"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?" -- Dr. Seuss
There is no time like the present to prepare for the future. Like many religions, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints finds value in ancient scripture, but is equally, if not more so, purposefully future-oriented as we prepare for the Second Coming in some future day (See "The Return of the King"). That was the purpose of the many prophecies throughout scripture --- to warn us of and to prepare us for things to come and towards Jesus Christ. It is my conviction that Heavenly Father is much more interested in who we become than who we used to be. He is more interested in our future than our past. It is up to us to not live in the past but to learn from it and to forge a better tomorrow. Let's think ahead!
Click to Navigate (Table of Contents):
Work wasn’t much better with the other two Elders assigned to our District in Bagdad, directly west of us in Buena Vista (See "2nd Area: Buena Vista, Matamoros"). On the week of November 17, 2015, they'd reported a total of 7 lessons for the entire week, an average of one lesson per 10-hour workday; this was terrible considering in our MIssion, the average missionary companionship was averaging at least 3 to 4 lessons per day sometimes as high as around 10 lessons or more in a single day in some cases. We decided to go on intercambios with them, swap companions for the day, on Saturday, November 28, 2015, to see what we could do to help each other out. It was just a matter of whether I or, my companion, Elder Montán would go over there and which of the two of them would come over. We had the power of choice as their District leaders.
After some pondering and prayer, we decided that I would go to Bagdad for the day to work with Elder X. Initially, I was pretty excited to follow Elder X around his Area and just be his support. Just as important to helping the other missionary teach in intercambios was to listen and first see how they would normally handle things if you weren't around. Seeing where the room for improvement was was essential to providing the best help and advice. You don’t order a prescription without knowing the diagnosis.
It’s said that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. That's the mindset I had helping others. I felt it was more beneficial in the long run if the missionary took the initiative and the final say in his own Area. To try to let him figure things out, to take the initiative, before telling him what to do and change.
THE DAY
Elder X and his companion meet us at our house early in the morning before he and I walk back to Bagdad. It's cold at this time of year now as the gray sky lets down a light lingering mist of late November-almost December gulf water. It was such a 180 from that hot summer we had gotten through with the canícula. Of all days, we just had to have intercambios on the coldest day!
NOTE: Before I go any further, let me say that Elder X is an awesome guy and friend. Let this single occasion with him not reflect poorly on any other day of his life. We all have bad days. This was undoubtedly one of those. For all I know, he likely had some great days before and after his time with me. The purpose of this story is not to shame Elder X, but to glean some insight and advice for the rest of us to learn from and to consider what might have been done differently.
As I start working with this good Elder in his Area, we barely get down the street from where he lived and already he loses his way to our first appointment. I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know the Area being my first time there. It took time but we find this house and we go inside but we don’t teach them anything. Elder X was having stomach issues and immediately heads to the bathroom but judging by the light conversation I am having with this sweet family, it sounds like they're already members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He was in there for a disturbingly long time and the whole time, I'm just stuck alone on the couch in a house of strangers that aren't really interested in conversing with me. Elder X comes out but he doesn't sit down with us like I thought he would. Instead, he thanks the family and we leave! I’m confused at this point why we wasted so much time walking in circles just to pop in, use the bathroom, and walk out, especially if they were already Church members. I don’t remember his reasoning but it didn’t make sense to me. Did we leave the house just to spend the first hour of the day looking for someone else's restroom?! At the very least, even if they were already members of the Church, we could have shared a brief spiritual thought with them or prayed or something.
Missionaries don't only spend time with those learning about the Church; they strengthen members of the Church too, whether by word or service or otherwise. Missionaries should always strive to edify any and all they cross paths with. It can be a quick simple thing, but an effort nonetheless. We started off our day with a missed opportunity.
As we go about our day, we’re not teaching any lessons or talking to anybody in the streets. Almost all of the time is spent just traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood. I wonder where we’re going and what is going on in Elder X’s head. His planner is filled with names but they weren’t more than that. Most people don't know who the missionaries or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are which is why you should try to share something, even if it's briefly, when you meet people which you can do in 30 seconds (See "Hermanas de las Chamoyadas"). It's unlikely that anyone would invite two strangers back for a visit without knowing anything about them. But apparently, these two Elders only took down names and addresses and left. Some of these names weren't even scheduled for any specific time or day for a return visit! It was a crapshoot with the odds of anyone being home and then letting us in were extremely against our favor. It's understandable why these names were falling through. It was like the planner was just filled for the sake of looking full of ink, nothing concrete, nothing useful, a setup for guesswork and disappointment instead of predicting success for the course of the day.
