Elder Drake's Mission: April 2014

Monday, April 28, 2014

April 28th

I just got off the phone with Margaret, one of our investigators. She called to tell us how she had decided last night to read out of the Book of Mormon by the light of her phone. Her book fell open to 3 Nephi and she began to read about the Savior's ministry; especially his instructions on baptism.

Being able to see how the Lord blesses those who desire to follow Him is one of the coolest things about being a missionary.

This week has been up and down. We've been busy, but slow at the same time. One of those weird weeks where everything seems to indicate that you've been busy and productive but it feels like you've been sitting on your couch watching reruns of Law and Order:SVU eating Cheetos.

I do have a fun story though. The weather has been crummy. Warm but wet. We were out on the Ranch and had a spare hour with nothing to do and a truck so we went exploring. Then we got stuck in some mud. Luckily we were right by some dude's property and he pulled us out. But only after we spent about an hour trying to save our pride and get ourselves out. Lesson: Don't be prideful and pay attention to where you're driving because it might just be 8 inches of mud and passenger tires on a small truck just don't do.

How's everybody's dream chasing going? It's weird, because nobody's offered to buy me a race car yet, and it's really starting to irritate me. Progress is so slow! I spent some time thinking about how I wanted to proceed, or rather, how I should proceed. I started with making an effort to more closely follow the rules, then I took some time Sunday morning to pray and ask what I needed to do next.

No angels yet, but I felt slightly impressed to extend the arm of forgiveness towards a few people. Or at least start the process. Boy, that's hard to do sometimes. Especially since I think I'm always right.

I read some great talks this morning about forgiving others. There were a couple that I remembered, mostly because of the amazing stories of horrible things that happened to people who still managed to forgive those who had so injured them. Forgiveness is one of those things that I tend to think affects me more in the scope of small things. I've never had anybody do anything horrible or life shattering to me, but I think we've all had a bunch of little offenses thrown our way. Elder Holland said, "There are little clichés that we learn early in our lives. Most of them I hate; some of them I really hate. I think number one on my list is 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.' I hate that. I’ll take sticks and stones any day"

I've never been beaten with sticks or stones, so I can't really say for sure, but I've seen the damage done by a few words and I think I agree with Elder Holland.

To me, there's not much worse than knowing that somebody doesn't like you, especially if it's for something you know you've done wrong. And for some reason, the inverse is also true. There's not much worse than trying to forgive someone you don't like for something that they've done to you.

I find myself often saying things like "Oh, I love the guy, I think he's great, but..." Why the but? Stop talking about buts. Nobody likes a but. Let's drop the buts and start focusing on the good things.

Have a hard time with that? Me too. Especially with the gossiping part. I think girls and guys gossip differently, but we all do it and we should all stop. I think that's the first step for me, is to stop talking smack about people.

Quote time? Yeppers.

President Uchtdorf said,

"Forgiving ourselves and others is not easy. In fact, for most of us it requires a major change in our attitude and way of thinking—even a change of heart. But there is good news. This “mighty change” of heart is exactly what the gospel of Jesus Christ is designed to bring into our lives.

How is it done? Through the love of God.

When our hearts are filled with the love of God, something good and pure happens to us. We “keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.”

The more we allow the love of God to govern our minds and emotions—the more we allow our love for our Heavenly Father to swell within our hearts—the easier it is to love others with the pure love of Christ. As we open our hearts to the glowing dawn of the love of God, the darkness and cold of animosity and envy will eventually fade."

Can't argue with that.

The Addiction Recovery Program should be renamed. Well maybe not. Instead, I think we should overcome our pride and realize that we're all addicted in one way or another. It's all about overcoming the natural man and I love it. Step 8 is about seeking forgiveness.

There is nothing more gangrenous and corrosive than a festering grudge in hearts of men, and there is nothing more cleansing and uplifting than the spirit of forgiveness.

I love to be forgiven, don't you? I also love when people apologize to me and I have a chance to clean the slate officially. I think we've all offended somebody or been offended by somebody.

My first step to dream chasing is to let my poor little heart heal up and forgive people. Step 8 will be a big help, methinks.

President Eyring said,

"The pavilion that seems to be hiding you from God may be fear of man rather than this desire to serve others. The Savior’s only motivation was to help people. Many of you, as I have, have felt fear in approaching someone you have offended or who has hurt you. And yet I have seen the Lord melt hearts time after time, including my own. And so I challenge you to go for the Lord to someone, despite any fear you may have, to extend love and forgiveness. I promise you that as you do, you will feel the love of the Savior for that person and His love for you, and it will not seem to come from a great distance. For you, that challenge may be in a family, it may be in a community, or it may be across a nation.

