COMPANION: ELDER COLLETT
Ohhhhhhhhhhh this week was fun.
Let's start with a few lines I found in an old general conference talk.
"I ask no dream, no prophet's ecstasies/ No sudden rending of the veil of clay/ No angel visitant-no opening skies/ But take the dimness of my soul away."
I liked it. it requires no commentary.
This week Elder Collett had some choice descriptions of me that I would like to pass on. One day we were walking side by side and he looked over at me and said, "You have this one expression on your face all the time. I don't know what it is or how to describe it. It's a smile but it's like... sarcastic maybe? I don't know." I let him struggle for the words for a while, and then I recommended. "Smirk?" "YES! You SMIRK!"
Hehehehe, I've heard that once or twice. Yes, I do smirk. I think that's just the way my face was made. I smirk because I know something. And I want other people to know it. The other comment from my companion was, "You bear your testimony to every single person that we talk to!" I'm not sure it was meant as a compliment but it is true. NOBODY escapes! Muahaha!
This week Elder Collett had some choice descriptions of me that I would like to pass on. One day we were walking side by side and he looked over at me and said, "You have this one expression on your face all the time. I don't know what it is or how to describe it. It's a smile but it's like... sarcastic maybe? I don't know." I let him struggle for the words for a while, and then I recommended. "Smirk?" "YES! You SMIRK!"
Hehehehe, I've heard that once or twice. Yes, I do smirk. I think that's just the way my face was made. I smirk because I know something. And I want other people to know it. The other comment from my companion was, "You bear your testimony to every single person that we talk to!" I'm not sure it was meant as a compliment but it is true. NOBODY escapes! Muahaha!
We get ourselves into some wonderful situations. I find myself shouting across busy streets, asking for contact information from people I don't know, an receiving it! I find myself hearing, "Come in!" after knocking on a random door, and am a little startled to hear a voice impossibly like my own responding, "Alright!", and feet very much resembling mine carrying me over the threshold into strange houses, hallways, bedrooms or kitchens or porches or living rooms, and testifying of the savior, the prophet, the Book of Mormon, and the restored gospel before anyone is really sure who I am or how I came to be standing in front of their TV!
Who the heck says, "Come in!"???? It has happened several times. Every time it has resulted in a new investigator. It leads me to a thought: What you invite in is important. And when someone invites YOU in, say YES! Random preachiness out of the way. Back to stories.
Some of these stories I'm not so sure about honestly. We do some ridiculous things. I had the opportunity to act as voice in a priesthood blessing and I felt impressed to REBUKE the sickness. Cool word choice by the spirit there. One man we are helping to prepare for baptism and when we pulled up to his house we saw him lighting a cigarette. So we woke up some of his neighbors who are members, sat them all down at a table outside, taught the Word of Wisdom, and committed him to live it. It started raining almost immediately but we just went right on going. You should have seen the look on the cable guy's face working next door. I tried to commit him to live it too but he ducked behind the house when he saw me coming. We'll get him next time!
Oh there are so many stories. One day we drove way out to a neighboring city to visit someone we have been teaching at their home for the first time. We got to this tiny town with houses spread WAY apart, of course it was pouring rain, and the dirt roads were, in some places, 100% under water, when we realized we knew the STREET but not the house number. But we were DETERMINED. So we drove to the end of the road, (driving through fields to avoid the rivers that had developed in the roadway), my companion started on one side and I started on the other, and we SPRINTED from house to house through the mud and rain, knocking on doors and asking, "Does Brittany live here? Do you know Brittany? Does Brittany live anywhere on this street? Have you ever met a Brittany in your life? WHERE IS BRITTANY? DO YOU KNOW JAPAN????" It was ridiculous. Apparently a member drove by and saw us and told the whole ward and everyone was laughing about it for a week. At one point I was being chased by no fewer than FOUR dogs from individual houses (of course no one has ever heard of a LEASH in this town) as I jumped fences and dodged some very pro-gun neighbors in my search on the right side of the road, and my companion was having just as many adventures on the left side.
