August 2, 2021
From Mom - Getting into Practice
Dear Elder Smith,
We heard a good quote in regards to journal keeping …. “The weakest ink is better than the strongest memory.” Ooooh. Nothing like a good quote to motivate a practice that should be habit. I wish I wasn’t a feast-or-famine-kind-of-girl. Currently, I’m in a journal-writing famine, but I’ll try to do better. Why? Because excellent, worthy experiences happen every day and I. Forget. Them! Ugh. Henry B. Eyring suggested the question, “How have I seen the hand of God in my life today?” and think about it and write it down, even if it’s only one sentence. Then, over time, to see the pattern of heavenly love.
Yesterday, it was sitting on an uncomfortable largish stone at the edge of the lake with Kurri. It was the Sabbath and I decided to avoid swimming in order to keep the day set apart. We were squished on this rock, with our feet in the water in an attempt to stay cool. Under our feet was a myriad of beautiful multicoloured stones which we would randomly pick up and admire. Kurri and I were having a good conversation, when suddenly a rogue wave had the audacity to soak us up to our hip bones. We screamed, then laughed because it actually felt pretty good. Turns out having a wet dress is a fantastic way to stay cool on a sweltering day.
It doesn’t seem like a glorious moment, but it really was. It’s the exact scene that comes to mind when I ask myself Elder Eyring’s question. God has given me a beautiful sister who fills my soul with laughter and love. And that I could spend time with her in a gorgeous world that offers little unexpected surprises now and then.
A fascinating tidbit I learned this week, is that the title “God,” when traced back to its original Hebrew … is pluralistic; meaning male AND female, working in perfect harmony. It makes perfect sense to me. I adore studying the Gospel and how the more I learn, the better the world makes sense. That bit of knowledge actually makes Elder Eyring’s question easier to answer for me. I think a male God could have created rocks but a female God might have added colour to them. And it seems a mother would create life-giving water and a father would use it to splash his overheated child. Ha. It’s an over-simplification, I know. And I’m not trying to be irreverent, but it’s a profound idea worth thinking about.
We’ve been having a great time at Koocanusa. What could be a better combination than family + hot weather + a lake? The little cousins are hilarious. They painted a pile of rocks for Chad for his birthday. They follow Sam and Josh around for help developing D&D characters. Elli walked into the motor home and announced she was cranky and Nora said, “Sometimes you are cranky if you don’t get enough sleep.” And she’s not wrong, but it made us laugh.
Emma Driessen came with the girls and they set up a fancy glamping tent complete with Steph’s old sheepskin rug, an inflatable couch and a hydrating station including delicate wine glasses. Haha. Emma’s been having many new experiences and loving almost all of them. She also has a crush on Corbin who is no longer a boy, but a tall, good-looking teenager. So weird for us oldies.
Claira has been open regarding her transition and the family has been super supportive and loving. The little cousins just shrugged and call her Claira without batting an eyelash and I know it’s because of open conversations in their respective homes. It doesn’t mean we avoid hard conversations though and she’s been good at answering our questions. At one point I asked her about suicide and depression statistics in the trans community. Claira responded that it’s a difficult question to answer if a person has never experienced gender dysphoria but a large contributor is because of isolation and rejection. Because of this reunion, now she knows that her family has unconditional love towards her and it makes all the difference. It took a lot of courage to come and she was withdrawn at first but by degrees she is back to the person we’ve always known. Pretty awesome. She’s been running campaigns for the little cousins until Sam and Josh showed up to give her a break. Haha. And she just laughs when we forget the pronouns or use her old name. We all laugh together. Practice will make it normal, eventually.
And I will also need practice writing an email to my missionary son every second Sunday. I woke up, wide awake at 3:30 a.m. realizing I needed to write you. You should know you are never far from our thoughts, always remembered in our prayers, often mentioned by name in our conversations and loved deeply every second.
Tell me about your hard experiences and how you overcame them. What is your most important spiritual epiphany? Did you have any laughing moments this week? Tell us about your new companion. Was your first week with him as stressful as you thought in terms of teaching him about the area?
Keep striving, my boy. So so so worth it.
Love you forever,
Mom
Reply from Ben:
Hey Fam.
Thanks for the tidbit about journal writing, Mum! I'm still working on making it a missionary habit, and it brings me encouragement to know that you're striving to work on it as well.
Thanks as well for the update on Clara, I think often about her, and it's comforting to know that the family has received her well, and that she's feeling loved.
Concerning hard experiences. If I'm tired, anything is infinitely more difficult . I'm starting to find out that one of my biggest responses to stress or pressure is to become apathetic. If something isn't going too well with someone who is exploring the Church, one of my thoughts might be "Well, I don't need to worry about them because there are other people to teach, and maybe in the future, they'll come to choose for themselves." Or if I'm struggling to have compassion or feel love towards my companion (for no fault of their own) I might think "I don't need to worry about improving our relationship because if I can just grin and bear it, eventually, I'll get another companion who will click better with me." Which is problematic as it's pretty much inevitable to feel stress on both fronts: for the people we're teaching, and for the relationship with my companion.
My best solution to the tempting "less-stress" mindset of apathy is the classic, "Love them, THEN the feeling of love will come after." It's hard to care sometimes, but when I try to care, even though I don't feel like caring, I have always started caring.