"But if you go for the Lord to bless others, He will see and reward it. If you do this often enough and long enough, you will feel a change in your very nature through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Not only will you feel closer to Him, but you will also feel more and more that you are becoming like Him. Then, when you do see Him, as we all will, it will be for you as it was for Moroni when he said: “And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.”

Amen to that!

So that's my dream chasing update. Go chase 'em!

Love yous!

Elder Christopher Drake

PS Pictures.

This first one is my District. That's Elder VanHouten, me, Elder Sarceno, and Elder Allred. We went asplorin' last Monday. We did not get stuck.

Second one is Elder Allred and I. 'Nuf said.

Here's our lovely stuck truck. We got really dirty. Well I got really dirty. Elder Allred found some basketball shorts to protect his shirt, muck boots, and snow gloves. He got off okay.

Elder Christopher Drake

Monday, April 21, 2014

Soapbox Time?

Transfers: Elder Allred and I are staying in Stockton.

Week: Super good. We stayed busy and all that jazz. Went on exchanges twice this week, which was a lot of fun. I'm going to send you guys a song that Elder Sarceno from Bolivar performed for me at the end of our day. It's pretty beautiful.

We had a few less-actives and some investigators at church, which is always pretty sweet. Still waiting on the interviews for our Fundamentalist friends, keep your fingers crossed!

Everything below this paragraph is soapbox stuff that has little to do with my daily happening. It's like the Small Plates of Elder Drake or something. If you're not interested in all of the wonderful epiphanies I have, you can skip to the bottom and look at the funny picture or listen to Elder Sarceno or something.

I had a neat experience the other night. We were here at the church on the computers because Elder Allred needed to watch a thingy so he can get his tiwi card so he can drive. I was poking around mormon.org and watched Lindsay Sterling's "I'm a Mormon" video, and it inspired me. Cheesy? Maybe, but hear me out, okay?

I think every missionary goes through different stages of being a missionary. "Gung-ho Greenie," "Self-righteous Senior Companion," are a few that come to mind. However, I think every missionary gets to the point where they have to decide to either be mediocre for the rest of their mission or really give it all they've got and put it all on the table. I think people that aren't missionaries have to make this decision eventually too.

So back to Lindsay Sterling. Go watch that video. Here, I'll even give you a link to her video. She's this 20 something year old girl, who's been through crap like each of us have been, and now she's doing something that she loves and changing lives, I think that's cool. Really cool. Cool enough to talk about anyway. I even wrote it down last night. That's how cool I think it is.

God gives each of us gifts. Some of us he gives more, some of us he gives less, but each of us has at least one. That's a fact. Each of us is also given weaknesses. Some of us have more, some of us have less. Opposition in all things, right? Well along with all of that, I think we're all given dreams. Or desires if you want a less cheesy way of putting it. We each have righteous desires that just are, they're just there and they always have been.

When I was two or three, my parents had an old Toyota Corolla or something. I don't remember much about it, besides that it was red and that it was a stickshift. In fact, I'm not even sure it was red. What I do remember though, was that the coolest and most fun thing to do in the whole world was to sit in it and play with the gearshift. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably would have told you a mailman, a garbage man, a chauffeur, or something else that got to drive a big cool car around all day. That's how I wanted to spend my life. Driving a car. I was three! That was God-given and I think God wants me to use that.

Along with those righteous desires, comes those unrighteous desires. Opposition in all things again. Sometimes we get the two confused and that causes problems. I'll use me as another example.

My mom tells this story about me when I was around the same age, maybe a little older. We were at a movie rental store and I grabbed a video off the shelf and brought it to my mom telling her that was what I wanted to watch. On the cover were cars and half-naked women. I didn't know any better haha. I just knew I wanted to watch it! God gives us all weaknesses.

So like I said, the tricky part is to be able to tell the difference between those Righteous desires and the weaknesses. "Do I really want to get up early and exercise or do I want to sleep in?" Those righteous desires always seem harder to accomplish. Entropy. That's a subject for another soapbox though.

Anyway, I think each of us has something to which we can say, "I've always wanted to do that!" Dreams, right? What do the movies and the songs and the books tell us? "Chase your dreams! Be who you are! Let it go, let it go! Don't hold it back anymore!" All that stuff. Well they're almost right. I came up with a formula last night.