We collectively spend about 40 to 50 pesos to grab a taxi to what appears to be the far side of town for an “appointment” in the planner. Now, I may be wrong because this was a long time ago, but I think it was the "Palmares de las Brisas" neighborhood or one nearby. The only thing is is that I'm not even sure if said neighborhood was within Bagdad's Ward boundaries. I'd heard rumors of "Las Brisas" that it was supposed to be this dangerous place to the West but I thought it had its own missionaries in some other Ward, but who knows? Now whether this was the actual neighborhood or not, wherever it was, we had to take a long way around a massive field that would have been too inconvenient to cross on foot which is why the ride probably felt longer than it was but just as pertinent to save us time.
As luck would have it, nobody opened up. Now, that's pretty normal but we didn't have a backup plan nearby. I wonder if that "appointment" wasn't actually interested, rather, they like most people were just being polite to get rid of us (See "Sí Dios Quiere"). Now we’re astonishingly far away and Elder X wants to go back to the other side of the Area, back where we just came from but doesn’t have any money left for another taxi back (you would have thought he would have brought enough money before we left the house if he knew we would need more than a one-way taxi ride). And I didn't want to sacrifice my savings on him just because he failed to think ahead. Our savings were scarce as they were. We couldn't afford to not think ahead. If we had just spent 50 pesos to get somewhere, I was going to get my money's worth before immediately doubling it, another 50 pesos --- 100 pesos total --- to undo that trip like it effectively never happened. I wasn't about to blow 75 pesos of my personal savings on transportation in a single day, let alone within the same hour just to go straight from point A to point B and back to point A with nothing to show for it. It didn't make sense to go back right away. So I persuade Elder X that we should keep working where we already are. After all, as I said before, it's best to leverage both hard work and smart work (See "Yard Work, Hard Work, Smart Work"). The best place to start is wherever you happen to be.
We’re walking down extremely long streets of a new neighborhood, meaning that it's relatively still under development and unpopulated. Nevertheless, Elder X isn’t knocking on any of the doors we're passing, so finally, I try my luck. Even though it wasn’t very successful, I was doing something which was better than doing nothing (See "Choices"). I was shooting my shot. Throwing as many darts on the dartboard hoping that one might stick. Successful smart missionaries should intuitively have a reason to talk to anyone and everyone, not look for excuses not to talk to them! If nobody is out and about, you have to go look for them by knocking on doors; that's common sense.
For some reason, of the two of us, Elder X has me be the navigator with the paper map. I legitimately don’t know where we are, and the paper maps only show so much, even less in new neighborhoods like where we were, so I stop the only guy in the middle of the road to ask for directions, “Excuse me. Do you know the fastest way to get back to Y street?” ‘No, I don’t know the street names very well.’ “Oh, neither do we. We’re not from here. We’re missionaries and we are sent to different places to share the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ” and so forth. My goal for the day was to try to set up return appointments for Elder X and his companion. If we weren't going to get to teach anything, at least I could try to fill his planner for another day of success with his companion. At least I might plant some seeds for them even if I got nothing out of it, as all good leaders should do.
We walked many miles that day snaking around almost every street in the Area like Pac-Man, running into dead ends and unnecessarily retracing our route every two seconds. We didn’t find people to teach and all our appointments fell through. The streets are quiet and barren beyond vacant houses and tall fields of rural overgrowth. It was bitterly cold and wet. The sky is colorless with sadness.
THE NIGHT
It goes on like this all day and then the pitch-black night falls upon us. I brainstorm possible backup plans since every appointment is falling through. We are stranded astronauts floating without a tether in the darkness of a surprisingly humid outer space. We're going in no specific direction and I'm incredibly disoriented and cold. I ask Elder X if there are any less active members of the Ward that we can visit or anybody that we could ask referrals from but that list is quickly exhausted because we can’t find their houses, both because we only have a paper map and also because we can barely see except under a few streetlights. It's dark now and we still have a few hours to kill before calling it a night. We spent those hours walking around with no success like mice in a maze with no exit.
I felt so bad for this Elder. He was a good guy but for one reason or another, he was unprepared. His planning wasn’t clear. It was watered-down quick planning. His planning didn’t include scheduled timing (as opposed to “let’s see if they’re home whenever we show up”), or backup plans, phone numbers, street addresses, or direction. I don't even remember if the things we planned to teach were any more specific than a scribbly "Lesson 1" or "Lesson 2". Proper missionary planning includes what parts of that lesson would be emphasized according to individual needs, and perhaps even what scriptures would be read or other details as to lesson structure.
