Hello people of the Elder Coxson newsletter. What a week it has been! I warned you guys last week that there would be smoke as A and I tear this area up, and it's coming up.
Let's first address the elephant in the room, the huge life-changing event that has changed the world. Yes, I'm sad. No, I'm not going home for it. Yes, I have mega fomo. No, you may not send me spoilers or you will be blocked faster than president will send me home for kissing a sister missionary. What I'm referring to, of course, is the new Zelda game that came out on Friday.
Don't even worry, it'll still be there when I get home and the work that I'm doing out here is way more important than playing what is probably the best video game ever. On a serious note, do they have Nintendo's in the Celestial kingdom? Time to whip out the good ole James 1:5.
So on Friday we were trying to find this one inactive member. We get to a big town home complex, but can't find any numbers on the houses. We knock this one door, and a cat runs out as the owner answers the door. The owner has no idea where the house we want is, and shuts the door. So we're left with this cat, and so we start walking.
As we walk, this cat is following us. We walk around and look at different 'you are here' maps trying to find this house, and then the cat just starts walking. It would turn around every once in a while to make sure we were following, but it was definitely leading us somewhere. We follow it to a doorstep, and my comp and I were like "God has sent this cat to guide us!" We knock the door, and they're like heck no, I'm afraid of Mormons. So the cat failed us, and we lose our trust in the cat. We start walking, and the cat starts leading us again.
As we walk away from the cat, the AirTag on its collar starts to make noises. I took it as a sign from God that the cat wasn't done yet, so we follow it deep into the jungle of town homes. We walk around a corner, and the cat darts into the corner under some bushes. Gosh darn it, the cat led us here just to run under some bushes! But as we try and find the cat, a man walks down the stairs. Turns out that he's super impressed with us church members, so we were able to have an awesome discussion about the Church. So I guess the cat led us to this man?
After that discussion and the man walks away, the cat darts out of the bushes again. We tell the cat to lead us to the next soul that needs the gospel, but it just sits down. We assume that the cat has finished its role as God's servant, so we continue walking. We're still trying to find this one home of the inactive member. As we walk away, the cat has a sad look on its face, sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk. (Don't worry, the man told us that he's seen that cat around the neighborhood a lot, it's not lost)
We walk around for like 30 minutes trying to find this darn house, but with no luck. We eventually found a map that told us how to get there, so we head over. We somehow walked in a circle, because 30 minutes later we end up right where the cat plopped down. As we walk up, the cat has the 'I told you so' look, sitting right in front of the door that we've been looking for the entire time. After we talked to the member, the cat guided us back to our car and ran back to his house.
We trusted this cat with our time, and it led us to interactions that we did not previously plan on. It's the same with God. Sometimes he leads us to places that we do not want to go or places we did not expect. Are we supposed to just brush away the air and say 'stupid cat I know where to go'? God's commandments may seem out of touch, or the things he asks us to do are maybe a bit crazy. But having a complete trust in Christ will lead us right to where He wants us to be.
One thing that I've been studying this week during study time is miracles. When you think of miracles, maybe you think of Jesus calming the water or the seagulls that monched up all the crickets. Regardless, miracles have been a part of the Church, both anciently and today.
My companion took all the mission statistics and our personal statistics and basically came up with that we have a 0.1% chance of finding somebody that is ready to receive the gospel during the transfer. Now those are some pretty bad odds (and definitely not statistically significant). Yet somehow missionaries are able to beat those odds and find the people that are searching for truth and purpose to their lives. How in the world does that happen?
I don't have the answers, but what I do know is that God's hand is most definitely in every single soul. And that comes through the form of miracles. They either happen or nothing gets done in this work, and it's pretty obvious the prior happens. So if these miracles are so great, how do we get them? Everyone pull out your quad's and flip to page 732 in the Bible. You'll see the dictionary definition of miracle, and near the end it basically lays out the 3 steps of receiving said miracle.
1: Pray for a miracle. 2: Have a need you feel needs a miracle. 3: Have faith that God can and will perform said request. Wrap that bad boi up in a JSON and send it to the API endpoint. If you need some proof that it works, call up literally any human being. If you are looking for them, they're there. God is waiting, just pray. Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened to you.
On Sunday we found some colored paper, and chopped them into slices. We then put on our least menacing smiles and set off for La Jolla Cove. If I ever come back to San Diego after the mission, this place is on the list of must-sees. We were walking around with a stapler and these slips of paper, and begged people to write what they are thankful for. We then staple it into a ring around the last ring to make a chain, which we then wore around our necks.
The best part about this is that it's easier to trick people into writing what they're grateful for than to talk about their eternal exaltation, so they'll take the clipboard and sharpie and be writing. That's how we trap them, because once they start writing we can hit them with our pitch and a testimony. It's not like they can just abort with the good ole 'not interested' because they are holding our clipboard and sharpie. Mwa ha ha, who's uncomfortable now? How the turntables.
Mothers day was pretty neat, gotta chat with my mother. Us new missionaries are weak, we get to talk to our family every week. At this rate, my kids are gonna be like coming home over the weekends or something. My mom is the best though, I'll never miss a chance to see her. It's not a coincidence that the second principle missionaries teach is that the gospel blesses individuals and families (right after God loves you), and I have a testimony of the learning of principles in the home. My parents taught the gospel pretty darn well.
Sorry for the stupid long email (I even cut out the parts I thought weren't as important), I'll be more thoughtful of y'all's time next week. If you skimmed to the end, I'm only a little hurt. You missed the cat story. Have an amazing week! Pray for miracles! Get lost, devil!
Things to do when I get home v1 (in order of importance):
-- Elder Coxson
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