when I went to bed at night I would quickly mess up my bed sheets. I didn't like to work on things that didn't show results.

When I came out on my mission I was soon involved with a task that I thought was pointless and produced no results. This task was called tracting and involved knocking door after door on a street. I quickly came to not like tracting. Doors were often closed in our faces and people always had excuses to not talk to us.

After several weeks of knocking doors I had not seen anything come from our efforts. No one we had met was willing to let us us come in and teach them about the Restored Gospel. I was little depressed because of this.

Like making my bed or weeding I thought that tracting was a waste of time. I voiced my reservations to my companion, who said we need to have faith and that we needed to just keep going. I took his advice hoping that something would eventually come.

Even after my companion had told me to keep going we still didn't see anything come from our efforts. It wasn't until several weeks later that we were walking down the street that we had a lady pull up alongside us in her car. I immediately recognized that we had knocked on her door a couple of days earlier and that she had told us that she was not interested in listening to us. The woman started talking to us and told us that she now wanted to listen and to learn more.

From that time on my companion and I were able to teach this lady. Our hours and hours of tracting had finally paid off. As I reflected on this experience later I was reminded of a scripture:

Even so faith if it hath no works, is dead, being alone.

James 2:17

As my companion and I had gone out each day and tracted we had faith that we would find someone to teach. It had taken a long time, but because of our persistence we had been blessed. If I had told my companion that I didn't want to tract and that we should just walked around then we wouldn't met the lady in the car and she wouldn't have stopped us on the street.

Even though the tracting had produced little success it eventually brought forth a brief, but great reward. Just like the grass of a lawn would soon grow back there would be many more hours of tracting with little success. But I grew to realize the joy of the work. The work led us to small brief successes that don't last, but are so worth the effort to get to. That's why we mow lawns, weed, make our beds or do anything. It's for the end result.

I came to realize that our Heavenly Father wants us to work. Like my parents He knows that work is important. When we work it lets us appreciate the things that He has given us. Because of He gave us everything then we would take His gifts for granted.

God makes us work so our faith means something. If we believe then it should inspire us to do something. So if we have a problems we need helps with let us put our faith in God. Let us get down and pray and then go do something to solve the problem. As we act God will help us and miracles will occur.

May we look for these miracles as we continue to work and seek for answers.