Here's what you do if you want to achieve those dreams.

1) Put God First. He knows you, He knows what you want, He knows who He wants you to be and what you need to do to get there.

2) Identify Righteous Passions. I don't think this one is that hard. Find out what makes you tick and go do it!

3) Identify and Fortify Against Weakness. Do your best to overcome the crap that drags you down away from the first two parts of my patented formula for success and let the Lord do the rest.

Tired of my soapbox? Well too bad, I'm not done yet. One more story, okay?

I think President Uchtdorf is one of the best examples of putting my formula into practice. Quick! What's his number one passion? I bet you said flying, or airplanes or something, didn't you? Well I think you're wrong. It's okay, I guessed wrong too as I was writing this. Then I realized that his number one passion is probably serving the Lord, but his number two passion is flying.

Now, if he had put flying as his number one passion, I'll bet he still could've done most of the things he's done. I'll bet he still could've achieved all that flying success and flown 747s all around the world and stuff. In fact, I'll bet he'd probably be poking around Germany in his Piper Cub and stuff having a grand old time. But instead he put God first, and look at how much he gained from that! Not only did he get to do all that stuff, but now he's one of the most beloved apostles who influences millions of people for the better every day. And on top of that, because of his service to the Lord, he's gotten to sit in the cockpit of Air Force One, go on a ride-along with the Blue Angels, and tell millions of people about flying every six months if he wants to. How sweet is that? Has he had hard times? I'm sure. Has he been put through the ringer? I'm positive. But isn't the reward worth it? And the best part is that the reward isn't just for this life, but for the next life too, because he probably discovered my patented formula before I did. He just didn't patent it like I did.

Here's the TL;DR. Go serve God, do what He wants you to do, then take those dreams of yours and go make 'em happen.

Have you always wanted to be a paramedic? Go do it.

Want a puppy? Go get one

Want to learn how to play the guitar? Skydive? Scuba? Go to China? Live off the land for a few years? Go do it already! You have my permission?

Are you tired of being mediocre? Well me too! Stop being sad and go be awesome.

Scripture time? Yep. Here.

I thought of two dreamers from the scriptures last night. Joseph and Lehi. They dreamed a lot! Joseph's brothers thought it was stupid, so they said, "Behold, the dreamer cometh, come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit...and we will see what will become of his dreams" (Genesis 37:19-20)

Do you know what happened to Joseph and his dreams? Well he became "like a father unto Pharoah" and basically ruled Egypt and stuff. His dreams came true.

So when the world tries to throw you into pits cause your dreams are awesomer than theirs, you stand up like Lehi did and say, "I know that I am a visionary man; for if I had not seen the things of God in a vision I should not have known the goodness of God, but had tarried at Jerusalem and had perished with my brethren. But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice." (1 Nephi 5:4-5)

I'm going to try it. Are you? I'm going to go be a race car driver or something. But only after I do everything God wants me to. And you know, when you do everything God wants you to first, everything else seems to fall in place.

(TL;DR)

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one"

"And when you dream, dream big,

As big as the ocean blue,

'Cause when you dream, it might come true

When you dream, dream big."

(Other cheesy song lyrics here)

Love y'alls,

Elder Christopher Drake

Monday, April 14, 2014

Birthday Parties and Baptisms

Hola fam!

We had a good week. It was Elder Allred's 20th birthday on Friday. We had three or four birthday parties for him. It was a lot of cake, but I'm not complaining. So much for skinny.

We had some good things happen this week and I actually wrote some of them down so I'd remember! On Monday, we had dinner with a rather awkward family who brought a friend over. The friend was a Korean exchange student, who was super nice. His name is Subin. Everything went pretty well until he started to be interrogated by the Sister. Then her son asked questions about population control and they talked about that for a while. Elder Allred and I felt pretty bad. Then when dinner was over, a cat walked up to the door. I looked over and said, "Hey look, we have a cat visitor," and both the Sister and her son jumped from the table exclaiming, "Hershey!" and ran outside to go welcome their prodigal cat with such greetings as, "You're alive and not dead!" So they did that for about 15 minutes while we apologized to Subin for dinner being so awkward. We did give him a Korean Book of Mormon though, so that was cool. You're welcome missionaries in Korea.

