JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
COMPANION: ELDER CORDON
ASSISTANTS
KINGSLAND, GA on Tuesday
ST. JOHNS on Wednesday
I am riding in the backseat of a cream-colored Volkswagen Beetle. It's quite the experience.
Our week was pretty packed! We had zone conferences this week. Missionaries are organized in the following ways:
Companionship: usually two missionaries per companionship. A "trio" is three. Each companionship has a senior companion.
District: the average district has 4-5 companionships. Each district has a district leader.
Zone: Each zone has one companionship of "zone leaders" that care for the zone as a whole and one companionship of "sister training leaders" that pay special attention to the sisters. Our smallest zone (Lake City) has 11 companionships, the largest (JAX South) has 16. Each of the 8 zones has three districts (except for mandarin and JAX East zones, which have two largish ones) There was a dramatic reduction in zone and district size over the last year as the total number of missionaries in the mission has dropped from 284 to 212. It's about 45% Sister missionaries and 55% elders.
Bet you wanted to know all that!!! We have six stakes in our mission, from corner to corner the mission would take five hours to drive across. And once a quarter we engage in a joyous series of meetings called "zone conference". Zone conference usually lasts about 10 hours. We had them on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday we had:
1) Kingsland. The Georgia zone. Georgia is true "Deep South". Think of a Deep South stereotype. What comes to your mind? Those things, that's Kingsland. I desperately want to serve there. It's my favorite place to go.
2) JAX East. It's really the north side of Jacksonville. The name is super misleading. It includes the downtown area and the low income parts of the city, and also the three really nice beach cities along the coast).
Wednesday was:
1) JAX South, which is really diverse, and does not include any of the actual city of Jacksonville. Again, weird naming choices. The northern district is the St. John's district and is all extremely wealthy suburbs of Jacksonville, the middle district is entirely St. Augustine, the gorgeous beach city of my dreams, and the southern district is Palatka, which is a small rural "other side of the tracks" sort of town and the surrounding countryside. It's probably the most diverse zone. I served there twice so far so it's pretty well known that it's my favorite one.
2) JAX West. The St. John's River runs through the city of Jacksonville. Everything on the west side of the river is "west side". It's kind of the working mans zone. It reminds me a LOT of Chula Vista/ National City area. Working people, big roads, growing fast and maybe a little too fast to keep up with itself.
3) Mandarin. I call it "Mandarin Mountain". It's the City still, but the southside of the city. Named after the Orange, not the language. We have the YSA branch for the whole city of Jacksonville and mostly huge apartment buildings that we work in. We serve in mandarin zone now.
Thursday was:
1) Lake City. This is the other truly "Deep South" zone. Locals refer to it as "Old Flordia". It is as country as you can imagine out there. I have yet to see anyone eat anything but barbecue, and I was there for five months.
2) Gainesville. The college town with the University of Florida Campus. The city is dominated by the university and most of the members are attending the apparently very highly ranked medical school. I started my mission in Gainesville.
3) Ocala. Ocala is the far southern border of the mission. It's all huge horse ranches. So random! But Yep! Horses and ranches and migrant workers and tiny country towns. It's just so... Random! Ocala is a gorgeous place. Lots of Spanish work to be done there. I think I get to go down... Tomorrow? Maybe? Yes pretty sure.
So we went around and had our meetings with the missionaries. 30 hours of meetings in three days! President and Sister Craig do most of the teaching and training, but we have our little segment too. It was "Talk With Everyone". Seems pretty basic, but we had some fun with it. Sister Craig's trainings were on the enabling power of the atonement and professionalism. Presidents trainings were based around a talk entitled "becoming a preach my gospel missionary", having a balanced work, and how to become fundamentally different from your former (pre-mission) self.
Story time!
1) The Wednesday conference was in St. John's, and overlapped seminary. So while we waited for everyone to get situated, we gave a pass-along card to every youth in the whole stake and committed them to give it to one of their friends that day. It was so fun to see so many of the people I'd grown to love when I served there.
