A Week of Tradeoffs

  On Monday it was another busy day in the office and then a long drive over to Crestview to tradeoff with the Mobile zone leaders. Elder Riddle, Elder Palau, and myself stayed here in Tallahassee and worked the campuses. Elder Riddle is currently serving in a super small town so the pace of campus pumped him up, I love my area. We taught Celine and since she is leaving for Utah for the next few weeks it could have potentially been the last time I will see her on the mission. It's no fun leaving converts. Great lesson though! Wednesday was a cool day for a couple of reasons 1) Sabrina's birthday 2) MLC and 3) anniversary when I was assigned as a zone leader, it's crazy how fast a year goes by. We were asked to teach at MLC on Monday and so you can imagine the time we had to prepare for that with the tradeoff in the middle. We had some extra help and it went well. On Thursday we had another tradeoff, this time it was with the Fort Walton zone leaders. Elder MacLay, Elder Sorenson, and Myself held down home base here in Tally. We had a lot of appointments but they unfortunately fell through so we contacted a lot on FAMU. Normally people on FAMU are super nice and open to talk but for some reason Satan was pushing against us extra hard. We were bashed a couple of times, not many people out, it randomly started raining. We knew that there was going to be something good coming up though, Satan doesn't push extra hard for no reason. Friday we had one more experience when he was pushing back. We had an appointment fall through but saw a guy that we started talking to and ended up being able to teach. He had some concerns but the main thing that we saw was that when we were talking about 2 important things people starting coming out of the house or someone called him or some commotion happened that drew his attention away. The first time was when we were reciting the first vision, the second time is when we were teaching about the Book of Mormon, and the last time was when we were throwing down on anti doctrine! When the Lord hastens his work, so does Satan. When the day starting to draw to a close we had one last appointment with probably one of our most solid investigators so far, her name is Jackie. We have taught her the restoration super simply prior to this so we wanted to review it with her. It was such a powerful lesson. She talked about how she had been planning on getting baptized when she went home from break but now was second guessing it because of what she is being taught and what she is feeling. I would probably say it was in my top 10 most spiritual lessons. 

  My overall tender mercy for this week has been something that has been a mission long endeavor, I would possibly say even before that. Story time! About 13 months ago when I was a district leader serving in Mobile I was on a tradeoff with a missionary that was going to be going home a week later. When we were laying in bed he was discussing some of his plans. Whenever missionaries start talking about it I get a large amount of anxiety that comes along with the conversation. I remember the next morning getting on my knees and asking for help to be able to focus and for things to work out in time so that I can dedicate myself. Fast forward 5 months and I am serving in tally. Missionaries always talk about where they are going to school and try to recruit other missionaries but Elder Musgrave, who I only served with for 2 weeks said I should apply to BYU and that time it stuck with me. Eventually I decided to take action but realized I didn't have a good enough ACT score to get in, so that was my first step. Once I took the ACT I received my score back which was the EXACT SAME score as last time. So a little frustrated and upset and with some counsel from my good ole ma I still followed what I felt and still applied to BYU. This past weekend I get an email back from BYU saying that I hadn't been accepted to attend school there. I hope everyone can visualize my faith being crushed with each one of these blows. I was frustrated not only that I didn't get in but that I felt like I had wasted so much time. Why did I feel like I needed to do all of that stuff? Since I knew that BYU wasn't an option anymore I went back and emailed my counselor from SUU to start getting the ball rolling on things I need to do. Then I got the answer of why all of this even needed to happen in the first place. I get an email back from him saying that he was excited about my decision and due to me retaking my ACT my scholarship had been reconsidered and it now didn't cover half of my tuition but now covered quite a bit more. Nothing is a coincidence, all of those steps were necessary. The blessing that I was given here was great but I just love looking at God being so aware. The Lesson learned like I said at the beginning meant so much more than the experience itself. Love and miss yall. All is well! 

 Elder Welch