"Certainty of death...small chance of success...
...what are we waiting for?"
NOTE: This email contains many of my random thoughts over
the last week. Some are not so serious, others are, and I had a lot more that I
decided not to put in for the sake of your attention span. Still, I hope you'll
bear with me as I unload the rest -- considering, of course, that you actually
read the entirety of my fatty emails...
Well, it happened again.
We got a call from President Craven this last Saturday,
telling me that he had talked with the stake president and the bishop, and,
after those two conversations, the decision had been made that the Monroe elders were
going to be pulled out this transfer and be replaced with sister missionaries.
This is the fourth time in my mission that this has happened to me:
first Dobson, then Pineville, then Huntersville, now Monroe. Or, to put it
another way, 4 out of the 5 areas where I have served, I have been in the last elder companionship
in that area before it was given to the sisters.
This really was a good time for sister missionaries to come
into the area, since the lease on our apartment expired and our Ward Mission
Leader had found us a new one in the nearby town of Indian Trail, which is much
higher class and has not seen missionaries for years. The sisters will be able
to move into a new apartment in a area that is probably a lot safer for them
than the sometimes sketchy Monroe .
I know they will have lots of success here, and that makes me feel happy. I
feel bad in that, despite Elder Schauerhamer and I's best efforts
this entire transfer, we never got even a single investigator, so the sisters
will be coming in with no one to teach and will have to start from scratch.
Regardless, I am being transferred from Monroe . Where to, I do not know.
This development with transfers has only been one of the
many interesting events which have occurred this last week, not the least of
which being Elder Schauerhamer having to make an emergency trip up to
Charlotte for a doctor's appointment this morning, which is why this email got
off so late. It's been an interesting transfer, all things considered. I have
learned a lot and grown a lot more.
Random:
A) Those of you who look on my Facebook page will note I
liked all the Brethren. It's interesting to see how many likes each of them
got. The current leaders are:
1) President Monson: over 100,000
2) President Uchtdorf: over 60,000
3) President Eyring: over 40,000
4) Elder Holland :
around 36,000
5) Elder Bednar: around 32,000
All the other members of the Quorum of the Twelve are under
30,000. I think Elder Hales has the fewest, poor guy.
B) One of the CDs my trainer Elder Molina liked to
listen to was called "The Work," about missionaries. One of the songs
on there was actually called "Work," a real gung-ho song
about...working. One of the lines in this song mentions "rockin' on,
knockin' on a billion doors."
I got a little clicker thingy in February to keep track of
the number of houses I've visited blind on my mission. It occurred to me, after
I passed the 1,000 mark, that if I knocked a thousand doors a thousand more
times, I would only be a thousandth of my way to that billion-door mark. Crazy.
C) When I made my Mormon.org page, I looked at the profiles
on the side of the page and, lo and behold, there was my cousin-in-law (?)
April McMurray. That was a real day-brightener!
D) I returned back to Pineville on exchange with the Zone
Leaders this last week. That was definitely a lot of fun for me. The
apartment's a mess now that I've left it, though.
More serious...
Perhaps it was the fact that we haven't had anyone to teach
the last six weeks, but I have been thinking a lot about how to really measure
success on a mission. How to really be a good missionary, when you get right
down to it. Anyway, I think I found an answer when I read an email from Aaron
Machen, an El Paso friend currently serving his
mission in Mexico ,
and he repeated the same conclusion I came to:
We are good missionaries if we forget ourselves.
-- Forgetting yourself is only using 10 minutes of your
lunch hour so you can go out and work longer.
-- Forgetting yourself is working right until 9:00 PM even
when you run out of stuff to do at 8:25.
-- Forgetting yourself is wearing missionary clothes even
when you don't necessarily have to.
-- Forgetting yourself is not owning a large
stuffed Spiderman ball or a Marvel notebook or a Lord of the Rings calendar or
other childish things, even though those aren't specifically mentioned in the
Missionary Handbook.
-- Forgetting yourself is listening to spiritual music all the
time, even though none of your missionary leaders would have a problem with
hearing something a bit heavier.
-- Forgetting yourself is talking about the Gospel when it's
just you and your companion and you have nothing to prove by doing so.
-- Forgetting yourself is working out of a desire to serve
the Lord -- not to get numbers.
It occurred to me that all the missionaries I admire most
did all of these things above. Therefore, I have tried to do those
things. Still, despite all this, there is so much more work to be done on
forgetting myself and becoming like Christ.
For example, I never knew what sort of person I really was
at heart until the time Elder Schauerhamer asked me if I could please
sleep without my fan from now on, since it was keeping him awake at night. At
that moment I learned very quickly who the realElder Fisher was.
It's ironic: when we were born into this world, we forgot
who we were before: the Person of Christ who knew exactly what was right and
wrong. The whole point of this earth life is that we will forget our natural
selves -- who we are familiar with -- and remember the Person of Christ that is
deep inside all of us. The Atonement is the power that allows this process to
happen.
There is so much more I want to say, and I have no more time
to write. I guess I'll have to write more next week in my new area, with my new
companion. I love you all, and I love my mission. Hurrah for Israel !
Elder Fisher
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