And you know what? WE FOUND BRITTANY. In the LAST house on the street. Of course. Sometimes we start knocking doors on one side of the street, and then get in the car and drive to the other side, because that one golden person is ALWAYS in the last house so we try to just skip the in-between bit. Anyway, that was a hilarious, muddy adventure. I've never felt so good and looked so ridiculous in my entire life.
The secret is to ignore "no". People say no to us all the time. Yesterday we invited a man to church and he said no SEVEN times in a conversation before finally he agreed and showed up to sacrament meeting.
Oh! Another funny story. This is the deep south, the belt buckle of the bible belt. Everyone, EVERYONE has been baptized. Inviting people to be baptized is something of a struggle. So yesterday halfway through the first lesson I said to one of our investigators who has firmly refused to be baptized, "Do you believe what we are teaching?" "...Yes." "Then will you join the church?" "...Yes!" "Excellent! There is a little ceremony involved. We will teach you more about it saturday." Hehehe, we'll see how THAT conversation goes.
One of my favorite stories from the week happened right after I returned to my area after serving briefly in a neighboring city for a companion exchange. I was happy to be home, and feeling a little extra exuberance. We saw some people doing yard work several lanes of traffic away. We immediately stopped in our tracks and sprinted across the road straight for them, offering to help pull weeds. They refused, protesting that we were too nicely dressed (and probably a little bit terrified of these two strange men running at them). We kept coming and offered again, and they refused. Well we did what any normal person would do, we broke eye contact, pretended not to hear them, dropped our supplies unceremoniously in their grass, and dove into the mulch to begin digging out weeds. I have no idea what their faces must have looked like but I am certain the expressions were priceless. The young couple knelt beside us and returned to their work, and the woman asked my companion almost the same moment the man asked me their personal wording of this question: "What is it that you believe that makes you do what you are doing?"
They received the message. We taught while we worked, we're going back Wednesday, they are reading their new Books of Mormon with fervor. But that questions sticks with me. We are asked it over and over in a million ways. In words, in a raised eyebrow, in an exasperated acceptance of an offer to serve, people are constantly wondering, "WHY?"
Because God told me to. Because His spokesman stood before an audience of millions and proclaimed to a world of billions: "Thus Saith the Lord..." He spoke of Missions, Temples, the Word of Wisdom, Tithing, the Law of Chastity, the Book of Mormon, the Plan of Salvation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Eternal Marriage, and Priesthood. He told us that they came from God; that God has given, and that He expects us to receive.
God speaks to men. He appeared to Joseph Smith. He blesses and uplifts and instructs and supplicates and comforts and COMMANDS. These commands are not negotiable. Life must be lived within certain boundaries. Happiness is to be acquired in one divinely appointed way. We stand in streets and on pavement and at pulpits and in doorways and proclaim as duly ordained ministers of the true church of Jesus Christ, called by His prophet and appointed by revelation, that God lives, that He has waited long enough! ENOUGH! Enough of pain and sin. Ebnough of sadness and cruelty and hatred and filth. It is time to throw such evil and waste behind ourselves. It is time to drop everything and COME! Come to Him. Come and see. Come and live His way. Come and be so gloriously, incredibly, absurdly happy that you type in all caps in your letters home. We do what we do because the will of God has been relayed to us and we are commanded to obey it. We declare that man's wandering in darkness is over, that Elohim has heard our cries, and He sent His son to deliver us from an ancient Foe. There is a kingdom now of priests. An holy nation. A promised land dotted by temples, led by Seers and Revelators, emanating light, radiating faith. I am an Elder in the order of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the same order of Priesthood to which Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses belonged. I am endowed with power from on high, I am a citizen of the Kingdom of Christ, and I have sacrificed everything I have ever owned, and everything I have ever been, to travel thousands of miles and stand today and invite you to COME. To hear the words of God that come pouring from my mouth, and to OBEY them. To believe, to repent, and to be baptized by the Priesthood authority of God. You will be happy forever. You will join this peculiar people in a sweetness of joy and a fullness of purpose that dwarfs all other emotions and endeavors. Thus Saith our God, you shall have Eternal Life. My companion and I know it, we bind our lives, our souls, and our destinies to it, and we cannot deny it.
And that is why we are weeding your yard.
