Wow, what a week. I can't wait to tell you all about it.
This past week, we really felt like we needed to set our teaching goal to 4. As we prayed last week, we felt that the Lord had prepared 4 people who were ready to receive the Gospel. We looked over our contacts of people who had already expressed interest, and felt justified in our goal. As we ended our planning session with a prayer, we felt the Lord's presence and moved forward with faith.
This week, I studied Alma chapters 17-22. This covers the missionary adventures of Mosiah's sons, namely Ammon and Aaron. Their adventure starts in the wilderness at the borders of the land of Nephi, and they go through a goal setting process. They pray, they fast, and they ask the Lord for help on their missions to the Lamanites. They pray for a portion of God's spirit to be with them (Alma 17:9, see 18:35 for cool connection), hug one last time, and split up.
At first, we read about the story of Ammon. He finds success preaching to the Lamanite king by showing the pure love of Christ. On Tuesday, I went on an exchange with an Elder. We met a nice lady who needed help sweeping her porch. She started out the conversation with a declaration that she had absolutely no interest in converting to Christianity, but needed help. Elder P and I jumped at the opportunity to serve just as Christ would do. She thanked us immensely for doing a chore she physically couldn't anymore, and we went on our way.
The next day was our zone conference. One more down, four more to go. One of the impressions that I got during that zone conference was to start listening to the Saints books again. I started listening to them while working on Texas Roadhouse, and was a huge starting point for the building up of my testimony. So that day, we came home and I listened to the experiences of Joseph Smith seeing God the father and Jesus Christ. As I listened, I knew it to be true and couldn't wait to go share it with La Mesa.
Unfortunately, La Mesa had other plans. That day, we talked with with everyone we could see. Unfortunately, none of these people were very interested in hearing restored truths, so we ended the day doing some contacting on social media and ate a hearty dinner of rice and beans. Of course. The next day during my studies, I read chapter 20 from Ammon's story. It's about Ammon saving Aaron from prison and ends with the statement that Aaron just happened to stumble upon a more hardened people. At that moment, I felt the spirit connect my experiences from the day before to Aaron's experiences.
Alma doesn't say that Aaron was a bad missionary, or that he had no faith, or that he was lazy. It says that the people Aaron was assigned to preach to were not prepared to receive Jesus Christ, and that's okay. I realized that during my mission, there have been Ammon days where I taught people eternal truths, and some days were Aaron days where the people had no interest. Both men had faith and were diligent in their labors, but only Ammon happened to stumble upon the people who were ready.
The next day, I got to exchange with Elder W. What a great guy, I miss being companions with him. Our plan was to do some work in his area and to go to the ASL podcast later that night, and our companions could continue working through those critical hours. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. We got through about an hour of work as exchanged companions, and then we ran over a nail. For those of you keeping count, this is flat 3 or 4 of the mission. But wait, there's more! My companion sent a voice message as we were swapping out the tire that our car back in La Mesa got a notification that said 'Engine Malfuction - Reduced Power - Service Now.' Very smh. Due to car failures and Facebook streaming, we had another Aaron day.
Friday was all too similar. The mission office was out of cars and didn't have time to get us bikes, so we were stuck with our good ole Nissan Rogue (10/10 mid car, I'm not buying one). Elder P assured us that it was still okay to drive it around, even though it revved up to 4k RPM going 35. Friday was another Aaron day as we ran around to lessons that fell through, and doors that didn't answer. We did help out with a service up on Mount Helix, though.
At this point, I've been listening through the Saints book all the way to where Martin Harris begs Joe Smith to take the 116 pages home. God says no, Martin Harris says pls, God says no, Martin Harris says but pretty pls, God says fine idc. Surprise, tragedy struck and they lost the first part of the Book of Mormon. I listened to this story during lunch on Saturday, and started to wonder if there was anything that we had in our daily schedule that were against God's will, so I asked him. And I got an answer...
