Patience

 

Hello Family,

 

The mission is going great! It is very tiring; I am asleep usually by about 10:35 and I have been dreaming every night too! Crazy stuff.

 

I had the wonderful opportunity of going to a session at the Mesa Temple this week with the Jenkins. It was phenomenal. I have really missed that place so it was good to go back. I saw the new presentation. It was interesting to hear your thoughts about it too. Hermano Jenkins said it was a little bit like a 'telenovela' which means Soap Opera in Spanish and a lot of Mexicans watch them. I agreed to a point but our whole group agreed that it was an improvement to the old one. My two favorite parts were the added emotion and the changes on the Creation. That was neat. The emotion really put personality into it and made the decision so much more important and realistic. The Mesa Temple is beautiful too. I drew back on my thoughts of being there with Dad, Monte, Sam, and Caroline a couple Thanksgivings ago. It was especially nice to think about Monte while I was there! I wish we could go to the temple more. It was great. Not to mention, it was like a huge road trip to leave the six-square mile El Mirage all the way to Mesa haha.

 

Elder Dodd and I are working hard in the area. We are talking with everyone. People have been coming to church. The Rama loves us and the other two elders too.

 

Something I am kind of learning off and on throughout my whole mission is patience. Most good things take a long time. Paradoxically- learning patience does too haha. But I have noticed that it is not up to us, nor is it right for us, to expect all the good things to happen when we want them to or even when we expect to have waited long enough and to have worked hard enough. Some investigators get taught by upwards of ten different missionaries. Most of who we are teaching right now are on their first or second missionary companionship with me being in the first companionship. It is so much easier and better to plan ahead with the VISION that we want to have for them. Elder Hughes and Elder Lemon found Jose in January. He wasn't regularly taught until Elder Cardoso and I could focus on him. We have regularly taught him since May. He has received all the lessons, understands them too, and is sincerly trying to find out if it is true and is for him. Every lesson the past three weeks we have come over hoping to hear from him that his prayer was answered, or he feels ready, or that he knows it is true. He knows what he needs to do. He is doing it. We even taught 3 separate lessons on Moroni 10:4-5 so that he would fully understand 'having faith in Jesus Christ, sincere heart, and real intent.' He knows. He wants it to be true. He is praying and reading; asking specifically and doing it consistently. When answers don't come we realize how impatient we are and how much we want to direct the Lord's will. That is not how it is. I remember one thing Dad has said to me a couple times that he learned and that is that we can't expect to change the Lord's time in our prayers or actions even if the desires are righteous desires for His children (or something like that; at least that is what I got out of what you said). We are doing everything we can with Jose and he appears to be doing everything he can too. This is in the Lord's hands. And I trust Him! We trust Him! I am not worried. I guess I just felt confused because we didn't know what was going wrong for Jose and why he hasn't received an answer. Patience. I know without a shadow of a doubt that he will be baptized. He will be a worthy Priesthood holder and he will go to the temple often. I know it will happen. Why would it need to happen now--while I am teaching him or while Elder Dodd is teaching him--if the Lord knows it would happen too but that it would just happen in His time and no one else's? I have the Faith that it will even happen if he stops investigating. He has told us a few times that he is looking for truth in his life and if he doesn't find it here he will go elsewhere until he finds it. What more can we ask for out of an investigator? Not much. But I am fairly confident that he could still accept the truth here even if he stops. He has done his part. I don't think the Lord could say otherwise. But I am in no position to say that. He knows all. It is up to us to trust in Him and that is what we are doing right now. Patience has helped me take the mission week by week too. Several nights we come home and reflect on the day; and when you think about the lessons that fell through, the people that weren't home, the people that weren't interested, and the lack of set things to do through the day, it can be destructive! What we do in a day may not seem like much. If we did our best and strived always to be doing the right thing it  adds up. Even some weeks seem to go by with zero progress. That may be the case. But the Lord loves His missionaries and He loves His children and we are expected to do our best out here to help them and leave the rest to Him. He is doing amazing things through us. Even if we teach 3 lessons in a week and talk to 22 people that barely even let us leave them with a card. I am learning patience. A few weeks ago I was praying off and on about something- I wanted to know if my service in the mission up to that point had been accepted and appreciated by my Father in Heaven. I waiting around until I got an answer to that too. How selfish does that sound? It almost sounds a little pathetic too. In retrospect that is what I think of that. I didn't need an answer nor should I have really expected one. I know my efforts are being accepted because I am doing my best. Even if I get home at the end of a day and feel like I didn't do my best that day, I tap into the power of the Atonement and recommit myself the following day. Overall, I am doing my best, and it has taken to me to learning patience in order to feel like my efforts aren't wasted. That may have all sounded like a broken record player, or maybe you all have already heard something like that from other missionaries or already have that down yourselves-but that has to be one of the biggest things that has stood out to me so far in my service. I hope that when you all see me home you can honestly say that patience is a Christlike characteristic that I exemplfiy. I am trying so hard to be patient in everything. I even think President Taylor knows that patience is my big battle right now. I pray for it every day. Through the Lord's grace I can make patience my strength. Ether 12:27. 

 

Love you all. Love, Elder Jacob Parry

PS The weather has been beautiful. Still a little warm and the humidity makes me sweat more but the cloudy sunsets are awesome and the thunder and lightning storms are picture-perfect desert storms. There aren't a lot but I have enjoyed them. We have been rained on twice on bike and it wasn't bad so that was kind of fun. I have only had two headaches since making it to the field. One was the first night with Cardoso and the other was the second night with Elder Dodd. It must be something about change that brings them haha. I will tell Sister Taylor of any medical problems including scorpion bites so thank you. She reminds me of Mom a lot! It is kind of neat. She is very very concerned and always thinking about the missionaries and our health. Physical, mental, and spiritual.