going digital

Dear Family,

I love reading your e-mails. I wish I could reply to them all, but since it takes a half hour just to read them, I have a time constraint on that desire. I'm delighted to have such talented, intelligent, culturally awake, and spiritual family members. And the humor is always uplifting.

Winter has been smiling on us lately, but mostly at night. During the day, the sun tends to burn off all the clouds by noon and give us a warm day until about 6pm. Then the sun goes down, the wind picks up, and the temperature drops. We started eating in members' homes for dinner this week, so we didn't have to come home at 6pm every night. We made the mistake a couple times of leaving at 3 in the light of sunshine and then getting caught in the cold - and at 6, when we wanted our sweaters, time just wouldn't allow it, and dinner didn't give us a reason to go back. We now pack the sweaters with us at 3, just in case.

We worked like crazy this week. President Mora gave permission for the zone leaders to buy and use a cell phone, so we took advantage of that offer last week. The cell phones are a little less complicated here: normally they're all pre-pay with phone card recharges. However, cell phone to cell phone, cell phone to home phone, and cell phone to a different phone company's cell phone all have different charges. I don't quite understand it, but I just know that I can still call people. Nevertheless, this asset helped us work miracles this week. Our baptismal service was starting at 6, and nobody was showing up. We called the ward mission leader and convinced him that it wasn't going to start at 7, and we pulled off a fantastic baptism with many investigators watching it. I managed to get into my white pants again, but it wasn't easy. We might have bought a size bigger. I think we can go elastic next time on the waistband. In other ways, our cell phone helped us coordinate a lot of lessons with members to come with us. And since almost every member has a cell phone, we save time - instead of walking to their house and hoping they're home, we get instant results. I've wondered about living without a cell phone. It is possible and it is cheaper: however, I firmly believe that God allowed man to invent them so that they could be used in His work.

This week's zone meeting was fun. After the usual reports, updates, and announcements, we had a little activity inspired by a story we heard of in some far-off seminary class. Our zone had listed some high goals of baptisms they wanted to achieve this month, and we wanted to show them that accomplishing goals requires work, commitment, love, and teamwork. Using the chalkboard, my companion started asking our district leaders for the names of people they wanted to help join the church this month. After writing each name, he looked at me and I did 10 push-ups. Being about 15 pounds heavier than I once was and out of the habit of some 50 push-ups daily, I was getting pretty tired after about 8 names. Nine and ten were rough, and I think I couldn't do any more after eleven. When it was apparent that my effort wasn't enough, my companion asked one of the district leaders to help out. He did three or so, and we ended that group. There are eight companionships in our zone, each with their goals. It took a while, but we went through all of them. I loved seeing some elders just stand up and walk to the front to do 10 push-ups for someone another companionship was teaching. I even got to do some more after recovering a few minutes. We didn't make the sisters do any push-ups, and the grand total ended up being 60 names - even higher than the goal they had set last week. I really liked the example, and I think it helped the missionaries understand the worth of a soul and the love and work it takes to help them. I heard once that the glory in doing something hard is in doing it. Like a sign I saw on a wall in Going Vertical (my favorite personal training place back home): if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

Needless to say, my arms were a bit sore for the rest of the week. But I learned that I can do a whole lot more push-ups for my zone in one morning than I can do for myself in my own exercise time. I don't think doing push-ups actually saves souls, but it's interesting how a certain level of motivation moved us to give a lot more of ourselves than we normally could. I love it.

Well, until next week. I've got some spiritual experiences to share, but hopefully the above (is that gramatical construction legal in English? "lo arriba" - ha, I'm not even sure if it's legal in Spanish, but it sounds fine to me; I'm getting out of practice here) will help you feel just a little of what I'm feeling right now.

Love,
Elder Withers