That day, there was a deaf expo. The ASL missionaries have been going to these since time began, but the ASL missionaries were up in Riverside last weekend. That left it up to Elder W and I to make sure all the deaf children of God were contacted. That day and I listened to the story of Martin Harris and asked God if we needed to change our plans, I felt the impression that we shouldn't go to the deaf expo. My brain started to immediately justify reasons why I should go: I was the only ASL missionary in town, opportunities to meet deaf people were slim, Elder W was already planning on being there with me, so on. I asked God why I shouldn't go, and he put it in one of the clearest answers I've ever gotten from the spirit: it's a waste of time and we wouldn't get the contact info for a single person.
Apparently, I didn't learn my lesson from Martin Harris and went anyway. Go ahead, write your chastising responses. Sure enough, Elder W talked to just about everyone we could, and they were either very not interested or from farther north and also not interested. As we drove away, I remembered the revelation from God, through Joseph Smith, to Martin Harris. I knew I had to change something in my missionary work, so I committed at that moment to rely on God more when planning my day, not fearing the judgement of man or putting my own wisdom above God's. Another Aaron day down.
As my companion and I woke up the next Sunday morning, the last day of the work week, we reflected on our goals. We had found zero out of four people we had planned to start teaching. Now this is the point in all the movies where everything looks hopeless. Teaching four new people in one day is almost unheard of in English areas of San Diego. We knew we had set this goal with the Lord, but were unsure if we had forfeited this goal from our lack of diligence and trust during the past few days. Regardless, I took my burdens and resolutions to church as we partook of the sacrament. I had my journal out as the bread and water was being passed around and wrote the thoughts that came from the spirit. It's basically like writing D&C for myself, very recommended.
During this revelatory sacrament meeting, I knew what I had to do. I took my thoughts home, listened to the Saints book during lunch and then started my personal study. Specifically, I read through Alma 22, which describes Aaron's discussion with the king of the Lamanites. At this point, I had grown a liking of Aaron as I drew parallels from his labors to mine the last few days. As I read how he taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to the king, the thought came to me that if I start teaching somebody who doesn't have a background in Christianity, I ought to start with the Plan of Salvation instead of going with the procedural first discussion.
At that moment, my phone rang. A man had pulled up to the church seeking answers to his questions, but nobody was inside. We told him we'd love to help him answer his questions and that we'd be there in ten minutes. We raced across town in our maimed 2023 Nissan Rogue, and learned that he had a background in Eastern religion. Thinking back to my study and that thought to start with the Plan of Salvation, my companion and I answered some of his questions with truths from the God's plan. It was exactly what he needed, and we set up another appointment to meet again. That's 1/4.
We gave one of our friends a call asking if he wanted to start learning from the missionaries again. He told us he was free in about an hour, and he had a friend that wanted to join in the discussions. We had a very spirit-filled discussion revolving around our Savior and prayer. 3/4.
At this moment, I should have seen the writing in the sky. God wasn't gonna let this area stay at 3/4 potential. We got yet another phone call out of the blue, this time from a woman named Anita who wanted to learn more about our church and was on her way there. We limped our way back over to the church to meet her, give her a church tour and tell her all about the Savior and his restored truths. What an amazing experience, she's so excited to learn more.
4/4.
Brethren and Sisteren, I have a testimony of personal revelation and repentance. My companion and I did not expect nor deserve the miracles we've seen this week. These experiences are the fruit of the faith described in Alma 32. I hope that this narrative makes as much sense on paper as it does in my head, but seeing the truths from Alma 17-22, Saints and my personal experiences weaved together like this has been so powerful. This email has gone on long enough, so I'll end with my testimony.
Jesus Christ speaks to his children today. God is at the head of this work. The sacrament can be a meaningful and revelatory experience when prepared for. God loves his children too much to let them suffer in darkness. He loves you, he loves me, and he wants us all back home.
On to eternal perfection
-- Elder Coxson
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