Lessons I've Learned this Week

Today, I just wanted to share a couple of things that I've learned this week. They were probably the more profound moments of the week.

First of all, I want to talk about faith and trust.

One of my big struggles with training Elder Kapalanga is that fact that he hasn't gone through the MTC yet, so I feel very obligated to myself to literally drill everything into his head as possible and be the one that is demonstrating how everything is done, and then letting him observe. I realized though that by doing so, I was negating any opportunity for him to lead and to be able to try it out himself, and that's really the only real way (in my personal opinion) that one can really learn to become a better missionary, so one of the things that I worked on more this week was letting my companion take the lead in certain things.

By now, I've probably cemented into all of your heads right now that we are in the middle of a very extensive finding process right now. Literally the only thing that we can do is find. I realized that one of the ways I can help train my companion better is that if I let him try it out himself and apply himself to what's at hand. In this case, the only thing that there is that we can do to have him do that is take the lead in finding. I'm not going to lie, I took a little bit of faith on my part. I knew that with him being as a brand-new missionary, he does not have the experience of finding and talking to people. Adding to that, he is probably not used to listening to the promptings of the spirit when finding, and I knew that it was likely that he was going to make some mistakes here and there, but I decided to let him spread his wings a little bit and learn from trial and error by letting him lead in the tracting. He was the one that decided which direction to go and who to talk to. It wasn't absolutely perfect, but it definitely went better than expected. We talked to a couple of people here and there, and we even sat down for a lesson (though it did not go smoothly at all). I realized now that he's more able than I realize, and I need to trust him more in many aspects of missionary work.

The other thing I want to talk about today is prayer. As I've said in the past, my prayers have become more sincere and genuine. This week I continued in my effort.

After praying all this time though, I realized one night that all I was praying about was me, me, and me and about things that I wanted from God, but I hadn't really offered much thanks for anything that he had given me, so that same night I knelt down in prayer and just offered a prayer of thanksgiving. I did NOT ask anything of my Heavenly Father at all, but rather express my thanks to him for all the things that he has done for me in my life - or at least, the things I could think of that he had done for me at that time. It was definitely a good experience. I'm just too used for asking God of things when I've forgotten to thank him for all the things that he has already given me up to that point. I forget if someone said it once, or if it is just something that came into my mind, but I've realized that one of the greatest sins that we can make in life is that of ingratitude. We sometimes do not slow down and think how much God has done for us in our lives, and then we eventually forget about all those things that God has done in our lives. 

You see it happen over and over again in the Book of Mormon: God spares his chosen people from destruction, the people praise and love him and are prospered by him only to forget all of that in the space of just a few short years. I've just finished reading 4 Nephi and am into Mormon right now, and it's sad to see how blessed those people are turn from righteousness to wickedness because they have forgotten The Lord's hand in all the things that have happened to them. What's even worse is that in Mormon, God spares them a couple more times, but this time they don't even notice that it was him that saved them all along. It's sad. I realize though that those examples are me at times. One of the things I've hoped that I've learned in my Mission is to be more grateful for the things that I've received in life. I've got a long way to go to really by grateful in all things on a daily basis, but at least this mission has begun to set me in the right direction.

Miss you all as always. I should say one of the things that I'm grateful for is having you wonderful people as my friends and family. I think that's one of the things that I am grateful for most. It's one of the things that I miss the most, but I thank my God that in a short time I'll be able to be in your company again. There's nothing in the world that I want to have more right now than being able to be together again this coming Christmas season. God bless you all, and have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Massey

The Elder's New Clothes (and haircut...)

I honestly don't know what to write for this week. This week has been another rough one so to speak. We were juggling our own area with Elder Slade's for half of the week until he got his companion, so we hadn't had a full week in our area... again.

That said, we had a good lesson in Elder Slade's area. We were teaching this young brother of a member. His name is Chisomo. He's only about 9 years old. If I'm correct, most if not all of the family are members of the church, but they hadn't got him baptized when he turned 8, so it was Elder Slade's job now to teach him the missionary lessons so he can get baptized. It was a great lesson. It really put me to the test. I'm used to teaching adults all the time, but rarely have I ever had to teach younger children, and when you teach such children, you really have to simplify things but still make sure that what you are teaching to them is especially profound to them. In this case, we taught Chisomo about him being a child of God, how he loves him and how he has given commandments to make him happy in his life. It was a really good lesson, and Elder Slade said after the lesson that he felt the spirit very strongly in that lesson.

