Week 11: The Quad is Banished - Bentonville, Arkansas

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

The Quad Squad

Bentonville Temple

A lot of birds on one power line

Week Four: Paratrooper - Bentonville, Arkansas

Hey everyone! Hope you're all good. A ton of stuff happened this week and I can't get to it all but the biggest thing is that I finally got to go to Arkansas! I'm assigned to the Bentonville 1st Ward with my trainer Elder Cebellero and we're right in the middle of town. Like smack in the middle. The Bentonville temple is literally in the same parking lot as our church haha. 

Saying goodbye to my district and the MTC was sad but it had been a fire two weeks and we were ready to get going. The trip to Arkansas was actually super fun because my travel group turned out to be like 20 missionaries on the plane to Minneapolis and like 12 on the plane to Arkansas. The others in Minnesota went to Milwaukee so prepare for some greenies Elder Thompson. Also, a pilot named Captain Brett bought like seven of us Chick-fil-A. Thanks Captain Brett. 

I couldn't help but feel like I was getting shipped off to war in the last few days in the MTC. Everything was geared around suiting us up, handing us a plane ticket, and giving us a nice pat on the back before we parachuted into a battlefield. Arkansas is legit and the Bentonville mission is strong and no-nonsense. It's so foreign in so many ways and as missionaries we're out there in the thick of it almost 24/7. 

My mission president, President Collins, is equally legit. He's a super nice guy but he's waaaay tough on the "high love, high expectations" thing. No music, no member service, even no Pokémon cards. Just knocking doors every second we've got. It's way intense and honestly a lot tougher than I expected. But hey, the stats don't lie. Since he's taken the wheel the average baptisms per month has literally quadrupled in our mission. That's four times as many children of God accepting the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ every month. So while some of the guidelines we have to follow are frankly unpleasant I know that our mission president knows what he's doing. I came out here to do the Lord's work so if it's four times as effective with strict rules then heck yeah. 

My trainer, Elder Cebellero, is great guy too. He's a District Leader who's been out for nine months now and he's a great example of both an obedient missionary and a good hard worker in general. Elder Ceb's responsible, diligent, and competent and I've been learning so much from him these past few days.

In other news, this week I:

- Met one Elder that looks a lot like like Michael Cera and another that looks EXACTLY like Jim Carey. Like frighteningly close. I'll send a picture of him sometime cause he lives next door. 

- Learned missionary slang. We're discouraged from using slang so we sound more professional so a few substitutes include "treacherous," "powerful," and "hairy." I still don't know half of what the other Elders are saying but whatever, I'll pick up on the dialect soon enough. 

- Lit the duolingo owl on fire. 

Thought:

(PHILOSOPHY ALERT. Skip to the bottom and I won't be offended. Plus I can't see how much of this you read anyway.)

I got to spend part of my first day in the trenches as a trio with the Elder I was replacing on Friday. His name was Elder Sam Andersen (the exact same name as my MTC comp but he's a different guy haha) and it was his very last day before he went back home. I was exhausted and discouraged from knocking doors without success and at some point I made a joke about wishing I could switch places with him and be on my very last day too. He got super serious as soon as I said that and told me dead serious that he would do almost anything to switch places with me. It caught me completely off guard—I thought he'd be so done by that point that he couldn't wait to get home but he found something here in Bentonville that made him want to stay for as long as he possibly could. I kept thinking about it and it reminded me of an idea we learned about in my philosophy class last year. I'll quote it roughly: "you know what you're doing is meaningful if you would be okay with doing it an immeasurable amount of times over and over again." This dude was cool with serving a mission over and over again and he was devastated that he was going home while here I was doing mental math of how many months, weeks, and days I had until I got to fly back to Arizona. What made him love this so much that he never wanted to leave? I had and have literally no idea, but the longer I wear the tag the more I start to see what he was getting at so bear with me for a bit and maybe I'll answer my own question soon enough. 

Anyways, enough with the philosophy stuff for now. Here's a scripture:

Doctrine and Covenants 84:88:

And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.

Missionary work is hard. It just is. But I know God will support His servants and j know that the one thing better than going home to Heaven is going home to Heaven with as much of your family as you can possibly bring with you. Nuff said. 

Love you guys!

Elder Rigby

airport Chili's in Minneapolis

gorilla head

good ol' Bentonville temple

Elder Ceb

rain is nice

various doodads

Week Three: I wanna watch Top Gear - Provo UT MTC

*voiced by Clarkson*

"Tonight: Elder Andersen sees a cat, a New Zealander talks about Toyotas, I schmooze with the locals, and the district flies dangerously close to Canada."

"Welcome to Top Gear!"

So a nice part about going to BYU for a year is that I've met an absolute ton of school friends and other homies here at the MTC. So far the list includes Elders Harris, Irish, Calder, Evans, Jones, Pinoli, Stubbs, Thompson, Garrett, Scow, Leonard, Bryan, Munson, Crenshaw, and the one and only Liam the RA (Elder Henretty now) and Sisters Dobbs, Everton, McGarvin, Chapple, Calder, Allen, Pulsipher, Elgan, and Hamilton as well as Sister Masters, Brother Jones, and Shurtleff兄弟 plus Sister Roskelley from my BYU ward leadership! I also see Elder Williams from my flight from Gilbert to Provo and meet other random Gilbertites on a daily basis.

