This month was very busy for Elder May and as his mission is drawing to a close, he is truly rising to the occasion of all his responsibilities. I am simply in awe most of the time of his testimony and his ability to speak and his testimony. Most importantly, he knows that his Heavenly Father loves him and knows him by name. I am honored to be his mom and very blessed to watch his growth as he continues to serve the Lord. Enjoy!!
Hi everyone! I thought June would be an easier month, but it
just got crazier than last month! I have no regrets though and I love the way
that my life has been going. We had our zone temple trip, Dayton and I got to
go to Elder Haws’s Homecoming Talk, and I got to be a part of our monthly
leadership council. I also got to tour all the nonprofits in my district, my
friend got jaw surgery and I got to be at the hospital and visit him many
times, and finally, our Mesa Zone talent show.
First, our zone temple trip. Elder Lott had made me aware
and it being Saturday morning, I made sure to let Sister Hayward know and I got
to bring Dayton with me. For Dayton and me, it was just the same usual thing
for us but as I was in the temple, I had an amazing thought. Of course,
proselyting missionaries are important, but service missionaries are just as
equally important in performing the service of the Lord. Not only do we serve
those around us, in the LDS church or not, but in the temple, we push the work
along by a ton. Can you imagine a swarm of at least 70 to 80 missionaries
coming to a temple at the same time? 40 missionaries going to the baptismal
font and performing baptisms for the dead, 5 ancestors each. That’s easily 200
people that have just been baptized by proxy. Then, you have another 20
missionaries performing initiatory, causing at least 100 people to receive
those ordinances. Finally, you have our 20 that are causing 20 people to be
endowed. Of course, these numbers are just estimates but can you imagine the
thought of 320 people being helped by our group of missionaries in the space of
2 hours? That’s just at the temple together! If you haven’t felt the Spirit of
the Lord yet, now imagine each one of those missionaries going out and serving
and blessing completely different people each day, regardless of where they
work, for months or even years, without asking for anything in return.
Our service missionaries are exactly perfect. We reach out
to those that the proselyting missionaries can’t reach. Even if you are not a
fan of the LDS church, at least please be a fan of our missionaries and just
give them a smile or a handshake or a hug as all they do is try their absolute
very best to help others without asking for anything in return. The greatest
thing about our missionaries is that you can still feel the most celestial of
love for yourself from others, regardless of if you are affiliated with the LDS
church or not.
I was given the opportunity to be able to go to Elder Haws’s
Homecoming Talk with Dayton and his family. For those of you that don’t know,
Elder Haws was kind of my trainer. When I first started my mission, he was the
first person that made me feel truly welcome as we planted flowers at the Mesa
Temple. He asked me what my talents were, he just treated me with respect and
with love. He let me come with him on every Tuesday and trained me to take care
of Dayton and his endowment sessions. I remember there was one week that I
invited him to dinner and he invited me to his home to have dinner with his
family instead. They were all so kind and loving to me. Elder Haws has always
been there, and he’s always been willing to listen and to help when I needed
help or has just been there to be my support. I love Elder Haws. He is just so selfless,
and he was the perfect companion for Dayton. He showed me how to communicate
with Dayton and he taught me how to love Dayton. He taught me that a service
mission is just as real as a proselyting mission and that it’s just as important.
His homecoming talk was amazing! He brought up so many key things about
revelation and fasting that I hadn’t thought of for a while and how important
they are, but that they will only give us answers if we give 100% of our
efforts to get answers from revelation and fasting. I truly love Elder Haws and
everything he has done for me. I had a lot of hardships with my mission and he
really helped open my eyes to God’s plan that was in store for me through those
hardships. I will always be grateful for him.
The next thing that happened in the month was my leadership
council. I feel like they happen every month but every month, I get rejuvenated
with brand new ideas and different tactics for my district. My district is
incredible by the way. Things are going well, they’re responding and
participating in different activities and they all have the desire to tell me
what’s going on in their lives which is a nice feeling to have. Anyway, this
month we talked about the distinct roles of a district leader and what it means
to us. It started out and I didn’t want to answer every single time because I
wanted to let others have the chance to participate, but the spirit had a
different thing for me to say on every one of the 15 questions that we went
through. I felt bad because I felt like I was talking too much but I didn’t
want to miss an opportunity that Heavenly Father wanted me to say because I
don’t know what was touching other people and their hearts. I don’t know if I
said one specific phrase and made someone’s life better. That’s a difficulty
with a service mission; I will never know the impact that I have had on
someone’s life or the impact of my service mission. I just follow the spirit
and say what he wants me to say, hoping that it pierces someone’s heart and
maybe has a chance to change either their mission or their life.