Talking about this in hindsight, I've also realized that when I consciously ignore problems that would cause me stress to address, it doesn't make me any happier (the classic procrastinator dillema.) I've found that when I choose to play it safe, and not care as much, or not love as much, or not try my best, I actually feel more miserable. It's an ongoing fight, but I'm definitely conquering "by and by" :)
So it's not an event that make up my hard experiences, but my reaction to the many micro inconveniences that add up to a miserable mindset that, when in, makes anything a hard experience. But I'm learning to gain that perfect brightness of hope that combats it, so no stress!
Something I'm coming to realize is how powerful the scriptures are. Whenever we read from the scriptures, the spirit is welcomed. I am really loving learning to recognize the power behind the First Vision account. Every time I've quoted Joseph Smith's account in a lesson, is the time I can easily recognize the spirit. It's pretty darn cool to see it more first hand.
One laughing moment this week was working with Elma. She has a really spontaneous personality, and so we went to go teach her a lesson but she had forgotten and was out helping a friend of hers clean up his place. She invited us over, then, within ten minutes of getting there, she invited us, and her friend to another friends house. So we ended up teaching Elma and her two friends. Old, energetic Jamacian ladies are hilarious to teach.
My new companion, Elder Hamilton, is basically a genius. He loves robotics and plans to become a Robotic Enginner. We have an unexpected amount of things in common. In Highschool, he did three years of choir, and loved his musical theatre experience, he's got funny catch phrases (Badda Boom Badda Bing is one of his favorites) and is a pretty awesome Gospel Scholar. He's really cool. Helping him get a hang of the ropes of Trenton has been way easier than I thought. He rolls with the punches pretty well.
Love you guys a whole bunch!!
- Elder Smith
From Ben - The World is Wide Enough, For both Hamilton and Me
Just a couple of high points this week.
Elder Hamilton moved in!
This guy is the jack of all trades. He's done karate, is a commendable chef, loves robotics and computer programming, is a D&D nerd, did choir for all three years in high school and loves musical theatre. Unfortunately, he is also 2 inches taller than me. You take what you can get eh? :)
Just kidding. I'm really excited to get to know him better. He's got a sound understanding of the scriptures and there's a lot I can learn from him.
During Fast and Testimony meeting on Sunday, this one 16 year old went up, and dang. I thought fiery sermons were a thing of the past, but this kid threw down some fire hot enough that it had my eyebrows singed. He dropped some facts about the "mentality of the lion" which were actually pretty solid, then directed our attention to the best means of living the best life possible. It didn't quite fall under definition of a testimony, but if the kid were to go into motivational speaking, he'd change the world. I just had to smile.
On that same Fast Sunday, we got to help a lady from the Belleville branch, Sister Courtney, move some stuff into a moving van from her boyfriend's apartment. He lived on the third floor of the apartment building and there were no elevators; so me and Elder Hamilton got to show them just how strong and fit we really were. By the fifth journey up the three sets of stairs my body was like "Heyo boss, you haven't had food or water for something like 20 hours, you should take it easy" and my brain was like "We haven't had food or water for 20 hours? Dang. Take some energy from this guy's Patience and convert it all to energy" So. I got pretty hangry for a bit. And, so as to not say anything a hangry person wants to say, I also went pretty silent. Poor Elder Hamilton, he is exceptional at rolling with the punches and my random periods of silence.
Life brightened up a bit after Sister Courtney gave us some Pizza to break our fasts with.
We were also able to have a crazy wild lesson with Elma, our old Jamaican lady friend.
We got to her apartment but she wasn't at the agreed upon rendezvous point, so we gave her a call and found out that she was at a friend's place, helping him clean up. She invited us over and so we went. Got to meet Jim, an older guy with a commendable beard. He professed non-belief in the bible and God and so we got to talking with him. In the midst of the conversation, Elma perked in and said "Hey! My friend Anne wants to meet you guys. Come along Jim!" So we left Jim's place and got to go meet Anne. She was a believer, but didn't see the reason why so many churches existed, so we started talking with her until Jim showed up. So, we got to have a lesson with Elma, Jim and Anne. It was wild. At the beginning of the lesson, we asked if they had any questions about the church and Elma was like "Oh nothing much, but me and Anne did hear that you guys were a cult and such, we didn't believe them though..." So me and Elder Hamilton had a laugh after the fact about that.
And guys, holy moly, turns out the scriptures are legit. I am ever so slowly (as it feels to me) starting to really enjoy reading the scriptures. I have enjoyed reading them before of course, but I never realized how much more I can go in enjoying them. I am currently REALLY loving the story of Alma the younger.
In a nutshell, life as a missionary is pretty good. It ain't perfect, but it's still pretty darn stellar.
1) My goofy mug in front of a beautiful landscape of houses
2) My best attempt at 'stylin' in front of the Brampton Toronto Temple
3) A cool bridge nearby our place
4) Elder Hamilton, the man, the myth, the legend.
Dang guys, I totally neglected to include the most important part of the week!! We got to see one of the kids we were teaching get baptized! My bad, that's kind of an important thing to include, so I'm including it now.
Boosh.
1) Liam Wojnicz and his dad.
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