I love my Heavenly Father. I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I love my Comforter, the Holy Spirit. I love my companion, Elder Collett. I love my brothers and sisters living in Starke Florida. I am a little missionary, one of tens of thousands in the world. There is nothing special about me, but there is something unimaginably unique in what I say. For I have a message, which Thomas S. Monson, the prophet of the Lord, invites all men everywhere to heed. My message is that the Lord speaks and the very universe trembles and hastens to obey. Sometimes He does it through me, and I watch the word of God propelled by my voice to the shaping of the cosmos. It is a privilege and an honor for which I am not adequately equipped to express my thanks. I am less than nothing, for even the void responds more immediately to its Creator than does my own stubborn, weak, and willful heart. But I try so hard. So very hard. And I am not afraid.
These are my blessings, and this is my testimony for this week. No one is more aware than I of how woefully unworthy I am of them, and so I can only be as grateful as I know how to be. Thank you for reading, and for sharing my fun. The Church is true, every word. I know it, because Jesus Christ said it. And every time I share my pitifully inadequate testimony, there is an unspoken and beautiful preface attached by the Holy Ghost:
"Thus Saith the Lord"
Amen.
~Elder Jorgensen
God speaks to men. He appeared to Joseph Smith. He blesses and uplifts and instructs and supplicates and comforts and COMMANDS. These commands are not negotiable. Life must be lived within certain boundaries. Happiness is to be acquired in one divinely appointed way. We stand in streets and on pavement and at pulpits and in doorways and proclaim as duly ordained ministers of the true church of Jesus Christ, called by His prophet and appointed by revelation, that God lives, that He has waited long enough! ENOUGH! Enough of pain and sin. Ebnough of sadness and cruelty and hatred and filth. It is time to throw such evil and waste behind ourselves. It is time to drop everything and COME! Come to Him. Come and see. Come and live His way. Come and be so gloriously, incredibly, absurdly happy that you type in all caps in your letters home. We do what we do because the will of God has been relayed to us and we are commanded to obey it. We declare that man's wandering in darkness is over, that Elohim has heard our cries, and He sent His son to deliver us from an ancient Foe. There is a kingdom now of priests. An holy nation. A promised land dotted by temples, led by Seers and Revelators, emanating light, radiating faith. I am an Elder in the order of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the same order of Priesthood to which Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses belonged. I am endowed with power from on high, I am a citizen of the Kingdom of Christ, and I have sacrificed everything I have ever owned, and everything I have ever been, to travel thousands of miles and stand today and invite you to COME. To hear the words of God that come pouring from my mouth, and to OBEY them. To believe, to repent, and to be baptized by the Priesthood authority of God. You will be happy forever. You will join this peculiar people in a sweetness of joy and a fullness of purpose that dwarfs all other emotions and endeavors. Thus Saith our God, you shall have Eternal Life. My companion and I know it, we bind our lives, our souls, and our destinies to it, and we cannot deny it.
And that is why we are weeding your yard.
I love my Heavenly Father. I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I love my Comforter, the Holy Spirit. I love my companion, Elder Collett. I love my brothers and sisters living in Starke Florida. I am a little missionary, one of tens of thousands in the world. There is nothing special about me, but there is something unimaginably unique in what I say. For I have a message, which Thomas S. Monson, the prophet of the Lord, invites all men everywhere to heed. My message is that the Lord speaks and the very universe trembles and hastens to obey. Sometimes He does it through me, and I watch the word of God propelled by my voice to the shaping of the cosmos. It is a privilege and an honor for which I am not adequately equipped to express my thanks. I am less than nothing, for even the void responds more immediately to its Creator than does my own stubborn, weak, and willful heart. But I try so hard. So very hard. And I am not afraid.
These are my blessings, and this is my testimony for this week. No one is more aware than I of how woefully unworthy I am of them, and so I can only be as grateful as I know how to be. Thank you for reading, and for sharing my fun. The Church is true, every word. I know it, because Jesus Christ said it. And every time I share my pitifully inadequate testimony, there is an unspoken and beautiful preface attached by the Holy Ghost:
"Thus Saith the Lord"
Amen.
~Elder Jorgensen