Mission Wars: The Revenge of the Satan

May 30, 2016

Warning: If you didn't notice the title, there's going to be a good deal of Star Wars references, and using said references as a parallel to some mission experiences. So this will probably come off as pretty dorky. But I regret nothing. You have been warned.

Hi everyone!

Well, it's once again P-Day. Thank goodness! We've had a really hard week, and it felt like it was never going to end.

The last few weeks, I've felt and seen a lot of opposition. But we always seem to be able to pull out of it and come out on top anyway. But this week, Satan really did a number on us.

The insanity started the week before actually, when we weren't able to get appointments set up with people we usually have fairly regular appointments with. So we didn't have nearly as many teaching appointments set, and to make it more difficult, a lot of people were gone or going away for Memorial Day Weekend. Then on Monday, we found out we were being moved to a new apartment, so we had to spend pretty much the entire day on Tuesday packing and cleaning everything. The move was on Wednesday, and the better part of the day was spent getting everything to the new apartment, scrubbing floors and pretty much everything, and getting chewed out by one of the housing coordinators. To make things more complicated, we had another missionary with us for a few days, his companion had to go home for medical stuff. It's pretty sad because he was a pretty good friend of mine. But anyway, we had that Elder with us until his new companion flew in from Mexico a few days later. To make things yet even more complicated, the Elder who went home was my district leader. So now President made me district leader again. That's not a bad thing, but it's just another thing on top of this cluttered mess of a week.

So we didn't get a whole lot of teaching done this week unfortunately. We did however get back in touch with Jose and Alexis, got them married, and (by the skin of our teeth) got them all ready for baptism on Saturday. So that's two more baptisms, and besides that being awesome in and of itself, it would have finished off the monthly zone goal (not that it's all about numbers though). Basically the baptism was the highlight of the week...except for the part where it didn't happen. On Saturday, Alexis's mom, Mona (who just got baptized a few weeks ago), couldn't get off work at all that day, even though unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure her boss knew about this and how important it is. Her boss was also the reason she was late to her own baptism a few weeks ago, even though she was supposed to get the whole day off. Anyway, so Saturday morning didn't happen. So we rescheduled it for Sunday right before church, but they ended up having to take their baby to the hospital, so that didn't happen. So no baptisms this week. And the fact that the rest of the week has been so terrible, and that we were so close to still pulling a successful weekend out of it just made it even more painful.

So all of that happened, and that plus, stress, exhaustion, discouragement, and a little bit of home sickness just made for a really tough week. This is actually probably one of the most difficult, hard-to-swallow weeks I've had on my mission. And we still almost came out on top with those baptisms, but even that hope of a last minute victory was shot down. That's not to say nothing good happened. In Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith, good things still happened. It was just overshadowed by all the bad stuff, and by the Emperor winning in the end. We still had a few really good lessons, and Reagan is progressing really well. And even if the baptism didn't happen this week, Jose and Alexis still got married. But overall, despite us really trying our hardest, the week was pretty bad. Satan really did a number in this area this past week.

But thankfully, this too will pass. We may have lost this week, and Satan may have gotten some revenge in seeing us exhausted, sad, and discouraged, but that doesn't negate the good that we did, even if it wasn't as much as we would have liked, and that fact set aside, Satan's a loser. Sure he came out top this past week. But that's one week. The Emperor won in Revenge of the Sith, but that's just one movie. There's a whole trilogy that takes place afterward all about how the Emperor loses. Likewise, there are plenty of weeks left to come in my mission, and more times than not, Satan's going to lose. And just to start with, this week is going to be better. It's still looking a bit rocky in terms of having a lot of appointments, and we just found out from one of the families we're teaching that one of the kids has some health problems and they might not be able to see us for a while, and I'm coming down with a cold, so I might be limited there. But we have Jose and Alexis's baptism, we have some new investigator prospects, and we're not going to be busy moving apartments or dealing with what are basically surprise transfers, or anything like that. It's a new week, a new month, a new hope. ;)

Have a great week!

-Elder Oswald