Stress and Success

Elder Strickland (left) on his last day!

Elder Sherrill's Desk

Hello Everyone! So first off I would like to apologize for not sending a general email last week. Week 5 of the transfer in the mission home is mainly just making travel plans and organizing everything to get ready for transfers. So my email probably would have been boring anyways haha. But anyways, this last week was way good! Tons of stress, probably more than I have very felt on my mission before but is definitely helping me learn some important life principles.

We have started another transfer! It's hard to believe that we have already gone six weeks from the previous set of transfers. I feel like I talk about the same thing in my emails ever week because they just come around so often haha. Anyways, at the beginning of the week we started to finish up the travel plans for all the transfers which ended up not actually being all to difficult. The biggest challenge we faced was with the trainers and their new missionaries. There were 19 new missionaries and 19 new trainers that had to be called to train them. The challenge was getting them up to the mission home a day early while realizing that they all had companions that needed a companion for the day. Then on top of that a few of the trainers were from the islands so we had to transfer other missionaries even earlier in the week to make sure everyone had a companion at all times. I don't think I've had a chance to be so organized in my life. It took us hours upon hours of getting very detailed travel plans with arrangements for every missionary in the mission to have a companion at all times. With all those plans in place it ended up making quite a few transfer a day before the normal transfer day (Wednesday).

Throughout the transfer week probably the most hectic day would have to be Wednesday. The night previous we had just gone and picked up all the new missionaries and that is always a ton of fun. We had 19 way solid elders and sisters come into the mission. On Wednesday we begin with new missionary orientation along with setting plans for them to have new missionary dendo out on the streets of Fukuoka. So that's another 19 people we need to find and plan to have in Fukuoka that day to help us out with them. After the orientation and during the time the new missionaries are proselyting we are scrambling around to make sure the church is prepared to our Trainers Training Meeting where we gather and train the trainers. It probably doesn't sound to difficult but with so much going on it's easy to slip up and make a mistake and we did, and that's where the stress comes in haha. 

There were quite a few mistakes but I would say probably one of the best ones is when we started our trainers training meeting. During that meeting the new missionaries meet their trainer for the first time and they get this cool little paper that has their name on it and who their trainer will be. During interviews with new missionaries earlier that day Kaicho felt a flip flop need to be made with some trainers and their new missionaries so we got two new papers and stuck em in the van. With all that was going on I totally forgot about it until the training had begun and I see Kaicho mouth to me, "where are the new papers??" He probably laughed a little inside when he saw my eyes go wide and I mouth back, "one second" and slip out of the meeting to go to the van. So we get to the van and the papers are gone. My fears are confirmed and there's no way to get a new paper unless we went back to the mission home to print off new ones, which we unfortunately couldn't do because we obviously needed to be in the meeting giving our training. So we figured it out, had a couple other elders run back print it off for us and it all ended up working out. That's just one small example of another little mistake that happens here and there and causes stress. 

I had more stress this last week than I had ever before experienced on my mission, with little and big things going wrong here and there. One thing I have been trying to learn is how to deal with my stress positively and calmly. A great example at that is my mission president, president Egan. But I assume he has a pretty good tolerance for stress because he has to work with two knucklehead assistants all the time that make lots of mistakes haha. No matter what happens he always stays very calm and positive. I really learned a lot about that this week and since I was feeling so much stress had a lot of opportunities to try it out! Haha. But it all ended up working out in the end like it always does. I continue to be amazed with how many opportunities you have to learn things on your mission that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Whenever I am going through a trial or experiencing a difficulty it seems a lot easier to recognize and understand it is for my benefit to become better and improve. Understanding that not only makes me more positive when facing hardships and stress but it helps me remember that these missions (and our lives) are just preparing us to become more perfect as we have been commanded to be. 

The title of this email is stress which I feel like I have talked a great deal about but I also want to talk about the success! First off being that we survived transfer week and everyone made it back to their areas safely and there were no major problems. The main success points I found out through the week though are two main things. The first one is today we are going to a baptismal service and I will have the privilege of performing the baptism! The sisters in a nearby area have a 13 year old investigator they have been working with and asked me this last week if I would be willing to perform it for their investigator Ruka Chan. So I'm super excited for that today! There will be pictures to come this next week. The next point of success I saw or I guess heard was I got a call earlier this week from a recent convert of mine. It was Sister Yano, the sister we taught and baptized in Kure over a year ago. She called me and told me she was going through the temple to receive her endowments next Saturday and invited me to go along and act as a proxy for her son! I was thrilled! Then after the session we are going to do a sealing session as well and I will again act as proxy for her son as she is sealed to her family. It will be an amazing opportunity.

But that about wraps it up for this week! It's kind of long but I had to make up for last week haha. I love you all! I know this work is true and I know the Savior Jesus Christ lives. He is always there to help us in our times of need if we turn to Him. I will talk to you next week, take care! 

Love, 

Elder Sherrill