Week 52: a haiku - Pierce City, Missouri

Unseen mosquito

Destroyed me while I played hymns

Begone, dumb insect

Hey all!

Technically it's a senryu but whatever. Seeing as how I've eaten eight cheeseburgers in the last two days, I think my diet has more room for improvement than my wording. 

~

 Aaaaaaaaanyways, hope you're all doing well! Here are some miracles from our week:

- Our friend Kent was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! He's an awesome guy and I'm happy to say that Pierce City Branch has embraced him wholeheartedly.

- We also got to head down to Bentonville with Kent and two other members for a departing devotional from our mission leaders, President and Sister Collins. Man, I'm really gonna miss them. On a brighter note, while we were there, Kent bore testimony of his conversion to a soon-to-be-baptized friend of a sister missionary I went to high school with! Shoutout to Sister Hale from Campo. 

- While on exchanges, Elder Wadsworth and I were blessed to meet a member family with eighteen children, fifteen of whom were adopted foster kids from high-profile trafficking and abuse cases. For privacy's sake I'll limit the details, but a brief conversation the mother of this special family taught me a whole lot about the true meaning of "Christ-like" love. And get this: one of their adopted daughters is about to leave on her mission! 

~

Friends to pray for:

- Norma: her wedding's this week and she's on date for baptism in July!

- Tilor: bad news is he got hit by a car and he's in a wheelchair for a while. Good news is he came to church anyways and brought his mom and sister too! Last Sunday was his mom's first time leaving the house in five years.

Back by popular demand, the songs of the week: 

"Brand New Colony" by The Postal Service

"Where Love Is" (General Conference 10/2021)

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/music-from-october-2021-general-conference/2021-10-where-love-is?lang=eng

Note: In my mission, we generally stick with hymns and music directly published/licensed by the Church. I throw a contemporary song or two in here every once in a while just cause they get stuck in my head, but for these two years it's hymns for me, baby. 

Google Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7

~

Thought: "Small Acts of Service" by Spencer W. Kimball

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1974/12/small-acts-of-service?lang=eng

"Hell is frozen in self-pity." Service, on the other hand, is the ultimate defense against spiritual stagnation. God's commandments prevent human misery because, when we follow them, we turn outwards; we become instruments in Christ's hands to "clear a channel for the river of God's love."

“If we are not careful, we can be injured by the frostbite of frustration; we can be frozen in place by the chill of unmet expectations. To avoid this we must—just as we would with arctic coldness—keep moving, keep serving, and keep reaching out, so that our own immobility does not become our chief danger.”

So keep moving! Don't stop. Life is a race, but "taking a break" from daily personal prayer, daily study of the Book of Mormon, daily Christlike service to others is not like taking a water break. Don't take a breather from living your covenants. It could be spiritually fatal. 

 As in all things, Jesus Christ is our exemplar. His consistency of character throughout His life is a perfect example of how you and I can "live after the manner of happiness." We may not be perfect, but, thanks to our Savior and His Atonement, we can always be faithful. 

The Gospel works. Trust the process.

Love,

Elder Rigby

Week 48 - Monett, Missouri

 Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7

Hey all!

Not a lot of time this week but I at least wanted to write something. This week has been a rollercoaster in so many ways. Here's some stuff we've been up to:

- MLC! Learned a ton from the powerful workshops from President and Sister Collins and the APs, then grubbed with some of the Monett vets at lunch. It's crazy how many missionaries I'm friends with that have served in my current area at some point or another. 

- Bentonville and Rogers got totally trashed by a tornado this week. It was so weird driving through my old area on the way to MLC and seeing trees down and wreckage everywhere. 

- Took the most gorgeous one-lane road through the Ozarks back to Monett from Bentonville and felt like I was on the Cars ride but it was actually real. W.

- Went back to that Church-member-owned trading card store and pulled this crazy hundred-dollar Pokémon card from a cheap booster pack. That one's not super spiritual, I know, but hey, it was a tender mercy. It counts.

- Went on an exchange with Elder Wasden, a missionary Elder Bigelow (one of my past companions) is training right now! He's such a cheerful, friendly guy. We had a great day together and I know he's gonna go far as a missionary.

~

Thought: why does God cut us down sometimes?

This is a video based off of one of my all-time favorite stories, "The Currant Bush." It's based off of Elder D. Todd Christofferson's April 2011 talk "'As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten"” which itself was based off of Elder Hugh B. Brown's BYU devotional entitled "God is the Gardener." Both messages are fantastic, and if you love this story then I'd invite you to study them both.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/video/inspirational-messages/2012-01-014-the-will-of-god?lang=eng

God always delivers His people. Stick with Him until the end and you'll be so, so glad you did.

Love,

Elder Rigby

Week 44 - Fort Smith, Arkansas

 Hey all!

Sorry for no email last week! I'll be better at knocking them out sooner from here on out.

I'm just getting back from a two-day trip from Bentonville for exchanges with the Assistants to the President (APs) and then an all-day leadership council meeting. Sounds kinda boring if you're not a missionary but I promise it was a great time. We also find out transfer news tomorrow so I'll update this when we find out. 

