First, let me tell all of you that this church is indeed Christ's church here on the earth, and that it is guided on every level by him.
I needed this transfer a lot. Don't get me wrong, I love Bentonville and I miss it a lot, but I was in a rut. I started to realize it and started to pray and pray for help to get me out, but I just couldn't seem to motivate myself and pull out. Transfer calls came, I wasn't nervous at all, and I kept telling people, "I'm sad to leave Bentonville, but I'm not worried. I've had tough companions, I've served in rural areas, and I think I've got a hang on this while missionary thing."
Boy. That didn't last long.
There's a place outside of town called "The Ranch." The Ranch is where a group of FLDS people live. For those of you who don't know who the FLDS are, they share some roots with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in fact, that F stands for Fundamentalists. They broke off from the church around 1890 when President Wilford Woodruff officially ended the practice of plural marriage within the Church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued, and continues to roll forward as God's purposes always do. The FLDS church exists in a multitude of various sects living in small communities, and generally they have little or no structure to their religious organization. The Church considers them to be apostate groups, and they are in no way affiliated with the Church that most people think of when they hear the word "Mormon".
Phew.
So Saturday we spent most of the day out on The Ranch. I met some awesome families who have left the FLDS church, and joined up with ours. They're awesome people. I love 'em. Our Ward Mission Leader used to be one of them. I talked with a young family all about how they joined the church. We're teaching at least two families who come from a "fundie" background. As I drove around, and listened and tried to teach, I was overwhelmed with this sense of inadequacy. I have no idea how to teach these people. It was honestly like starting my mission over again. I went into a little inside panic mode. I prayed. And prayed. It felt like I was praying all day. Slowly that feeling of panic and fear was replaced by peace and calm. I remembered that I don't need to know everything. I don't even need to know anything, really. All that I need to do is try my best, do what I'm supposed to, and the Lord will make up for the rest.
Elder Sandoval is another story. I can't recall if I told all you guys or not, but a while ago when Elder Reese left, I saw a brand new missionary at transfer point. He was by himself, not talking to anyone and he seemed pretty overwhelmed. There was a little spot of blood on his collar and the whole nine yards. I felt bad for him, because I remember when transfer points used to suck, so I made an effort to say hello and hopefully make him feel more comfortable. Well that's elder Sandoval, my new companion. He's Navajo. He's young. He doesn't like to talk. Well, he talks in lessons, and does a good job, but besides that not much talking.
Oh, side note, so we live in a trailer on a member's property. Sweetest digs I've had my entire mission. It's like having a house. 3 bed 2 bath Luxurious Mission Mansion, basically. Granted, we have to sleep in the same room, so the extras rooms are storage and our office, but we even have a treadmill in our living room. Living la vida lux.
Anyway. Back to Elder Sandoval. So not much talking, which is totally fine and okay. Not all of us are talkers, especially when it's with someone you've known for four days. However, I'm getting the feeling that he does not like me much at all. Which is hard. I get the sense he is struggling a lot with other things, maybe homesickness or something, but none of that is expressed to me. He gets up around half an hour early, and by the time I'm up he's in his bathroom with the door closed studying. I prefer a desk, but I suppose a toilet works too. So that goes on until about 9 o'clock. Then we have companionship study and go about our day.
I remember being a new missionary, (Elder Sandoval's only been out 3 months), and it's not exactly the most fun thing in the world, so I have been trying my absolute best to serve him and to make him feel comfortable. Let me tell you how that's going.