We've continued to give service to Sister Khama this week. This week she finally began burning her bricks. One of the things she had us do was to move timber over to where they were burning the bricks. We're not just talking about small sticks, we were talking about BIG, BIG logs! We had to all work together to move them. For example, there was this one log that was way too big for all of us, so Elder Chola devised this clever idea of moving it. We got two smaller logs and put them under the log horizontally on both ends. We lifted together on these smaller logs and we were able to get it over to where we were going. We also moved bricks again, but this time the bricks were much much larger, almost the size of a shoebox! Surprisingly, they actually felt pretty light in the hands.

A cool thing that happened this week was that I unexpectedly got something from Lusaka. A while back I saw Elder Allred had something sent from Lusaka from a member of one of the wards I used to serve in. The member's name is Sister Mooto, (pronounced almost like Moto in Motorcycle) and she is a very skilled tailor. Anyways, Elder Allred had her make a chitengi hoodie using some nice material from Nigeria. It was finished after he left Lusaka, so it was sent to him when he was in Blantyre. I got to see it myself and it looked sick. I'm not one that really cares about clothes, but when I saw Elder Allred's African Hoodie I was like, "Fetch, I need to get one of these for myself!" so I sent a letter and some money to her via a trusted friend. Just this Saturday, I was given a grocery bag addressed to me that had something inside. I opened it, and to my surprise it was my own completed Chitengi hoodie! It looks sick! The sleeves are just a tad short, but apart from that I've fallen in love with this thing. I've sent some pictures of it along with some of my new haircut.

 

 

Training Elder Kapalanga has been going okay. He's slowly picking up things as we go along the way, but one of the challenging things in our area is that we hardly have anybody to teach, so it is hard for Elder Kapalanga to really put the principles that he has learned into practice. Likewise, finding has also been a pain. So far we've had no dice. This is one of the reasons why I don't like finding. It is long, slow and hard without the members helping us.

It is safe to say that this is one of my most humbling times on my mission. It's one of those moments in my mission that Heavenly Father has leaned in and said that it's time for me to straighten up. I've probably said it before, when things go well, my prayers slowly grow less and less sincere and become more rushed. It is when I face the most challenging trials in my mission where I begin to humble myself and offer up more genuine and sincere prayers. Saturday night was one of those nights. I was probably on my knees for a while just asking help from God. I've realized though that perhaps God is withholding divine assistance for a time to see how I respond to the challenges before me. He wants to see how I react. I suppose it is much like the situation that Job had. Job hit a really rough spell in his life and things really turned south. Regardless of that, he was still faithful to God, but God still waited to see how Job would persist in his trials. It was only after a while that God saw that Job truly had humbled himself and poured out blessings to him. Perhaps it is the same with me. I'll be frank though, I've got a long ways to go before I'm like Job. God has really magnified my weaknesses and I've seen how helpless I can really be without him. I'm not always perfect at doing what I'm supposed to be doing on mission, but it is my desire to do that which is right, and I pray that that desire can overpower my human weaknesses and help me to overcome the challenges that I am facing.

Wishing you all well!

 

Elder Massey

 

The Long Run

Well, I had a bit of a God-send this last week. Elder Slade (a missionary in my district) was told that he was going to train, but his companion isn't coming until this coming Wednesday. Not only that, but his companion at the time Elder Ouma honorably finished his mission and went home on Wednesday last week, so he had nobody to work with, so the Zone Leaders came by and dropped him off and we've been together all this time. I wouldn't say that things have improved much though. Both of our areas are struggling lately, and having to proselyting in both our own area and Elder Slade's area can be a bit of a hassle, but we are getting by for now. I'm just glad I've got a missionary like Elder Slade to give me a leg up when it comes to training Elder Kapalanga. This last Thursday we spent probably upwards of three hours doing weekly planning with him and explaining how it is done. Hoo boy was that a long process. A leader of the church (and I've forgotten their name) once said that we should teach not for understanding, but to teach so that it's impossible to misunderstand, so I think that's the theme and the principle of how I train. 

Life at the flat has been good though. Since Elder Slade is my Bawo buddy, we've been playing each other when we've had free time available at the flat. So far he still beats me most of the time, but I still manage to get a few wins here and there. One game I literally starved him out until he literally had nothing else to move with! I even played a round with Elder Chanza, Elder Chola's Malawian companion. Since Elder Chanza is a Malawian, he knows the game inside and out. He whooped me pretty good the first game, but on the second game I beat him handily, though I would say it was probably because of pure luck! His jaw was on the floor as I took out his whole front row in one move!  

