Week 46: "All Four of these Girls Are Converts" and Into the Water Lilies
Dear Loved Ones,
Saydi got confirmed on Sunday! I love this little girl so much. We didn't bring any adults to church this week, so my new companion, Sister Nackos, and I sat in on Saydi's Sunday School class before following her and her little friends to primary. As we moved down the hallway to primary in a single file line, me at the back and Sister Nackos in front of me, I realized that the two girls walking with Saydi had all been baptized in the past year.
Me: All three of these girls are converts.
Her: All four of these girls are converts.
Sister Nackos was raised Baptist. That's FANTASTIC because we're teaching a couple Baptists right now! As we left an appointment with our little Baptist family, the Cobbins, she said, "I think these are the people I was sent to this area for." I LOVE HER.
In other news, the new mission handbook dropped this week. I'm so thrilled to see that it's making strides to correct the long-festering problems in mission cultures. Here's a little excerpt from it:
God loves you. Choose to keep the commandments because you love God. Do not try to make deals with the Lord and expect specific blessings by adjusting what is required of you...For example, don’t try to bargain with the Lord by getting up earlier, going without food or drink (beyond the monthly fast), or skipping a preparation day.
AKA, don't be a Pharisee with an obedience fetish in the name of mission-centricness. When your teaching pool is small and nothing you do to build it up seems to work, everyone's knee jerk reaction is to blame their obedience. Some people get down on themselves for tiny liberties and some people become obedience Nazis.
I had a conversation with another sister recently about car washes. The church resells all its mission cars after three years, so they want to keep them in nice condition, but I'm the daughter of a car dealer and even I think washing a car every week is excessive. Especially since the money comes from our personal funds. She told me, "I think I know why (two recent converts) got baptized."
Me: "Why?"
Her: "Because I washed the car!"
Me: (laughs uncontrollably)
She said she didn't used to go to the car wash every week, and she didn't see a lot of success baptism-wise for a while. So clearly correlation equals causation.
Dear sirs and madams, you flatter yourself too much if you think your strict compliance to mission policies is what motivates others to make life changes.
Another key element of our mission culture is aggressiveness. Missionaries roll down windows at stoplights to distribute pass-along cards, throw their cars into park and run into the next lane to talk to drivers, knock on car windows in parking lots, and pull over to talk to pedestrians and dog walkers. All this, supposedly to leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the ever-allusive baptismal quota, but also to make themselves pumped up and full of purpose.
I prayed that the new handbook would change our culture but wasn't holding my breath. My mission president made us violate the old handbook and the Safety Zone videos, so what use is a new law nobody would follow? But I think our culture's actually changing! For normal missionaries elsewhere, P-day ends at 6:00 p.m. We ended ours at five, and two weeks ago, they docked that back to 4:30. That was harsh because a lot of us live east of our families' time zones, so our younger siblings aren't out of school yet and we can't talk to them. But on Sunday, they bumped it up to 5:30! I know that's a boring, mundane detail for everyone else in the world, but for all of us who live under it, it's a tender mercy.
And all the credit goes to that new handbook! I heard once that minimum wage is your boss's way of saying he wishes he could pay you less, but it's against the law. Our pay grade must have gone up.
I'll close with a story and some pictures. Last week, for my birthday, Sister Moritz and I went to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, which is gorgeous and reminds me of museums I've seen in Europe. They had a Monet Water Lilies. I saw one of those at the Tate Gallery in London when my study abroad class went to see this moody collection called Red. Red was painted by Rothko, a snobby guy who only used red and black and then committed suicide. They set up all these red and black abstract pieces in their own little cell, surrounding you on three walls so you feel like you're getting bricked up. But if you turn around, you can see water lilies.
I tried to sit in that red cell and think dark and moody artistic thoughts for my essay on the exhibit, but I'd had enough of being dark and moody from the then-two years of being barred from serving. So I kept sneaking outside to look at the lilies. England was a time of happiness for me. I felt like I was finally out of the red into the water lilies.
I felt like that again when I got my mission call. And when the mission culture here made it less than everything I'd imagined in those long years of waiting, this new handbook feels like stepping into the water lilies all over again.
That's what gratitude is. Not being content in the red, but understanding when you're out of it and surrounded by lilies. I'm living a water lily life.
Even better, Madison from my YSA branch emailed me and seems to have cleared LDSFS! She could be on a mission soon! I'm so glad she's moving into the water lilies, too!