On Wednesday, after a District Meeting, we went to Taco Bell, because you don't turn down Taco Bell when you're in Bolivar and it's Happier Hour. Then when we got back to Stockton we went to our dinner appointment. After our dinner appointment, we went to a teaching appointment with Matthew and Ecko, one of the fundamentalist families that wants to be baptized. We walked in, and upon seeing the salad bowl on the table begin to cry inside. Three dinners were had that night. It hurt. So much for skinny.

On Friday, we drove to El Dorado Springs, which is about a 25 minute drive. We usually go every week, but on our way up we talked about how things weren't really getting anywhere there, and our time was probably better spent working in other parts of the area. When we first arrived, a few appointments we had planned fell through, so we went to a thrift store that usually isn't open because it has weird hours to kill a few minutes before our next appointment. I felt prompted to bring a Book of Mormon in so I did. We did some shopping, I got a pair of slacks and some sweet ties, and then we talked to the lady at the register and gave her the Book of Mormon! It was sweet. Her name is Bonnie. We'll see what happens next week when we go back. It was neat to see the Lord telling us that there was still stuff we had to do in El Dorado.

Saturday was our Greenwood baptism trip, which was a lot of fun. I got to meet a whole bunch of new people, and even had the opportunity to wave at my old Stake Center in Bentonville when we drove by. The baptism was awesome, and the Spirit was really strong. The people were so kind and open, it was a great trip. On our way home, we got caught in a nasty storm and were way delayed. We ended up getting back around 8:45 Sunday night, which sucked, but it was all good in the end.

It was a good week, and we're hoping to have another good one this week. Transfer calls are this weekend, which is super weird, but such is life as a missionary. Hopefully Elder Allred and I will do one more together. Fingers crossed!

Love y'alls,

Elder Christopher Drake

Monday, April 7, 2014

#LDSconf

I just want to start off by saying that I am really really sad that Elder Callister was released from the Presidency of the Seventy for completely selfish reasons. Now he won't come to our mission anymore. Sad day.

Anyhow.

Good week, good week. Lots of cool stuff. We're teaching a bunch of peeps and it's awesome. President Shumway came upon Thursday and interviewed 6 of our investigators for polygamist reasons. We've also got two more that we're going to invite to be baptized. It's pretty sweet.

Also, we have another investigator, Margaret, who is stinkin sweet. She's living with a member family right now, the Brigances, because her ex-husband is cray cray. She wants to be baptized and stuff so that's awesome. We just started teaching her this week. Hopefully we'll set a date for her baptism this week and get things rolling.

On Sunday we were lost as to who to see after conference, so we went to a Southern Baptist service. Turns out their sign was wrong, and we were 50 minutes late instead of 10 minutes early. It was a good sermon though and people were very friendly. It was about evangelizing, which is what we get to do all day every day! Good stuff.

Conference was awesome as usual. I was very impressed with Elder Andersen's talk this year. He's getting in the groove of being an apostle I guess. So many other talks were so good. It was neat to see how well all of the talks mesh together and how they actually talked about the same things if you listened right. I guess every conference is like that, I just didn't really pay attention before my mission. Good thing I went on a mission so I could learn to listen to the prophet.

Welp. That's about all for this week that I can remember.

Oh wait, I asked Elder Allred and now I remember a couple more things.

On Thursday, after we taught our Book of Mormon class, we went to a cooking class! It was sweet. Plus we got free food. We're going back tomorrow and we're going to cook some more. Being out on the Ranch has been such a great experience. The people are really friendly, which is kind of weird, but I'm not going to complain because they need the truth more than anybody! At basketball on Friday we had another lady approach us, Cherie, who basically told us that she wants to learn more and it was sweet. Her son-in-law is marrying his second wife this weekend. We were invited to the wedding but will probably be going to Greenwood for a baptism, unfortunately. Anyway, Cherie's daughter is not too happy about it all, surprise surprise. And what can you do? Her religion teaches that she has to do it basically. Well not has to, but they basically say, "You don't have to be in a plural marriage, but if you're not you're not going to inherit the highest degree of glory in the hereafter." Societal pressures make agency a little bit harder especially when truth is distorted and your religious leaders are in a state of apostasy.

Just sayin. Keep peeps in your prayers.

All right folks. Time to go. I lerve you, I miss you, and I'm hungry.

Elder Christopher Drake

I forgot.

This is Steve, our horse. We keep him in a field in El Dorado because we just don't have the space in our trailer for a horse. The disadvantage is we only get to see him on Fridays to feed him carrots.

I'm still not super comfortable being around giant vicious man-eating, shark-eyed, creepy-teethed horses, but maybe one of these days...

Elder Christopher Drake