Transfers
preceded largely without incident last week. There were a couple of weird
things. First, the sisters that came out with me are going home. Eek! Has it
been that long already? I suppose so. Second, that is the most people,
missionaries or otherwise, that I have been around in months. Even though
driving to Kingwood was a long haul, I was glad to get to say good-bye to some
friends and former companions who about to cross over the veil from being
missionaries.
Elder Morgan, my new
companion, is great. A former wrestler from Brigham City, Utah, he was settled
right in to Welsh Louisiana. I have been blessed with my companions.
Unfortunately, the
main proselyting theme of this week was to get in touch with someone, set up a
lesson with them, and then not be able to get in touch with them again. We did
have one good conversation with a part-member family, she was going to join in
with our branch's Sunday School...but that never happened either. I agree that
it is often easier or more efficient to get in touch with people over the
phone, but the phone is also easy to ignore or forget.
Our downstairs
neighbors have been particularly peeved a couple of days this week, which led
me to reflect on them as individual daughters of God. It is so easy to imagine
only a caricature, when of course they have complex lives, needs, and
interests. I am still struggling to change my perceptions, but at least I am
aware that they need to change.
I have been reading
from the BYU Studies journal, and I am now thoroughly convinced that Cureloms
are actually giant Llamas. It is also sometimes hard to gauge how long an
article is when you are reading it by scrolling on a phone. For one article, on
monarchy and democracy in the Book of Mormon, I realized I had been slogging
through it for about an hour, which, if we compare to my reading of the Book of
Mormon, might suggest that this article was one 13th of the length of the Book
of Mormon. Sure enough, the article took over 50 pages in the physical edition
of the journal. I have a lot of respect for people who write obscure and
academic 50 page articles. Daryl and Peter, I salute you. Theses sound rough. I
might just drop out of school if they ever ask me to write one. After all, a
dissertation that takes a dispensation to write sounds like dysentery disguised
in academic discipleship.
Well, after that
grotesque approximation of Maxwellian alliteration, I close my epistle,
Elder DeFord
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