“These Elders are going to be in a threesome for the next transfer cycle. We are going to be bringing Elder Holland out... he will be their companion.”

Quote of the week explanation

We had an amazingly revelatory experience this last Saturday. Elder Gary E. Stevenson came to Oakland, and one of the things that he did was provide a training for all of the missionaries in our mission. It was great. He, Elder Teixiera of the Presidency of the Seventy, Elder Pearson (the area president), and Elder Pimmentell (our area Seventy) all came (Elder Pearson is such a fiery man that if you're unrighteous or unrepentant and you shake his hand your hand will be burned). It was possibly the best meeting I have attended on my mission, and trying not to let the obnoxious "Righteous Ben" come out full force here suffice to say that we learned a lot about how to increase our effectiveness in the work. Towards the end of the meeting, Elder Stevenson got up to share some closing remarks. He had two of the Elders in the mission stand up and announced that they would be participating in a new pilot program for our mission. Building it up slowly, he told us all that they would be in a trio for the next transfer. He then spoke for a moment more on believable things, and then dropped the big boy. He announced, in front of every missionary in the entire mission, several general authorities, the mission president, the temple president and the visitors center president that these Elders would be companions with none other than Jeffery R. Holland for the next transfer. The entire chapel was dead silent. If you were listening hard enough I'm sure you could've heard a mote of dust float and land on the podium for how quiet it was. Elder Stevenson stood at the pulpit while these two Elders stood on, looks of mixed awe, elation and horror pasted to their faces. Elder Stevenson then said that he was only joking. I didn't think that an Apostle was capable of catalyzing such a massive disruption of reverence. The chapel exploded into a cacophony of missionaries expressing emotions spanning the entire spectrum, from relief to disappointment to laughter to groaning. It was pretty good. Elder Stevenson used that momentum to relate that even though we don't have Elder Holland with us all the time we have the Holy Ghost with us all the time so that should be just as good, but the few tension filled moments are never to be forgotten. We were talking afterwards with other missionaries and we agreed that being a companion with Elder Holland would be both the best and the most terrifying thing in the world.

Thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts...

How are you?

We've had a pretty smooth week ourselves.

We found a new person this week, and we've taught him a time or two. It's kind of an interesting story there; we tracted into him a while back and had never been able to meet with him. We finally were able to this week, and we taught him the Restoration. The whole lesson he was pretty quiet, and giving pretty short answers whenever we asked a question. That combined with the fact that the whole time he had a very skeptical/bored face were sending signals that made part of me think "Oh man, this guy's not interested at all." At the end of the lesson, I was almost surprised when he accepted our invitation to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. It was at that point, that he finally opened up to us. "Well" he said, "You do understand that I grew up as and am a Catholic." (And the classic line flashed through my mind "We so thoroughly shattered your testimony of your past beliefs that you're just saying that to justify it back to yourself"). He then told us that his faith, for him, had raised more questions than it answered; and, quote: "This might have the answers." (End quote). So that's a development. Even after that, because of other factors I still have questions of how solid he really is, but for now we've got something.

Before I came to this area one of the sisters who had been serving here told me that the members would probably give us a really hard time, but I have not found that to be the case. All the members seem to love us. We've had some great interactions with members recently. The area is starting to pick up. 

Anyway, I won't bore you with anything more. "Go back to your lives, citizens."

Bye,

-Ben

P.S. Did you know that Solomon had 700 wives? That was one thing that I discovered this week.

P.P.S. 猶太人

P.P.P.S. Quaquaversal