This week was revolutionary! My mission president decided that enough is enough! So now we can eat with members and don't have to wear masks and we can go street contacting. Unfortunately these restrictions have been in place for so long that nobody really wants to change, which makes life a little difficult for me. Elder Jenkins is going to learn how to talk to people by the end of this transfer!
The work has been going good-- our deaf friend Mai is ready for baptism on Saturday! She reminds me of a phrase the Savior used,
"Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Mai's ears don't hear. They haven't worked her whole life. But she understands the Savior and his teachings far better than our other hearing friends. I've been thinking a lot about how it's funny that the blessed ones have the most curses. This is an incredible time to be alive! We have access to so much with the internet and technology and ears. Yet sometimes I feel like our senses are bombarded to the point where we become desensitized to all but the extreme. I chatted with some members of our ward who just returned from Ireland. They told us that there are these walls all over the countryside that were built during the potato famine. The upper class required work of the working class in order to rationalize feeding them so they would make them construct walls for miles on end. They would work all day and earn enough money to buy bread to feed themselves and then do it all again the next day. The walls had no purpose, just to keep the laborers busy and distracted. I was quite shocked at this and humbled. How grateful I am that my life has allowed me to pretty freely exercise my agency. I was then struck by the fact that many people still choose to be a poor Irishman. I have met so many people that are just "building walls," even in the land of the free. Social media is a big wall, addiction another. TV and video games, the ability to hear. We sometimes are carefully ensnared by the forces of opposition through our ability to choose. I have often thought, "it doesn't matter if nothing gets done today because I'm choosing to just chill." I think that because I'm choosing to do it that somehow makes the action more respectable. The Irish chose to build those walls in order to obtain food. But at the end of it all, all they had were heaps of stone that didn't matter. I hope we all can be better at making sure our time is spent purposefully. Many people do not hearken unto Jacob,
I see many missionaries who also don't understand this principle. Your time is yours, no one else's. One day you will be accountable for it. Choose to be more than you were, to go forward and not backward. Elder Uchtdorfs talk, "Daily Restoration," is a useful guide on how to refocus and get on the path of progress.
I love you guys!
-Elder Dahl
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