Elder Slade has also been taught by the other Elders how to play Draft, which is more or less an advanced version of Checkers. I knew how to play Draft, so I humored him with a few rounds! Fortunately, I'm "smarter than the average [Elder]" when it comes to Draft. We've played several rounds and he's won only once, and only because of a technicality issue. ;) 

Enough of fun and games though. Rest assured we are still working hard when we are in the area, but I will say that the games have been a helpful stress killer. It really is the small things that can really make a difference.

In the area these last few days we've been visiting a member named Sister Banda. She's an older fellow, but very intelligent. She teaches the equivalent of High School level Social Studies, so she is very very smart. However like a lot of other people here she's diabetic. It seems like they don't get proper treatment to maintain their diabetes, so from time to time when their blood pressure begins to fluctuate they get really sick and at the very worst get hospitalized. Whenever somebody has that, people simply say that that person had "BP". Anyways, we've been visiting to make sure she's doing OK, and thankfully she has recovered very fast. President Mukonda had it when I was in Chainama, and he was in a really bad spell that took months for him to recover from, so I'm grateful that such wasn't the case with Sister Banda.

The other highlight of the week is that I got my missionary journal back! I had a journal that I had all the missionaries and members sign and write letters in, but I left it in Lusaka for some missionaries and members to sign when I got transferred to Lilongwe - which was like APRIL - and I hadn't heard about it since, but when Elder Hinckley my new Zone Leader came by he had the journal with him! Glad I have that back. It had all the contacts of the missionaries and members I wanted to keep in touch with! Better yet, I can now have other people sign it now.

That's pretty much my week. It's been slow, but I'm continuing to hope that things will shape up! Love ya!

Elder Massey 

I Didn't Know I Was Expecting!

So, last Monday evening I got a surprise phone call. The Zone Leaders called and gave some transfer news. I wasn't moved out of the house, but I took over an area left behind some sisters who are leaving the area.

That's not all though. I was told that I would be training! My new companion is a Malawian visa waiter named Elder Kapalanga. He's supposed to go to Botswana, but he's having some visa issues right now. 

I took to training really well. I enjoy training a lot. If I could sit down in the flat and just train missionaries all day, I'd think I'd be down for it. Training has shown myself how much I've developed as a missionary. I'm certainly not the kind of missionary I was when I started. I've also developed the appreciation of the other trainers in this mission. It's no walk in the park, that's for certain! 

Elder Kapalanga is great. He's humble and willing to work, but has a lot to learn though. His English needs a little work and he actually hasn't gotten through the MTC yet, so I've got a lot on my shoulders to help him out with. Then again, I'm sure it's much of the same for all trainers wherever you go in the missions of the world. All that really matters to me though is that I want to be able to please the Lord and be an effective trainer, so I'm really doing all that I can to help Elder Kapalanga become a good missionary. I've made an effort to thoroughly teach him the doctrine of our lessons so that he can be able to expound and better apply some of the other principles of missionary work. In the end though, I just hope that I can be able to measure up to some of the great missionaries in this mission such as Elder Chola who is a great teacher and trainer. 

The biggest challenge of all though is the area itself. I won't go into great detail, but suffice to say the Sisters weren't able to work in our new area on a regular basis, so there's hardly anybody to teach at all. This means that we have a lot of finding to do, which is frankly the thing I like the least. If I had an area where we had people to teach, I think things would go fine, but I'm just frustrated by having this great responsibility and difficult challenge all lobbed together at the same time. It drops a whole whopper of stress on me. Ideally, we'd have some sort of teaching pool that would keep us busy. That's what I like being the most on mission, just running between appointments here and there.

I've had many other experiences on mission where I have been humbled greatly, but this is certainly the most humbling and trying time of my mission. It's certainly one of those moments of my mission where I have much testing to shape me more into the person that the Lord wants me to be. I will not hide the fact that I am very stressed right now. It's very overwhelming and I realize I won't be able to manage this all by myself. I have made many pleas to the Lord as of late that I will have strength to overcome these challenges. God has realized that I've been in a comfort zone for too long and I believe he has seen it fit to put me in this situation. I'm having a  hard time right now, so I would ask that you all keep me in your prayers this week that I can be able to persist through this moment of my mission. 

So again, I ask that you please pray for me,  I'm going to need all the help I can get, especially from our Heavenly Father. If I can get through these couple of weeks, I'd think that I'll be able to push on just fine.

Love,

Elder Massey

I Saw God Today

Going to rip off my bro Elder Massey 2.0 and do what he usually does when he writes home, which is use song titles and compares them to the experiences that he had that week.