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Saydi got confirmed on Sunday! I love this little girl so much. We didn't bring any adults to church this week, so my new companion, Sister Nackos, and I sat in on Saydi's Sunday School class before following her and her little friends to primary. As we moved down the hallway to primary in a single file line, me at the back and Sister Nackos in front of me, I realized that the two girls walking with Saydi had all been baptized in the past year.
Me: All three of these girls are converts.
Her: All four of these girls are converts.
Sister Nackos was raised Baptist. That's FANTASTIC because we're teaching a couple Baptists right now! As we left an appointment with our little Baptist family, the Cobbins, she said, "I think these are the people I was sent to this area for." I LOVE HER.
In other news, the new mission handbook dropped this week. I'm so thrilled to see that it's making strides to correct the long-festering problems in mission cultures. Here's a little excerpt from it:
God loves you. Choose to keep the commandments because you love God. Do not try to make deals with the Lord and expect specific blessings by adjusting what is required of you...For example, don’t try to bargain with the Lord by getting up earlier, going without food or drink (beyond the monthly fast), or skipping a preparation day.
AKA, don't be a Pharisee with an obedience fetish in the name of mission-centricness. When your teaching pool is small and nothing you do to build it up seems to work, everyone's knee jerk reaction is to blame their obedience. Some people get down on themselves for tiny liberties and some people become obedience Nazis.
I had a conversation with another sister recently about car washes. The church resells all its mission cars after three years, so they want to keep them in nice condition, but I'm the daughter of a car dealer and even I think washing a car every week is excessive. Especially since the money comes from our personal funds. She told me, "I think I know why (two recent converts) got baptized."
Me: "Why?"
Her: "Because I washed the car!"
Me: (laughs uncontrollably)
She said she didn't used to go to the car wash every week, and she didn't see a lot of success baptism-wise for a while. So clearly correlation equals causation.
Dear sirs and madams, you flatter yourself too much if you think your strict compliance to mission policies is what motivates others to make life changes.
Another key element of our mission culture is aggressiveness. Missionaries roll down windows at stoplights to distribute pass-along cards, throw their cars into park and run into the next lane to talk to drivers, knock on car windows in parking lots, and pull over to talk to pedestrians and dog walkers. All this, supposedly to leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the ever-allusive baptismal quota, but also to make themselves pumped up and full of purpose.
I prayed that the new handbook would change our culture but wasn't holding my breath. My mission president made us violate the old handbook and the Safety Zone videos, so what use is a new law nobody would follow? But I think our culture's actually changing! For normal missionaries elsewhere, P-day ends at 6:00 p.m. We ended ours at five, and two weeks ago, they docked that back to 4:30. That was harsh because a lot of us live east of our families' time zones, so our younger siblings aren't out of school yet and we can't talk to them. But on Sunday, they bumped it up to 5:30! I know that's a boring, mundane detail for everyone else in the world, but for all of us who live under it, it's a tender mercy.
And all the credit goes to that new handbook! I heard once that minimum wage is your boss's way of saying he wishes he could pay you less, but it's against the law. Our pay grade must have gone up.
I'll close with a story and some pictures. Last week, for my birthday, Sister Moritz and I went to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, which is gorgeous and reminds me of museums I've seen in Europe. They had a Monet Water Lilies. I saw one of those at the Tate Gallery in London when my study abroad class went to see this moody collection called Red. Red was painted by Rothko, a snobby guy who only used red and black and then committed suicide. They set up all these red and black abstract pieces in their own little cell, surrounding you on three walls so you feel like you're getting bricked up. But if you turn around, you can see water lilies. I tried to sit in that red cell and think dark and moody artistic thoughts for my essay on the exhibit, but I'd had enough of being dark and moody from the then-two years of being barred from serving. So I kept sneaking outside to look at the lilies. England was a time of happiness for me. I felt like I was finally out of the red into the water lilies.
I felt like that again when I got my mission call. And when the mission culture here made it less than everything I'd imagined in those long years of waiting, this new handbook feels like stepping into the water lilies all over again.
That's what gratitude is. Not being content in the red, but understanding when you're out of it and surrounded by lilies. I'm living a water lily life.
Even better, Madison from my YSA branch emailed me and seems to have cleared LDSFS! She could be on a mission soon! I'm so glad she's moving into the water lilies, too!
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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