Wed, Sept 2, 2015
Oh hey
there,
I was able to
go on a companion exchange with the one, the only, Elder Pulu from Oakland.
"He's from Califooornia. He's a Californian"(Petey from Remember The
Titans) Elder Pulu is a missionary that has been out for just 4 months and he
is currently training a new missionary. It's been crazy to see how much he has
grown from when he first entered the zone as a brand new missionary and now
where he is training a new one. It was a refreshing split to be on because
sometimes I lose focus. I forget how much this whole mission thing is changing
me and I don't really see it until I take a step back and look at the ways it
is changing me for the better. My time with Elder Pulu was a good step back. To
see him so pumped about being a missionary gets me pumped up too.
Quick story of
something that went down on the split. We went back to their pad for lunch and
Elder Pulu who is Tongan and definitely eats like one said, "I'm going to
make you the Pulu Special." Not questioning as much as I should of what
exactly a "Pulu Special" was, I accepted it. He made me a hug plate
of rice, with macaroni and cheese on top, huge chunks of spam, and "bread
crumbs" on top. The bread crumbs were really just pieces of bread that he
had torn up and threw on top. He laid the plate delicately before my bulging
eyeballs as if it was a rose on a casket. "Eat up" he exclaimed. I
was skeptical at first because it seemed a lot less like authentic Tongan
cuisine and more of a meal he invented when he was at college, but I ate it
regardless. It put a dent in my stomach, however it was actually a lot tastier
than I thought it would be.
We went bottle
hunting again last P day. Got all muddy digging around there for antique
bottles and stuff.
 |
| Out there on our Bottle Hunting Hustle |
 |
| What is my companion doing??? #GotHim |
I was reading
a talk that I got months ago from a missionary friend. It's a BYU speech
actually. It's by Jeffrey R. Holland. It's titled, "The Bitter Cup and The
Bloody Baptism". It's sounds really Catholic and a little scary but it is
quite the opposite. The gist of the speech was that as members of the church
there are going to be times where the heat is turned up a notch and the faith
that we have built is going to be tested and tried.
My favorite
part was when Jeffrey R. Holland talked about the "13th apostle" C.S.
Lewis. C.S. Lewis was a popular Christian writer at the time his wife was
diagnosed and began to slowly die of cancer. His faith that he had all over all
these years was put to the test. C.S. Lewis penned:
“You
never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood
becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope
to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to [tie] a box. But
suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first
discover how much you really trusted it? . . . Only a real risk tests the
reality of a belief.
. . . Your
[view of] . . . eternal life. . . will not be [very] serious if nothing much
[is at] stake. . . . A man. . . has to be knocked silly before he comes to his
senses.
. . . I had
been warned—[indeed,] I had warned myself. . . . [I knew] we were. . . promised
sufferings. . . . [That was] part of the program. We were even told, “Blessed
are they that mourn,” and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t [agreed
to]. . . . [So] if my house. . . collapsed at one blow, that is because it was
a house of cards. The faith which “took these things into account” was not [an
adequate] faith. . . . If I had really cared, as I thought I did [care], about
the sorrows of [others in this] world, [then] I should not have been so
overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. . . . I thought I trusted the rope until
it mattered. . . . [And when it indeed mattered, I found that it wasn’t strong
enough.]
. . . You will
never discover how serious it [is] until the stakes are raised horribly high;
[and God has a way of raising the stakes] . . . [sometimes] only suffering
[can] do [that].
[So God is,
then, something like a divine physician.] A cruel man might be bribed—might
grow tired of his vile sport—might have a tempo- rary fit of mercy, as
alcoholics have [temporary] fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up
against is a [wonderfully skilled] surgeon
whose
intentions are [solely and absolutely] good. [Then], the kinder and more
conscientious he is, [the more he cares about you,] the more inexorably he will
go on cutting [in spite of the suffering it may cause. And] if he yielded to
your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain
up to that point would have been useless. . . .
[So I am, you
see, one] of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears
[yet] to be dried but stains [yet] to be scoured. [My] sword will be made even
brighter.
It's been a
little hard lately feeling like we put in a ton of hard work, effort all topped
with tender love and care, and it is rarely reciprocated. That passage helped
me out a ton this week as I was struggling a bit. Not that I didn't have a
testimony anymore or anything, but I've just needed a little more faith to know
that all that we work for is worth it. This work is most definitely worth it.
I'm glad I've had little reminders of how great this work is through friends
like Elder Pulu and C.S. Lewis.
K. Bye.
Elder Tyler J
Johanson
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