*Update: I'll be heading to the Monett Zone, Monette Ward in Missouri with Elder Fairchild! Also, shoutout to my trainer Elder Ceb for being the new AP! 

 

Monett is the smallest zone in the whole mission population-wise with under 150,000 people spread across eight areas compared to 102,000 people in my last area alone, so this is gonna be a big change for me. I know it's God's will that I serve there, though, and I have faith that there are some amazing people waiting for the Gospel in Monett. I choose to make this the best area of my mission. 

~

Stuff I did this week:

- Drove a brand spankin' new (nine miles on the odometer) 2024 Nissan Rogue a hundred miles through the boonies between Bentonville and Fort Smith and both of our phones died on the way 

- Highlights from my exchange with Elder Shields: met a Ukrainian CSGO player who wanted to come to church and a Muslim dude I taught at a park in Bentonville six months ago, taught the absolute craziest lesson that I 100% cannot write about here, and met a Pohnpeian girl who wants to get baptized and just happens to be cousins with a boy we baptized in Bentonville! Fun stuff. 

- MLC! Big focuses of this month's mission leadership conference were promising blessings after every invitation we give and improving our council times. We set a new mission record for baptisms this month and set a goal of 100 baptisms in June (WOOOOOO LET'S GO ABM) to send off President and Sister Collins and welcome in President and Sister Hathaway.

- Hung out by the storm shelter for half an hour after a tornado touched down twenty miles south of Fort Smith a few nights ago. Not sure why people live where a giant whirlwind can just pop out of nowhere and launch them to Alberda,  but whatever. 

- Said goodbye to a few members I'm tight with here ;/. The last people I talked to tonight were some of the Deacons (11-13 y/o boys) who I'd passed the Sacrament with for the last four months and who are like my . One of them, Grant, looked me in the eyes and said "You are a good missionary." It made my day. 

~

Thought: 

I spent at least an hour today trying to come up with a good way to summarize this BYU Devotional I loved called "The Inconvenient Messiah," but nothing I wrote felt quite right. After saying a prayer about it, this is what I came up with:

1 Kings 17:8-24: The Widow of Zerephath

Consider the true weight of a blessing promised by a prophet of God.

What blessings were the widow promised? 

How did she have to exercise faith in order to receive these promised blessings?

This video impacted me when I watched it this week. I'd recommend starting from Elijah and the widow's conversation about halfway through:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/video/2011-03-0071-elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath?lang=eng

As a representative of Jesus Christ, I have the privilege of being able to promise blessings in His name. I promise you that you will never regret following Jesus Christ. No matter the decision, I promise that you will always be glad you chose Him.

~

Songs of the week:

"His Eye is on the Sparrow" sung by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/music/music-from-april-2024-general-conference/2024-04-his-eye-is-on-the-sparrow?lang=eng

Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7

Cool devotionals/sermons:

"Illuminated Stories" by Robert T. Barrett. 

If you like art, check this one out. It's super cool. 

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/robert-barrett/illuminated-stories/

"The Inconvenient Messiah" by Patricia and Jeffrey R. Holland

"Yes, but not this way."

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-and-patricia-t-holland/inconvenient-messiah/

~

Love you all! Jesus Christ is real. His Gospel really works.

Love,

Elder Rigby

Weeks 30 and 31 - Fort Smith, Arkansas

"Have you rebuked your sickness yet?"

- Elder Smythe

Hey all!

I was debating whether or not I should bait you with funny stories before blindsiding you with teenage crack theology but I'm late so I figure I'll just play my cards straight this week.

~

Claudia: Well...things took a turn for the worse when the doctors found out she had a disease that had gone untreated for a long time and she never came out of her coma. After a departing blessing and a few days in hospice, our dear friend Claudia headed off to paradise three weeks to the day after she was baptized into the Good Shepherd's fold.

God's plan, the Plan of Redemption, Salvation, and Happiness, gives a cool perspective on life and death. I heard in a devotional this week that this life is only one act in the great play of existence. No matter what happens in Act II, everything always works out in Act III—every time. No exceptions. 

1 Corinthians 15 in the New Testament is a great place to start if you'd like to learn more about what happens after we die:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/1-cor/15?lang=eng

40-day Fast: try one sometime, they're cool. Don't go forty days without eating food, but I'd invite you to make a change in your life and tracking it for forty days and hold yourself accountable to it. By the time it's over, odds are you've formed a new good habit. My "fast" this time is writing in my journal every night and so far I'm at twenty-eight entries. It's hard to find the やる気 to yet started sometimes, but Elder Whetten makes a good accountability buddy. 

MLC: Elder Smythe and I packed up our bags on Monday and made the beautiful 90-minute drive up to Bentonville for our monthly in-person Mission Leadership Council Tuesday. We listened to an awesome talk called "The Mortal Messiah" by Jack Christensen in the car, then met up with our buddies Elder Cebollero and Elder Atuaia (my trainer and one of our old roommates) for a birthday dinner with some members Elder Smythe knew from home before sleeping over at the APs' apartment. 