Something that we mainly talked about were the operations
managers of each missionary. For those that don’t know, in a service mission,
all missionaries must get signed on through an operations manager. An
operations manager can be a director of a nonprofit, to an on-site leader, to a
stake president for some, or even to a parent of the missionary. When we go to
different sites that have Young Church-Service Missionaries, there is always an
operations manager that must be there with the missionary, unless they trust
the missionary enough to be self-sufficient in some cases. Almost every single
district falls under one operations manager, as all the missionaries work in
one job site together, except for my district. Most of my missionaries are in
service locations that are not affiliated with the LDS church and a lot of my
missionaries work in environments where the Spirit is not the focus in the
work. It kept hitting my soul that I wasn’t doing my very best to meet all the
operations managers in my district and that I needed to make a change. I worked
with Elder Lott and he and I went, as just the two of us, to visit every job
site that my missionaries work at, only about 3 days after the council.
Shortly after this month started, I received an email from
Elder Pugmire that Dayton was no longer going to be my companion. I was
frustrated with this assignment for a long time. I was never mad at Elder Pugmire,
but I was so excited to be Dayton’s companion for a very long time, and just
after two weeks, the assignment had been changed and I was just very
disappointed with the change. I absolutely love Dayton and I’ve never met Elder
Hatch, but I know that the assignment was from God and even if I was upset
about it, it wouldn’t change anything, so I have chosen to just be excited for
my next companionship. I received a companion and then about 20 seconds later,
I received another email from Elder Pugmire that I was no longer companions
with that new Elder either and that I’m just going to be flying solo while I
wait for a special Elder to come. I guess this certain Elder has finished his
paperwork and I’m just waiting on standby until this Elder receives his call
and begins his mission.
Anyway, our leadership council was on a Thursday. On that
next Monday, I woke up just feeling like I could be a district leader. I asked
Elder Lott if he would tour all the nonprofits with me and he delightfully
accepted. He met me at Save the Family and when I was done with my shift at
work, I gave Elder Lott a tour of Save the Family and then he and I drove
across the street to Helen’s Hope Chest and got to meet Mary, the operations
manager there and learn more about Helen’s Hope Chest. Helen’s Hope Chest is a
nonprofit that helps get clothing for children that are in foster care. They
constantly need clothes for the thousands of children that they serve. If they
have clothing that they can’t use, then they donate it to other nonprofits.
After that tour, Elder Lott and I drove out to Tempe to see Project CURE and we
got to see Elder Gluch working at his job there. I got the chance to meet
Brandon, the operations manager at Project CURE, who asked me for at least 20
more missionaries there. Project CURE provides and finds ways to have medical
supplies so that when places around the world have different disasters, then
Project CURE works to get those medical supplies out there for the people that
need it. Elder Lott and I then drove together out to Mesa to visit the Summit.
The weird thing about the Summit is that it’s only about 5-10 minutes from my
house but because of the weird ways that the cities are in Arizona, it’s
considered to be in the most eastern part of Mesa, so it’s in my district. We
got to see Sister Wilson there, and unfortunately didn’t get a chance to meet
the operations manager, but you could tell that Sister Wilson was very self-sufficient
in her work. Sister Wilson works there for her job and her mission. For her
job, she works in the regular senior living home and for her mission, she works
in the memory care center. The Summit is a senior living center for seniors
that have no one else to take care of them. The memory care center inside are
for those that have mental issues such as dementia or Alzheimer’s that can’t
remember almost anything. The Spirit is not there very much but Sister Wilson
is so strong in her line of work. To work at the Summit, you must tell the same
person every day, exactly what you are going to do, and you must be prepared to
make your own initiative and really have a desire to serve others. My
missionaries are so strong in their respective locations. I couldn’t ask for a
better district.