Sometimes things get rough for us and we have trouble on seeing and recognizing the good things in life. We get so frustrated with our present situation that we begin to forget to try to make the most out of what little we have and we fail to notice the subtle things that help us to find a little joy in our lives. That's what the song "I Saw God Today" by George Strait talks about. In the song, there's a man that has just been through what can be easily described as a very intense moment in his life, and I would reckon it was overwhelming too. But as he stops to settle down a little bit, he mentions, that he "saw a flower growing in the middle of the sidewalk pushing up through the concrete like it was planted right there for me to see." On any normal day, he wouldn't have noticed it, but because of what he went through he had the impression it was not just happenstance that he saw that flower there and he remarks, "I've been to church, I've read the book, I know He's there but I don't look near as often as I should. His fingerprints are everywhere, I just look down and stop and stare, open my eyes and then I swear, I saw God today."

Definitely this week I can sympathize with the man in this song. I've had the knowledge of the Gospel and what not, but often I don't stop to see the subtle things in my life that God has done to help me out. This week was especially tough for us as we're heading into that point of missionary work where we are running out of people to teach and we are failing to find people to take their place and to continue our work. We even had a day where it was just fall-through after fall-through. It was really tough and I just had a lot of stress on my mind. Then one morning we were visiting this one recent convert named Hellen. It was shaping up to be another tough day. Hellen had gone to prepare something for us to eat and Elder Chola had gone outside to take a call. I was sitting in Hellen's living room trying to read my scriptures as I was thinking to myself how we were going to manage to get by this week. All of a sudden I heard laughter and squealing outside. I noticed that Elder Chola was playing with Hellen's kids and family members outside. They were playing a group version of monkey in the middle. At first I ignored it, but I felt prompted to go outside and play with them. Even then, I was still reluctant and I dragged my feet outside. Once I joined and began playing catch with them though I was having the time of my life. It was probably one of the happiest moments on my mission. I don't mean to speak ill of any of my past experiences on mission, but by far and hands down this was one of the few moments of my mission where it was just pure unadulterated joy, even if everything else around me wasn't necessarily going the way I'd want it to be. I realized shortly after that experience it was maybe God reaching out to me to help me feel a little better that day. I saw the fingerprints that day and opened my eyes for once and I was able to see the hand of God in my life for once.

Last Monday we visited President & Sister Mtale and had Family Home Evening with them. They invited a nonmember father to join us, and we had a good time. Sister Mtale shared a brief message, and we played some fun games. I learned a fun puzzle game called Cups. I'll have to teach you that one when I get home, because I love messing with people's minds!

We had service at Sister Khama's as always. We invited a couple other companionships to join us as there was a lot of work that day. For the most part, it was another normal day of service, but there was twist.

Elder Ouma loves messing with these things that come from a tree that I don't even know what it's called. The 'fruit' of that tree is yellow, shaped like a pea pod and is VERY fuzzy! It's very dangerous though as the fuzz on it can cause severe irritation and itching if it makes contact with any exposed skin. Worse, if you scratch there, it spreads to the part of the body that you made contact with the itching and so forth. I don't know why the fetch he does it, but Elder Ouma loves plucking these itchy itchy scratchy things from the tree and handling them with something to protect his hand. The way I see it, it as if he was toying around with a freaking grenade in his hand and that he was going to screw us all with it!

So we had finished this service, and we were all lining up to a bucket of clean water to wash our hands and arms. Elder Ouma was in front of me, and all of a sudden he turns around and I feel something brush my right index finger. Elder Ouma hadn't realized I was there, and in his (protected) hand was a itchy itchy scratchy that had just made contact with my own unprotected hand!  

An appropriate representation of my reaction to said itchy itchy scratchy touching me:

Fortunately I was able to be smart and not do anything that would get the irritation all over myself. After some herbal application and some sort of therapeutic oil that Elder Slade applied on it, it eventually recovered!

Last of all, early this morning some of us missionaries climbed a mountain to see the sun rise. There was cross on the top of that hill so there was a relatively easy trail that led us there. We had an absolutely OUTSTANDING view of all of Blanytre and the surrounding region, and despite some hiccups, we made it right on time for the sunrise! Elder Ssengooba had brought his Canon DSLR (A Rebel T3i) and he let me take some pictures with it! It was great to be able to get my hands on a really good camera! I miss my T4i back home. Thankfully, I still remember how to use such a camera, and I took some FANTASTIC pictures!

I almost forgot! I also got my hair cut today. I'll simply say that it's different but mission appropriate! You'll be surprised what I had done! Seeing as my family members are getting some pretty new haircuts that they've never had before, I'm getting in on the action too! I'll send a picture of mine next week. Just wanted to give Elder Doig a shoutout for the sick job that he did!

Take care everybody!

Elder Massey