MLC itself was awesome. After presenting our goals for the Fort Smith Zone to the rest of the council, we had like four hours of workshops and inspired teaching from the APs and our mission leaders, President and Sister Collins. Big themes of this month were leading with principles rather than rules, helping our friends see what step is next for them in God's plan, and leaving our nets to take up our cross with Christ every single day (Matthew 4:20, Galatians 2:20.) 

Rounding it all off was my piano accompaniment of #193 "I Stand All Amazed" for our closing hymn. I'd played it through just fine at lunch, but alas, performance anxiety makes jazz out of the most classical of concertos. After ten sublimely awkward seconds of abstract noise from my fumbling fingers, I stopped, cracked a joke to my audience of literally every single mission leader in the Arkansas Bentonville Mission, and proceeded to play the rest of the hymn with just my right hand. Nothing wrong with a little extra dose of humility. 

~

Songs of the week: 

1) "Smile" by Weezer.

2) "Theme from 'The Law of the Harvest'"  from the New Testament Seminary Video Soundtrack. One half safari adventure, one half Super Mario.

~

Pensamientos espirituales:

"Fourth Floor, Last Door" by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf (October 2016 General Conference)

"A Robe, a Ring, and a Fatted Calf" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (BYU Devotional)

Acts 5 : https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/acts/5?lang=eng

Galatians 2:20:

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Love you all. Talk to you next week!

Elder Rigby

Golf ball

Elder Whetten

More Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7

Week 14: Japanese-Speaking Political Botanist Zoologist Missionary - Bentonville, Arkansas

Current career plans ^

"Salut! Comment ça va?" - Justin

First off, thank you so much to everyone who emailed/messaged/wrote me on/around my birthday! You made me feel special on a day that I was worried would just be normal. Thank you. I wish I could get back to all of you but I ran out of time yet again and will probably have to push off sending a response until next week. 

This week I've learned that optimism is everything. Current strategy: indomitable cheeriness. I'll stomp on the Devil's plans with the devastating power of a can-do attitude. 

The news:

- Interviews with President and Sister Collins. They're such cool leaders. I talked with President Collins about keeping the Gospel simple and focused on the Savior and with Sister Collins about how we can be good missionaries regardless of whether people accept our message.

- Cut my own hair for the first time. It was equally fun and nerve-wracking. 

- The smoke alarm went off at 4:30 am yesterday so we spent a half an hour testing it to make sure we weren't gonna die. 

- finally used the 5 bucks we got in the park a month ago to buy some insanely good red velvet ice cream.

BIRTHDAY:

The big day. I woke up, donned my new birthday tie, ate a donut, and went to church. We then knocked doors until dinner with the Cronins, an amazing family who went out of their way to bake me a cake and sing me happy birthday. They even sent a video of it to my mom haha. Bonus points for that one. After then it was back to the work until the day was done. I called my family, opened some packages and presents with them, and hit the hay. 19 years, baby.  

Other fun stuff:

- Mom wrapped some Super Mario Legos in a picture of the cover of Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes, one of my favorite albums. Absolutely legendary birthday present. 

- Got a bonus birthday box from my cousins :)

- I had the Animal Crossing birthday song stuck in my head literally all day. It made me surprisingly sentimental for whatever reason. Big nostalgia. 

- We set up four lessons in one day! God gave us some birthday miracles for sure.

Person of the week:

Arsh: a cool Sikh dude who played pro cricket in India before he moved here. He gave us an Indian history lesson on the Mughals so we taught him him about Jesus Christ in return and gave him a Book of Mormon. 

Thought:

1) D&C 81.

Sister Collins invited me to apply this section to myself and it really helped me when I was struggling. 

Lesson learned: The blessings of missionary work are not dependent on how we are received. I can faithfully "be about my Father's business" regardless of the actions of others. 

2) 2 Nephi 4:27-35.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/4?lang=eng

My little sister Hazel sent me this one this morning so you know I've gotta throw it in. 

 I would love to unpack his whole psalm/internal monologue (soliloquy? Can I get a fact check, Mrs. Plunk?) but I'm out of time so suffice to say Nephi spits some bars here. The whole section is him writing about just wanting to be a good Christian and I dig it. Props, Hazel.

Welp, that about wraps it up for this week. Thanks again for all the birthday wishes! Love you guys. 

Elder Rigby

Photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7

P.S. General Conference is this weekend! Every six months, the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all gather for a special broadcast of inspired messages from a living prophet, Apostles, and other authorities. Think five two-hour sessions of sermons specifically tailored for modern-day Christians right in this moment. It's just cool.

I had a big paragraph written out about why you should check out General Conference but I'll just say this: if this isn't real, then you'll have wasted two hours of your Sunday morning. If it is, then God has led you to something wonderful. 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/general-conference?lang=eng

Come and see. Come, bring questions, and listen for the Savior in the words you hear. You will receive your answers proportionally to the faith you exercise. 'Nuff said. 

Well, that's about it. Thanks for reading this far. Later!

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

Arrival in Arkansas - Bentonville, Arkansas

President and Sister Collins