San Diego Week 7- Companions, Contacting, & Cancer

One thing I need to address before I get started. Due to my transition from the MTC to the field, and the accompanying change in the release schedule of these weekly emails, it has been almost two weeks since my last letter. However you'll see that there has been no break in the numbering. Well, I've decided to change what the number means. Heretofore the number has described what week the email was sent durring, but henceforth the number will describe what week the email is about. Except for this week. This email is about the last half of week 6, and all of week 7. Sorry it has to be that way, but change is never without cost. Thank you all for your patience during this time of confusion and instability.

Anyway, hey everyone, how's it going?

So like I mentioned, I've left the MTC and I'm out in the field now. The area I'm in is a few hours east of San Diego in the Imperial Valley. It's a small desert town called Brawley. Me and my companions are whitewashing the area, which means that both the previous missionaries are leaving at the same time, and we're coming in together, completely new to the area. And yes, I said companions; there are two. I'm in a trio. Their names are Elder Reid and Elder Humble. They've both been out about eighteen months. They are pretty chill so far. I'll let you know more when I get to know them a bit better.

Getting here was fun. Right when we got to the area, we met the Bishop of the Brawley Ward, who is called Bishop Smith. One of the first thing he told us was that the last missionaries to be here had done basically nothing for the past six weeks. Then he told us a bit about the area. Apparently Brawley used to have a Spanish branch, but it was shut down because it was too small, and now they are part of the Brawley Ward. They go to church at the same time as the ward, and have separate meetings in Spanish. Bishop Smith told us that he wants us to get the Spanish Branch to the point where it can be separate again. He said just five or six more priesthood holders should be enough. That would be about doubling the current number. So that's going to be our primary goal while we're here.

After talking to him, we went to our appartment. And it was trashed. There was garbage and half-eaten food everywhere. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. It was disgusting. The last elders who lived here were going home after this transfer, so they just left their stuff (clothes, bedsheets, toothbrushes, etc.) to be our problem. It was horrible. But we cleaned the place up and moved the furniture around, and it's actually pretty nice now. There are two bathrooms, which is great for such a small apartment. And there's also a pretty nice piano keyboard that I think a member must have donated. None of us play, but it has hymns programmed into it, so we use it for ambient music sometimes.

So I guess I should talk about contacting and teaching. That's what I spent the past six weeks preparing for, and it's what I've spent more time doing than anything else since I got here. And it's what I came here to do. I don't know how I feel about it so far. I'll tell you one experience.

We contacted a lady on the street the day we got here, and made an appointment for us to come teach her family a few days later. They were eating lunch when we came, and they invited us to eat with them. They gave us some soup that had some strange meat, with bones and everything in the soup. I'm not sure what kind it was. It tasted like beef, but there was a part that was clearly vertebrae, and they were way to small to have been a cow. It was good though. I was really surprised that they would just invite basically strangers in like that, and treat us so generously. It was a cool experience.

Contacting and teaching are strange things to me. I'll have to get more experience before I can talk about them any more, but I will do that at some future point.

One final thing. Before I end, I want to tell you about my last few days at the MTC.

Anyone who knows me will know that I don't make friends very easily. For me to get to know someone well enough to become friends with them usually takes a long time, and then it's still uncertain what kind of friendship that person and I will have; whether we'll be good friends or just people who know eachother. Coming into the MTC, I didn't expect I'd make any friends there.

But the amount of time you spend with people is a lot. It's basically 24/7 with your companion, and hours and hours every day with your district. And the things you're doing with them- studying the gospel, practicing a language and teaching skills- bring out a lot of openness. Kind of force it out a little, but one way or another it's there. So I got to know everyone and came to care about them a lot more than I expected to.

There was one elder in my district called Elder Taylor. On the first day when we all met each other, I learned from him that he'd had cancer before coming out on his mission. He told us about his treatment, and it sounded painful and terrible. But he was super cool about it. He a was very resilient person, and his suffering didn't weigh him down.

He told us about how through it all, he'd decided to serve a mission. It was clear how happy he was to be doing that. He had a strong sense of his purpose, certainly more so than me. And he had a very strong conviction in his desire to serve, certainly more so than me.

Anyway, over the following weeks, I got to know him more. He was a real cool dude. And I wouldn't say this about just anybody, but if I'd known him for like another year, we would have probably been friends.

Just a few days before we left the MTC, he went to the doctor to have looked at what he thought was TMJ, and he found out it came back. He has cancer again. He was released the next day on medical leave.

At the time he left, he didn't know yet how bad it was, or what the treatment would be like. He just knew he would have to be released and probably be in the hospital for a while again.

That he's going to have to go through that again sucks unbelievably. What really sucks though, is that his mission is over. Through all the suffering of his previous treatment, he wanted to serve a mission. He waited so long and endured so much, and he finally got it. And then it only lasted a few weeks. If he'd been called somewhere English speaking, he'd have gotten a couple weeks in the field. But he never left the MTC. Now even if the treatment goes fast and without complications, it will still be a long time before he's cleared to go again. And that's the best case scenario. That sucks on a really deep level. I don't even know how to express it. It depressed me quite a bit. It still does, and it's not even me.

The other thing I've been thinking about is what if I'd known from the beginning that it would only be for a few weeks? That in a few weeks, it would be over, and that such a large part of his memories of his mission would be of me? I would have tried so much harder to be his friend.

How fast can strangers become friends? And what kind of a friendship can two given people have? I don't know. Even ideally, it probably wouldn't have made that much difference. But I wish I had tried anyway. I wish I had made what difference I could, whatever that would have been.

I'm sorry for getting all overly emotional and complaining about my made up problems while Elder Taylor has cancer. It was a sobering thing to see, and it made me think a lot.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'll keep you posted on what's going on.

Your Friend,
Elder Wadsworth


P.S.  

This didn't really fit in anywhere, but here are some cube patterns I figured out. 

No sticker is next to another sticker of the same color, either laterally or diagonally, including across the edges of the puzzle (by which I mean that, for example, the UF and FUR
stickers would be considered diagonally touching). 

And on this one, there's at least one sticker of every color on each side.