2) The Tuesday conference was in Georgia. While we were there we taught a man the Restoration in the dollar store where we were attempting to purchase some last-minute supplies (we had everyone write down a personal goal for this year on a sticky white label and put it on the backside of their nametag). We tried the same thing in Lake City a couple days later, but the man we tried to give a Book of Mormon to turned out to already be a member of the Church! Darn Mormons!
3) One night we were on our way home at 9:15ish at night after a lesson and realized we were about to run out of gas! So we stopped and while Elder Cordon got gas, I went inside under the pretense of using the restroom but really to talk to people. Talked to two people in line, the lady at the register, and two people pumping gas, but no luck! As we were getting into the car, a lady pulled up and hopped out of the drivers seat so fast she startled me! I yelped a little and she looked at me and I offered her a card for the Book of Mormon and told her its Ne best book I've ever read. She smiled and accepted. 9:17 gas station successes!!
4) We went Tracting on trade-offs. I was with a missionary that we had had to separate from his companion and it was approaching 9 PM or so and he was lingering a bit behind me BUT I walked up and knocked on the door anyway. A very, very large unclad man with crazy eyes swings the door open, squeals "We're Jehovah's Witnesses!" and then slams it closed. I almost fell back into my crazy temporary companion! Tracting stories are interesting.
5) we have so many people we are teaching that we don't get a ton of time to find new investigators. It was 8:45 Sunday night (Sunday is the end of our weekly reporting period) and we had found zero. We said a prayer and ran around a little bit and 15 minutes later we had two!!! Two breathtaking people wi a divine heritage who heard about the Restoration for the first time in those 15 minutes.
6) I have petitioned at length for white boards for our apartment. We went to Lowes with a senior couple and, in addition to the three medium-sized ones we already had, we got two 4x8 boards. That's 64 square feet of whiteboard. Think of how much revelation you can fit into 64 feet!!!!! Of course we bought 12 colors of dry-erase markers at Wal mart immediately after. Look for the bare (bear?) necessities!
7) We were running a little latish (super late) to a dinner appointment and we got to the apartment complex but at the last second we doubted ourselves and went sprinting off in the other direction looking for the right apartment. As we were running (Elder Cordon jogging along like a gazelle, me sweating and panting and stumbling behind) a dog leaps out of the bushes onto us! Ah! The dog's owner comes running out in a panic, apologizes, and was a little confused by our offer to teacher her a lesson about Jesus Christ. But she accepted! So we stood on her porch and taught her about the Book of Mormon. She's a lawyer, so we talked at length about the judiciary outline of the Book of Mormon. We told her the book of Alma, although primarily a witness of Jesus Christ, can also be read as a documentary of the most brilliant legal achievement of ancient times (and perhaps of any time). When she heard about the first vision, she threw her hands in the air, exclaimed, "That's phenomenal!" and asked for a copy of the book, which we of course had.
Time runs short here in our bug mobile. I took some time in our training this week in the zone conferences to rebuke the virus of perfectionism that creeps through the missionaries I love. We do what we can. We try our hardest. And when we do our best, that is good enough. Your best and then trust Jesus with the rest.
The first vision IS phenomenal. It happened. I am sure. Love,
~Elder Jorgensen
Some quotes we used in Zone Conference:
1) "If great joy is the reward of saving one soul, then how terrible must be the remorse of ode whose timid efforts have allowed a child of God to go unwarned or unaided so that he has to wait till a dependable servant of God comes along." ~Thomas S. Monson
2) “I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed, the die has been cast, I have stepped over the line, the decision has been made- I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.
My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tainted vision, worldly talking, cheap giving & dwarfed goals.
I no longer need pre-eminence, positions, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I now live by faith, lean on his presence, walk with patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor with power. My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear.
I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, divided or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity,
I won’t give up, shut up, let up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up for the cause of Jesus Christ. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till [everyone knows], work till He stops me & when He comes for His own, He will have no trouble recognizing me. My banner will be clear.”
-Henry B. Eyring