It was scattered rather than setting up appointments that lived next to each other linearly and time effectively. Playing leapfrog is a waste of time. Zipping from one edge to the other and back is pointless when you could do all of one edge at a time, and then the next and so on. That’s why I've always seen it best to choose just one or two neighborhoods at a time and work there until work is done before glossing it over. Multitasking like that more often than not doesn't work. Just choose one thing and work on that. Don't try to take on the whole city at once. There are only two of you, break it down to be feasible. True, we seek the spirit to guide our path but neither is there shame in going from door to door. Sometimes, this is the best approach to give the most effort with the least amount of physical work.
Lastly, let me only point out a couple of things that could have been done better that day. What Elder X taught people felt very rehearsed like he was quoting the lesson book instead of making it feel natural like it was coming from him. It felt more like Alexa telling you about the Church rather than another human. Regardless of the impressions I was getting from the people by looking at them react, Elder X wouldn't deviate from his script. Like he wasn't getting the hints. You can tell when someone isn't listening to you, can't you? Well, talking more isn't going to make them listen more. But that's what it felt like he was doing. I could tell the people were getting bored and uninterested. When we'd invite them to act, they wouldn't accept the invitations, but Elder X would gift them a Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ anyway and invite them to be baptized! (See "Baptism by Immersion"). Now, we might applaud such enthusiasm, but even though we tried to invite everyone to be baptized, doing that when they are obviously uninterested in even seeing us ever again was a bit much. It's like someone telling you that they're afraid of heights and then immediately inviting them to go skydiving. It's the equivalent of feeling like they weren't listening to you when you told them you hate heights. A major emotional disconnect. Throwing that huge choice into the ramble isn't going to change their attitude if they're already counting down the minutes to go back in the house and shut the door. You have to read the room! Feel what they feel! Then make them feel what you feel. Missionary work is a podcast, not an audiobook. You're there for the people --- to help them come unto Christ --- not to recite a pamphlet. What a lot of people need sometimes is for missionaries to just put the pamphlet down for a minute and be there for the person, to listen more than they talk, and to humanize themselves more so it feels less like a student-teacher relationship and more like a friendly visit.
There was much that could have been improved! No wonder, the work wasn’t really going as well as it could have for these Elders! It was chaos!
BE ORGANIZED, BE PREPARED!
God is a God of order. We don't believe that the creation of all things was ex-nihilo, made from nothing (D&C 131:7-8). Just as the laws of physics assert, matter cannot be created or destroyed (See "What is Truth? Faith and Science"). Likewise, the spirit is eternal. We believe that God, working through His Son, Jesus Christ, organized existing matter to form the heavens and the earth (Abr. 4:1, 27). If you want a suggestion for studying the scriptures, try finding all the scriptures that have to do with the concept of "organizing" or "order", whether it be the creation, the family, the organization of the church, etc. God is organized and asks that we organize ourselves.
Thinking ahead is a life skill, not just a missionary skill. There can be danger in being too focused on what's behind us, or where we are, that we don't look to where we are going. It's like driving a car or riding a bike. If you only look at the ground right in front of you, you'll crash. You need to look wide and far in the direction you want to go. We can avoid many of the problems we create for ourselves if we look ahead more and think more carefully.
As we’re walking in the cold night, another scripture from the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ came to my mind. The prophet Alma is doing missionary work, teaching repentance to an unrighteous and stubborn people. After he finishes teaching, his companion Amulek stands up and begins to follow up on teaching repentance. Says he, in a symbolic way that they can understand him:
“For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors. And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.” (Alma 34:32-33)
Life is a day and the night of darkness is the end of mortality. We do not believe in deathbed repentance! Repentance is not something to be done only when it seems like the only option left. It is not the last resort. It's the first resort. Repentance is meant to happen while the sun still shines. For us that day, quite literally, our night of darkness came wherein there could be no labor performed. No matter our efforts after the fact to try to repair our troubled situation, our time to prepare had come and gone and we were not ready. We had no oil in our lamps that dark night. We were foolish and not wise servants that day. (D&C 58:26; Matt. 25:21; see also "Power Outage" and "Be Ready Always")
Like the scripture says, we are to repent while we can. If you are reading this, then you're in that category! Sometimes we procrastinate, I know I do, but I also know that the sooner we get things done, the sooner blessings come and we can be sure that our work will be done before the night comes. We don't know when the Second Coming will be, but what we can be sure of is that it's one day closer today than it was yesterday.
Comments