Saturday night around 730, Elder Sandoval says, "Let's go to Mike Pohlsander's. I want to see him and share a message with him before he leaves for his mission." So we get there, and the family comes out and visits for a bit. They're super nice and we talked about how Br. Pohlsander's dad is in the Harrison ward, so we talked about him, talked about guns because Br. Pohlsander is designing this cool stock for a .22. Awesome family, super friendly, and things are swell. Occasionally things shift over to gospel topics and back and forth. They ask us a few missionary questions; "Does he have to wear a suit to the airport? Where did you get those shoes?" and so on. I don't remember exactly how it all went down, but at one point one of the daughters asked Elder Sandoval to share his scripture. His response was, "What? I didn't have a scripture." So they're going back and forth and it's friendly and fun. He ends up sharing a message, I pique in, he finishes up, we say a prayer and leave. Cool beans right?
Well, we get into the car, and he says, "I really wanted to share a special message with Mike. I had been planning on sharing it since last week when he gave his farewell talk. It was special to me." Confused, I responed,
"Oh, I'm really sorry Elder, why didn't you tell me beforehand?"
"Well, like I said before, I don't really talk about myself and that was personal. I felt like things really just got off topic and I didn't get to share my message."
"Okay, I'm sorry, I'll work on being more on topic, but why didn't you share your message when they asked you to?"
"Well, I felt like the spirit wasn't really right anymore because we had gotten off topic..."
We continued to talk about it until he shut down the conversation after I kept apologizing and telling him that communication is key and if he had told me before we went in I would have yielded all the time to him.
Enter this morning. Same usual routine, except it's P-day. I spent a long time on my knees the previous night praying for help, and expressing that if I could have one desire this transfer, it would be to become best friends with Elder Sandoval, and to help him feel more comfortable and adjust to being around missionaries for two years. After all, I imagine it's quite the culture shock to live on a secluded reservation and then thrown into a pool of white missionaries in a very white part of the country. I was determined to serve him. I figured the best way to do that would be to clean up the house. It wasn't dirty, but I mopped, cleaned the sink, dishes, the works. I needed to get some laundry in too, but Elder Sandoval had a load in. When it was done, I waited a while, kept cleaning, and then figured he was just being a forgetful young adult male, and so I grabbed my bad and went to the laundry room. I took his clothes out, folded them, and placed them on his bed. I didn't want to disturb him, so just did this all without asking. I moved his clothes from the washer to the drier and put mine in. A little bit later, when he emerged from his study, he came out and said, "Hey Elder, thanks for folding my clothes and all, but in my culture it's really disrespectful to touch other people's things." Admittedly, I was very irritated. I tried to express calmly that I was just being polite, and if he didn't want me to touch them, he should have been keeping track of the time. Unfortunately, I probably came off very frustrated. I tried to stay calm, didn't react, then went off to pray for help. I resolved to engage in a conversation about culture differences. Figured he'd like to get some feelings out, maybe express some things that bother him, or whatever. He won't stop talking about his culture to everybody, so at the very least I figured he would like to talk about that.
We got in the car to head off to e-mailing and I began the conversation. I explained that in my culture, (Now don't take this the wrong way peeps, I don't believe this, but admittedly it is an aspect of our culture. Not saying I agree with it though) household chores are considered menial tasks, and typically labeled as "women's work" (again, calm down ladies, I don't actually believe that, okay?) I explained that in my mind, to do something like that for him, in my culture, was a great expression of love and service, especially coming from one man to another man. So I explained that I wanted to talk about some cultural differences we might have, and what we could do to bridge that gap. His response: "I feel overwhelmed right now, and I need some time to think about that. But I do want to say, that I don't think white people really have a culture, they just dominate everybody else's. You're going from one topic and branching off and I don't really want to respond right now."
Pray for me peeps. Pray for Elder Sandoval. Any advice on dealing with introverted Navajos would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to be this guy's favorite companion, and I need all the help I can get.
For you worriers out there: I'm very happy haha. I'm looking forward to the challenge and I'm extremely grateful that the Lord answered my prayers. Granted, they're never in the way that I would like them to be, but nevertheless they are answered. I've begun enlisting the help of everybody I can and that includes you!
Love you all, hope you're doing awesome. Keep on keepin on and all that jazz.
Love,
Elder Christopher Drake