One of my very best friends, Brandon Atkin, Elder Atkin’s
older brother, needed jaw surgery near the end of June. In total, it was a six-hour
surgery for him. He and I have been friends for over 10 years as we grew up
together. I was really worried about him during the surgery and all the
complications that could’ve occurred so Elder Lott and Elder Hepfinger really helped
by keeping me distracted throughout the duration of the surgery. The next day
after, I visited Brandon afterwards and stayed for a long time. I’m very happy
to say that he is doing very well and as he is in post-op surgery, he is having
a much quicker recovery than most. Brandon got to have his whole family visit,
he got a visit from his grandparents, another one of our very good friends FaceTime
in and Brandon got to talk to him through that for a while. Even Elder Lott
took time out of his busy life and came to visit Brandon, so he wasn’t alone in
the hospital. It was sweet to see how many people came to visit him.
Finally, we had our talent show. This thing was a lot of
preparation and demanding work. Elder Lott reached out to Elder Hepfinger and
I, asking us how to get the missionaries to better know each other. The
original idea was that we came up with multiple games to play to get to know
each other. One night, in a burst of good energy, I told Elder Lott and
Hepfinger that we should do a talent show instead and they loved the idea. In
total, we inspected the church 3 times to make sure that everything was in
working order before the show. We had several meetings and tried to have as
much outreach as possible. We even invited the Gilbert Zone to participate in
it as well. I volunteered to sing Never Enough from the Greatest Showman
soundtrack. Well, we got to opening night and it just seemed like almost
everyone that was going to go just forgot or didn’t want to participate
anymore. My family was there as well as some leaders and a couple of missionaries,
but it was getting to the point that I was beginning to panic and just kept
thinking that we should just cancel the show. Elder Hepfinger told me to hold
out hope and we will just go with what Elder Lott said. Elder Lott came and
told us that we should continue even if we have a much lower turnout. He
brought up a good point to me. Even if only our families were there, Elder
Hepfinger’s family hadn’t seen my talent and my family hadn’t seen his. We
should continue to express our talents as we don’t know what will pierce the
world’s hearts. After that I was completely calm. We all performed. We had
Sister Randall, an on-site leader from the Bishop’s Storehouse, show off her
martial arts talents, Elder Lott and I sang A Child’s Prayer, I sang Never
Enough, Elder Hepfinger danced and Elder Lott played the violin. It was fun,
and it was great to have it be completed. It was fun to come up with a project
and work to prepare it and perform and everything, but on the other hand, I’m glad
that we finished so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Every month passes by and I feel like that was the best
month ever and I just get blown away by the next month. This month was
incredible. So many good things happened, so many miracles that I was able to
witness. I am so grateful for my mission. I am so grateful for my family that
support me when I need them there and I am so grateful for all my friends that
I have gained through my mission and the ones that I have had since before my
mission. I have been able to do so many different things. As I read my old
emails, I can see my own growth through them. I love my district, I love
working with Dayton each week and the sweet celestial spirit that he always has
ready to give to me. I love my leaders that I get to work with, Elder Hepfinger
and Elder Lott and their examples to me. I love all the people that I have been
able to meet and help at Save the Family. Throughout my service mission, I can
feel myself growing in diverse ways and I’ve been able to be there for others.
Something that I was told that I struggle with is being able
to give myself credit for things that I do. I have been working on my
self-worth because of this and I had an analogy come to my mind. Many times,
each one of us have been compared as instruments in the Lord’s hands. Every
time I hear that phrase, I think of a musical instrument. If we were all the
same musical instrument, we would all produce the same sound which would not
give much of a variety. We all are different people, different instruments that
The Lord may need to us at various times. We can’t compare a flute to a trumpet
and be upset when they make different sounds so why do we try to compare
ourselves to others? Another thing about the instrument is that for to play the
instrument or have The Lord speak to us, we must stay in a good condition. We
do that by reading the scriptures, praying, serving our mission and helping
others. If we don’t keep our instrument in a good condition, why do we expect
The Lord to pick up our instrument and still play it beautifully? We should give
ourselves credit for keeping the instrument in a good condition and letting The
Lord play our musical instrument. We shouldn’t say that the Lord’s talent of
playing the music is because of us but if it wasn’t for us, then The Lord
couldn’t use us to further God’s work. Yes, The Lord is the perfect example to us,
but he isn’t expecting us to use him like we owe him everything in our lives.
He wants to be our best friend and friends don’t act like one owes the world to
the other. He wants us to be equal with Him. I love my Heavenly Father and I
love Jesus Christ. Because of this moment, I want to try to keep my musical
instrument in a better condition so that Heavenly Father will be delighted to
play the instruments that I have prepared. I love the work that I do. I’m
excited for what July has in store for me!
Love,
Elder May
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