Happy New Year!
I don’t know how it feels for y’all, but I cannot believe that it’s 2021. Maybe that’s a universal sentiment, but I also know that missions feel like this timeless vacuum. At least, that’s what mine has felt like.
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| Me trumpeting in the new year |
Anyway, on to whatever I got up to! For those of you who don’t have a perfect memory of these weeklies (as in these email updates), several weeks ago I mentioned creating a music group with Hermana Likes called Lil Men. I also joked that we would have a single coming out shortly. Apparently I shouldn’t do that, because the TNM* put together a music video of missionaries singing Lauren Daigle’s song “Light of the World” that includes the two of us! Give it a good ol’ watch and keep an eye out for the final shot recorded by yours truly.
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| Hermana Petersen and I enjoying some cheese and grape juice like high-society women |
New Year’s Eve was so much fun! There was no karaoke à la “High School Musical,” but we did have noisemakers, 2021 tiaras, and some killer cheese dip, thanks to one of our members, Sister Woodmansee! And we had an indoor snowball fight with these fake snowballs that another member, Sister Reeves, bought us. All in all, a pretty good holiday!
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| 3/4 of the Columbia crew celebrating! |
Transfers happened, but our district basically stayed the same. Apparently things changed up a lot when I got here, so we weren’t due for any major shake-ups. But we did have to say goodbye to Elder French. #gonebutnotforgotten. (We’ll see him at zone conference.) But this means I’ve been here a transfer.† Crazy!
Hermana Petersen and I really put our shoulder to the wheel this week. We’ve been finding and teaching like crazy. And I have some good news because of it!
We’ve been teaching this incredibly nice old man named Howard, and as soon as we met him, we could tell that he was super prepared to hear our message. But we hadn’t been able to contact him this weekend because of the telephone lines being down across Tennessee.‡ We were finally able to have our second lesson on Tuesday, which was about the Plan of Salvation. But halfway through it, we shifted into explaining the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we got to invite Howard to be baptized, and he accepted! I can’t even begin to describe how joyful that moment was. My chest felt like it was on fire (in a good way)! It turns out that Howard doesn’t live in our area, so we sent him over to another companionship to see him through, but I’m so grateful we got to invite him to the message of the restored gospel!
Something great about the new year? We’ve got a new standard work to study for “Come, Follow Me.” And this year it’s Doctrine and Covenants! I am extremely excited, in large part due to my “Saints” reading, but also because all of the scriptures are awesome.
In the spirit of D&C, I figured I’d share a scripture from it. It’s found in Section 64:
33 Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.
Not every day of missionary work is as obviously joyful as the day we invited Howard to be baptized. When I think back to it, we still had to face a lot of rejection, even an hour before we had our lesson with him. Most days in the vineyard, you aren’t harvesting. Sometimes the small things feel like they’re worthless. But I assure you, they aren’t. One might say that they’re the start of something new.
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| There are a lot of fun signs like this around Tennessee! |
I’m so grateful to be a missionary, and I’m so grateful to have so many people supporting me through this effort. I hope that 2021 will bring forth that which is great.
— Auld Lang Syne!
Hermana Newton
* Tennessee Nashville Mission
† Missionaries serve in a given area for six weeks at a time. They might be transferred to another area at the end of the six weeks; hence, each six-week segment is called a transfer. It is typical for a missionary to remain in the same area for several transfers.
‡ AT&T’s internet and phone service in three states was disabled for several days after a Christmas morning explosion in Nashville.
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