A lot of missionaries have been having trouble getting their passports lately for whatever reason and some Elders in my hall fell victim to the curse too and got reassigned for now from South America to New York City. In response to this news, six of them immediately banded together to perform the single most elaborate improv of a gritty New York crime drama I've ever seen. Fake blood and real tears were shed that night. 10/10. 

Okay back to the title. For those of you who don't know, Top Gear is a show where old British guys do dumb stuff in fast cars. It's fantastic. I wish I could describe it better but anything more wouldn't do it justice. If this show sounds even slightly interesting and you want a glimpse inside the head of a teenage car nerd then go check it out. Just make sure you watch the one with Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond cause that's the OG.

Onto the news:

1. We saw a cat. It's now my phone wallpaper. Nuff said.

2. My district got assigned to welcome in new missionaries last Wednesday and it was super fun. I got to meet a ton of new missionaries including yet another homie, Elder Mitchell Jones, but for a bit my job was just to wave cars in to the parking lot in with an Elder from New Zealand/Tonga named Elder Hala. He was cool and I liked his accent. We talked about rugby, Samoa and Tonga's beef with each other, and how trucks in America are way bigger than in New Zealand for whatever reason.

3. My companion and I got our flight itineraries! We'll be leaving for the airport this Thursday at 4:30am for...Minnesota? That's right folks. Our trip to Bentonville is a 14-hour quest by bus, train, and plane from Provo to Minneapolis to Fayetteville. Wish us luck. 

Okay, now the spiritual thought: 

 One thing I learned this week that I particularly liked is from a lesson we had on prayer. Heavenly Father wants us to strive to really connect with Him, not to just talk at him or give Him a spiritual grocery list. "Think about how much it hurts when you know someone you care about says they're 'fine' when you both know they aren't. He already knows exactly what we need but He wants us to open up to Him, not to just tell him we're 'fine.' What makes prayer special is that it's a chance to let ourselves be vulnerable with our Father."

 I'm constantly getting humbled here at the MTC. I'm glad I am, though, because as I've started to see myself grow I've also started to forget Who helped me to get to where I am now. Every trial I go through helps me to turn away from pride and back to God again and again and I'm so grateful for how He always gives me another chance.

Stay cool mi compadres

Elder Rigby

aforementioned gato

box of wonders

Most of my district.  We don't smile 'cause we're cool

lies

Week Two: Beefing Up - Provo Utah MTC

Note: this email is late because Samsung does not have an undo feature like IPhone does when you accidentally delete the three-page email you spent the entire day writing. Sorry for the delay :P

Hi everyone!

It's been a looooong week but I love it here. A lot of it was fun, some of it painful, most of it difficult but all of it good for me.

Anyways let's get into the meat of it. MTC (missionary training center) life is super busy but it's definitely manageable. Daily life basically consists of swimming through two three-hour classes plus an hour and a half of study time and coming up for air during meals, exercise, and the hour of free time we have in the evening. Let me tell ya, the dorms are a jungle at night. Missionaries or not, cram 100+ 18-21 year old guys into one building and its gonna sound like Rainforest Café. So it's a high-protein day for sure but like I said, physical drains for spiritual gains. Plus, every Monday I have a prep day (P-day) where I have time set aside to call my family, respond to emails, do laundry, and hang out with the other missionaries in my class. 

Besides my companion Elder Andersen and I my district includes three sets of sisters and three other sets of elders for a total of 14 missionaries. I've loved finally getting to know them in person and they're all cool people that I like being around. Homies of the week include Elder Checketts for having the same favorite movies as me (Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä) and Elder Stone for quoting Bible verses as he did 50 pushups in like a minute (see Philippians 4:13.)

Elder Andersen got called as District Leader! As his senior companion I'm basically now secretary/voice of reason for my adorably ADHD new roommate. He's fresh out of high school and a little hyper but he's a really nice guy and I think being called as role models for the district is gonna be good for us both. 

So much happened this week and I'd love to get to all of it but I wanna at least try to keep this shorter so I'll make another list. This week I:

- Played volleyball at the gym almost every day and kept running into into Aldstë Calder and Élder Stubbs

- Watched Stadium of Fire from a five-story building and a 日本人(Japanese) sister from McGarvin姉妹's district gave us all cinnamon rolls

- Got lost when we went to the Provo Temple (sort of)

- Sang next to a 6'5 Canadian dude at missionary choir practice

Thought:

1) God loves me. 

2) He sees the complexities of my trials perfectly. 

3) He knows exactly what He's asking me to do.

Knowing these three things has seriously gotten me through this week. The Lord knows perfectly how much I love learning Japanese. He knows how badly I wish I could be with the missionaries heading to serve in Japan and how badly it hurts to not be. But putting this dream of mine on the altar has only strengthened my faith in my Savior Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, The Lord is good at His job. He wants me in Bentonville, Arkansas so I can't wait to get there and get to work. 

Mosiah 23: 21-22

21 Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith. 

22 Nevertheless—whosoever putteth his trust in him the same shall be lifted up at the last day.

If anyone has any questions about Jesus Christ, His Gospel, missionary life, or just life in general then send me an email or message and I'd love to talk sometime! I can only really respond on Mondays but seriously ask me whatever whenever. 

Peace 

Elder Rigby

P.S. thank you so much to everyone who's sent me emails so far!! I had a super busy day yesterday but I'll try to write you back as soon as I can!