Yesterday marked The Tenth Day of the Tenth Month of the Tenth Year of the Tenth Century (ok, maybe not, but whatever). I hope you celebrated just as much as I didn't. Oh, and Happy Columbus Day! I think? I don't know, people don't celebrate him like they used to. They would if they had the Book of Mormon. I'll work on that.
This week was one of those rollercoasters you read about. Where do you read about such rollercoasters? My emails. If you notice something about rollercoasters, they neither really go up or down if looked at over the long scheme of things. Over time, the rollercoaster will not have continued its upward movement anymore than its downward movement. Now, life is not, entirely, that way. But, I believe, it is against some eternal law for us to take some rocketship straight upwards, continuing forever, nor an eternal fall into some dark abyss. We are ment to continually go up or down; but for us, the general trend of whether it will, in the grand scheme of things, go farther upwards or downwards, is up to us. Not to mention that, over time, the rollercoaster of our lives changes, so that the scenery and style of the rollercoaster is not constantly the same. And so, I like to think that, inch by inch, my life's rollercoaster is being jacked up so that, over time, I will continually get higher and higher, spiritually, emotionally, and personally speaking. However, the rollercoaster does not, necessarily, completely change each circuit around.
Now, if the circuit of a roller coaster is, say, a week, there is not too much of a major difference between this circuit and the last few. Some of my downs this week are similar to my downs of last week; namely Cabin Fever.
More time was spent this week indoors. The hospital has still not contacted Elder Bischoff pertaining to his possibly deadly illness, leaving us uncertain as to whether he will be good to go from one day to the next. And, as I believe I've mentioned before, if you ever want to depress a missionary who actually wants to be out here doing the work, you just have to keep them inside. And one common sign of depressive feelings is apathy (which, hilariously enough, has an adjective brother named apathetic. Pathetic is right). Apathy set in pretty good this week, so that even in little spouts mid-week when Elder Bischoff could work, I just didn't care. That changed, however, on Thursday, when we went to a lesson with a part member family on track for being a full-member family and their friend. Their friend started asking questions into much deeper doctrine than somebody who is unsure of the validity of the first vision needs to delve into. It didn't help, either, that he was being goaded on by his member friend. I finally had to call it all to a halt when an argument started to break out between the member and the friend over the nature of the Godhead. I told him the only way he could know of anything was if he knew the first vision was true, recited it to him, bore testimony not only of that, but of the nature of God and Christ and my sacred calling to be His representative and told him to read from the Book of Mormon and pray about it. I said I said it, but that's wrong. I love how the Holy Ghost speaks through me the most when I get frustrated with someone. He takes control and says what God would have them hear. Someone might say that it's just adrenaline or something I feel, but I know it's not. If it was me defending those points, I would be much more worked up, I wouldn't feel a tenth as good, and I would be using many more unkind adjectives with people. Hearing words coming from my mouth testifying of my sacred calling as one of Christ's representatives effectively dispelled all depressive feelings and its subsequent apathetic tendencies. Which was good, because the next day I never left the apartment.
We found a new person to teach this week, but I'm still uncertain of her devoutness to learning. She's looking for a church for her daughter to go to. We street contacted her while tracting her street and she invited us back. We taught her on the doorstep as her hamsterdog ran around the yard chewing thorn-covered plant stems. We found a lot of people in that area who invited us back. I'm pretty sure it's because it's a low-income area. You have to hand it to Alma, he was right in turning to the humble people. They listen...mostly.
We went to a funeral this week for a member I never met. I realized while I was there that faithful Latter-Day Saints don't die, they just get transferred.
Oh, I almost forgot. This week would have had far more ups than downs if I had. Friday I got a call from our mission vehicle coordinator informing me that he had gotten a letter from Salt Lake informing him that I needed to have my driving privileges revoked due to me being in a "serious" preventable accident. The mission vehicle coordinator was surprised, and really apologetic, about revoking my driving privileges, as I had, up to that point, no marks on my record and it wasn't, in neither his mind nor mine, a serious accident. But the people a thousand miles away and unconnected to the situation do. But I can be justifiably bitter that I, a granny driver most of the time with these blessings of vehicles, can lose my driving privileges when others who intentionally drift around every corner and do crazy stuff in the mission vehicles do not; or I can let it go and be happy. Back to that whole "we choose the eternal path of our roller coaster" analogy.
I think that's about it. It was a good week. I consider my rollercoaster higher than the week before.
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"But nevertheless, deep water is what I am wont to swim in." D&C 127:2
Elder Charlie Gates
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