Ben's Mission to Toronto

From Ben - The Apathy Trap Elder Blum and I are still very slowly getting our feet underneath us for the Social Media game.  We've got the general gist, but all the nuance and the micro details that make a big difference we are still trying to wrap our heads around In the local library, after a small blitz of trying to understand paid advertising and where our mission stands on that front, Elder Blum saw a book with the title of something like, 'Emotions Explained by really Muscly Dudes' In a moment of weakness, we spent 20 minutes laughing at this hilarious comic strip book in the middle of the library.  Because we were in the library, we had to suppress the laughter somewhat, and the classic awkard moment happened.  My vocal chords betrayed me and in the midst of our silent laughter, when inhaling the oxygen I needed to live, something happened as it entered my lungs I wheeze-cackle laughed really loud.  The silence of both the library and the readers in it silentl...

From Ben - My Conscience and I Our church parking lot is incredible.  The people of Newmarket use it as a free parking place, so we get cops, taxi-drivers, moms waiting for school to end, and workers taking lunch breaks. We'll usually walk up to people and see if they'd be down to hear a short message about the Restoration of Jesus Christ's Gospel.  Barring the cop, the two taxi drivers and a lady that drove away as we were walking up to say hi, everyone else listened and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon!  The one mom who was waiting for her child to get out of school explained that she loved the videos that the Church put out, and had used some of them to teach her children.  Kinda cool.  We had an incredible conversation with her; her faith was so sincere and she asked great questions.  We sure love the church parking lot.  On Tuesday me and Elder Blum had the most productive walk to a Tim Hortons to do a companionship study I've ever had. ...

From Ben - D&C 121:39 It has been a doozy of a week.  Transfer call night. The phone starts ringing.  It's President Ensign.  To me and Elder Durant's suprise, I am getting. transferred out. He is staying a 4th in Weston. (He's a champion) And I got sent to Newmarket!  To be the Digital Finding and Teaching Coordinator over the Canada Toronto Mission. Basically, me and Elder Blum (my companion now) lead and coordinate the Social Media efforts for the entire mission.  With this in mind, most of what we do is delegation to more effective missionaries in Facebook page running, content creating, and Ad placing.  It's awesome  However, I got some first hand experience with the  concept that power corrupts.  (Not talking about Heaven's power, that purifies, but the prideful power)  Now, not saying I became a tyrannical social media missionary, rejoicing in my authority over others; but at a certain moment, when I sat down to journal my exp...

From Ben - 5 More Minutes At the beginning of this week, I ran into a very common missionary danger. Napping.  It's exactly what you explained to me, Sam and Josh. The fact that you never really stop being tired, you just get better at being tired  I realized it was becoming a real problem when instead of my forecasted 20 minute nap Wednesday at Dinner, it turned into a 40 minute nap.  I knew it had become an addiction.  To fight back against the perpetual pull of tiredness, I started swinging back.  I resolved to turn off my phone as soon as I could as after 9:00 (sometimes there were follow up calls with District Members, so I couldn't do it immediately) and started trying to be in bed a little earlier.  This led to me trying to be on my phone less during both the lunch and dinner hours, which led to me to realize that I had been on my phone way more than I thought I had been! What a beautiful revelation!  My dream is that after the mission, I offici...