Dear Friends and Family,
I'm (re)learning a great lesson here, not only about being a better missionary but about life in general: when everything goes wrong and takes a turn for the worse, we can either let our adverse experiences be our destruction or our building blocks.
First of all, I'm still dealing with some pretty difficult back and knee pain. The last two days have been by far the worst days so far on my mission, pain-wise. BUT I am seeing more and more how the Lord is teaching me through this trial the value and strengthening power of personal perseverance. I teach people all the time the importance of enduring to the end and how it is a crucial and necessary process that must follow faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. Now I am understanding even better how important that endurance is, and I can see every day the hand of the Lord in my life and how He is not only blessing me for persevering, but also how He rewards me according to my endurance through difficulty. That seems to be an underlying theme to my life this last week.
On Thursday, we went to meet with a new investigator named Jeremi for the first time. He was golden. He was excited to receive the Book of Mormon and said that he already knew that it could help him and his family grow closer to Christ. We asked him if we could come teach him more and he excitedly agreed. In an attempt to always find more people to teach, we asked him to bring friends or family along, and he promised he would. On Friday, we met at the appointed time with our missionary exchange (a church member who accompanies us for fellowshipping, support, and transportation purposes). Jeremi welcomed us into his home, and as we stood to hold hands in a circle and pray for the Spirit to be with us, his friend---an older gentleman---walked into the room. We invited him to join us. He said that he would sit in on the lesson, but he wouldn't pray with us because we "pray to a different God". Uh oh. Jeremi started us off with a beautiful prayer to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. And we began our lesson. Almost immediately, his friend began to loudly interrupt everything we were saying, telling us that we were false prophets, that the Book of Mormon is a hoax, that Joseph Smith was a blasphemous charlatan, and that we were from a nonChristian cult. To make matters much, much worse, our exchange, an equally hard-headed native southerner, began to fight back against Jeremi's friend, who was a minister of some Baptist denomination. The argument grew heated and the Spirit that joined us in the first few moments was replaced by the spirit of contention. Jeremi, Elder Peck, and I were unable to get a word in. After trying (and failing) to calm our exchange down by telling him to be quiet and firmly grasping his knee, I turned my attention to the minister and asked him for permission to speak without being interrupted. It took standing up and boldly telling him that if he wasn't going to be silent then we would leave immediately to get him to hold his peace, but it finally worked. Jeremi was finally able to ask why the Book of Mormon was so important to us if we already have the Bible, and I bore testimony of its divinity and how I came to know that it was true. After maybe a minute, the minister and our exchange were back at each other's throats in argument and disagreement. Needless to say, we left soon after, dragging our exchange out the door. While the lesson in and of itself may be presented as an utter failure, I learned a valuable lesson, again, of the power of testimony and the divinity of my call as a missionary. A knowledge of these things is solidified each time I face opposition on my mission.
And it just gets better and better.
On Friday night, after planning for the next day, we were just about to have our companionship prayer when the phone began to ring. We looked down and saw the caller ID recognize it as a Utah number. It was my Dad's cell phone number. That freaked me right out! I let it ring, afraid to answer it, because in almost all circumstances talking to family on the phone is against mission rules. Dad left a voicemail that said, "Elder Schank, this is your Dad. I know this is probably a weird phone call to get, but President Cotterell gave me your phone number and asked that I call you. Call me back when you can." So, I did. He called to inform me that his father, my grandpa, had passed away due to a series of infections he had contracted at the hospital while recovering from a hip replacement. As Dad related the story to me, I felt completely at peace. I knew because of the Plan of Salvation that Grandpa is in the spirit world, doing the same work that my sister Christa and I are doing on the other side of the veil. I have felt the Spirit's kind assurance that he is doing good work to help those spirits without a knowledge of God's plan for them to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was difficult news to take, of course, and I cried a little bit for my Dad as I was speaking to him. I can't imagine how hard it would be to lose your father. I imagined what it would be like to get a call from someone else to inform me that Dad had died, and that was a painful and horrible thought. But I KNOW that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ all our losses are made up in time according to our faith. My joy as a missionary grew when Christa joined me in the field; it has grown even more as my Grandpa has joined the ranks on the other side. This experience has ultimately increased my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His infinite Atonement.
Another difficulty I'm dealing with is the fact/extreme likelihood that I will be leaving Greenville in a week from today. This is really going to be hard for me to do... I love the people in the ward and those we've been teaching. There are so many people we've found ready to be taught and I want to be here to see them go all the way towards baptism and then into the better life ahead of them. After leaving a family of investigators for probably the last time on Sunday, they began to cry, and I was pretty close to it, too! I'm really going to miss them, but I was reminded this morning of the importance of being transferred during my scriptures study. In Acts 18:23 it says of Paul:
"And after he had spent some time there, he departed, and went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples."
I reflected back on how I have been strengthened by the companionships of Elders Fuhriman, Westley, and Peck, and how I have provided some help to them as well. I understand better now that trials are really tools we can use to grow, and that we don't have to go it alone; we have each other. That is the way God intended our lives to be. In the words of Christ, "when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:32). I know that as I have done that and as my wonderful companions have done that to help me, my conversion is even more and more real.
I know that if we endure through trials we can grow. We are purified by the Refiner's fire so that we can become even more precious and of even greater worth than we already are in our Heavenly Father's eyes. I testify that Jesus is the Christ and that, if we are faithful, all our losses will be made up by His Atoning blood.
I love you all and hope to hear from you soon! Keep the letters coming! I promise I'll write back to those of you who are waiting on a reply!
With love,
Elder Schank
North Carolina Raleigh Mission
6508 Falls of Neuse, Ste. 100
Raleigh, NC 27615
United States
