Elder Oliver Rigby: Week 11: The Quad is Banished

Hey all!

We got locked out of our apartment for a bit tonight so I'm starting this email late yet again but c'est la vie. Hope life's been good for y'all! All the best to my friends and family starting school again this month.

Quick update:

Harrison's on date for baptism! We had another great lesson with him and invited him but he was still hesitant and wanting a stronger answer before he committed. Remembering our mission president's advice to invite people to act in faith rather than waiting for an answer, I decided to be straight up. I told him we were here to help him get baptized because we loved him. Plain and simple. We then asked him why he was meeting with us, and it took him a while to answer. His response was that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had a light about them he'd never seen before and he wanted to have that light himself. .

We explained that baptism enables us to that unimitable light and peace through the Gift of the Holy Ghost. We then asked him again if he would prepare to be baptized on October 7th if he had received an answer by then and, thank goodness, our boy came through. It's been so cool to see the Holy Spirit move in the life of our good friend.

So pray for Harrison, friends! The adversary isn't going to just let him go and get baptized like it's no big deal. He's gonna need all the help he can get going forward, so I'd appreciate it if you could remember him in your prayers these coming weeks.

A week in the life of a missionary, 8/30 - 9/6:

WEDNESDAY

- Taught a guy 3 days out of prison at 11:00 at night down the hall from our apartment

- Elder McKee talks in his sleep lol

THURSDAY

- T2 training: 6 hours with the Presidents, Domino's for lunch, a happy reunion with Elder Andersen, and a sleepover with Elder Hulse and Elder Gleason from the very northernmost area of the mission.

FRIDAY

- Finished the Isaiah quotations in 2 Nephi and man, the clarity of the "plain and precious truths" of the Book of Mormon is refreshing.

- Made my pad thai waaaaay too spicy by pouring like ten spoons of chili pepper oil on it. The natural man is inclined to make bad decisions.

- rip Shelby. She canceled our dinner lesson because her kid was sick and her husband wasn't interested :/

SATURDAY

- Sister Hancock's funeral: "would you help dig even if you didn't hear the voice?"

- SOS from the Central Park Elders with a flat bike tire

- thinkin 'bout Maple Treeway from Mario Kart Wii. Man, where does my brain remember this stuff from?

This church sure ain't comfortable Christianity. That's reassuring if you ask me.

SUNDAY

- "Commandments are less about 'do this, don't do that' and more about showing God that you're really trying so that He can rightfully bless you."

- Manly pillow talk with Elder McKee. Elder McKee's a G. We get along really well which is nice.

MONDAY

- I dream about doing missionary work most nights. "You'll have that on these big jobs."

- Ceb is so quiet sometimes.

12:00pm: I did not want to talk to people today. At all. So I said a prayer and got to work.

4:00pm: I feel better now. Little miracles.

TUESDAY

- wake up -> get out of bed -> go sleep on the couch for two hours. Not sure why, I was just not feeling it this morning.

- quick post office trip. I like the post office.

- saw some Jehovah's Witnesses in the wild. I thought about how I'd react to *them* knocking on *my* door and that was a real eye-opener. I've walked a mile in those moccasins.

- meditated for a few minutes at lunch and my brain chilled out. Meditation is neat.

- got a postcard from Aunt Jen hand-delivered by President Collins when we dropped by the mission office. A pleasant double surprise.

- ate at Cane's. Cane's is Cane's. It speaks for itself. Thanks for dinner, Aunt Jen.

- 9 hours of tracting in one day with 0 new people found. Woof.

WEDNESDAY

- got locked out of our apartment

- lost a page from a song I was practicing on the piano

- saw Halloween decorations in someone's yard for the first time this year. I'm not about that. No Halloween stuff in my birthday month. Gimme some space

"life's all about peace and pain at the same time. This life will always have pain but peace can be found in it as we align our will with God's will for us." Credit to Dad for this one.

今週の人々:

- The Wilhites: a nice young family who just moved from near Aomori, Japan at the snowiest U.S. Air Force base in the world. Brother Wilhite worked there as a family doctor for the military.

- Brother Ward: a softspoken and kind elderly artist in our ward. Owns a motorcycle and looks like Liam Neeson.

- The Thurmans: a member family staying in an AirBnB we happened to knock into. Sister Thurman's originally from Gilbert (shoutout Ciudad Gilberto) and their family lived in Appleton where one of my ride or die homies Elder Thompson served for a few transfers this year.

Thought:

This week my zone met together to discuss a talk given by Gary E. Stevenson a few years ago titled "Your Four Minutes." In it, he compared our whole life to the four minutes Olympic athletes have to has to prove themselves in the Skeleton event. Four short minutes and the decisions they make therein determine the outcome of an event they will spend the rest of their lives remembering.

This life, and, to an even greater extent, my mission, is four short minutes to prove to God how we will act when it's down to the wire. While an hour feels like an eternity some days and I sometimes find myself wondering what in the actual heck I'm doing knocking on a stranger's door at an apartment complex in northwest Arkansas, I know my purpose and know that RIGHT NOW IS GO TIME.

Right now, I have the opportunity to bring more of my family back home with me. If that means that I need to endure a spiritual and emotional marathon then I'll do that every day.

I wish I could spend more time on how impactful this talk and the discussion we had on it was to me but wow, I gotta go to bed. Goggins rant over.

Song of the week:

"BrokEn (Reimagined)" by Coldplay.

Good music.

I'm too tired to write a witty ending so I'm just gonna finish up here and hit send in the morning. Sorry again to all the people I couldn't respond to! I wish I could. I'm working on catching up as best as I can so bear with me a little longer.

Be cool, do stuff. They're closely tied together. Love you guys!

Elder Rigby