The Hammer of Thor written August 9, 2013
The week started off pretty slow because of transfer meeting on Tuesday.
There was a leader's meeting afterwards that took up a lot of time. Nothing
too exciting at transfer meeting. Our whole zone stayed pretty much the
same.
Things got exciting on Wednesday. Elder Goates managed to set up four
appointments in between the hours of 6 and 7:30. So they called us to see
if we could set up some splits to make these appointments happen. I went
with Elder Adams and we first visited a less active family. That was a very
sad visit. They are good people. But when I finally got down to asking them
why they stopped coming to church, I was not prepared for the flood that
was coming. He went off. He talked for about 20 minutes straight about all
the hypocrisy and back-biting of members at the church. He had beef with
the bishop, with the missionaries, and with the members. And it was all
legitimate too. There may have been other factors as well, but everything
he told me sounded pretty believable for our ward. I apologized for the
actions of people in the past and tried to explain to him that the church
is perfect but the people are not. He told me that he knows. He says that
he doesn't have anything against the doctrine of the church. But if the
people are going to act like this, then he doesn't want any part in it. He
said that he might come back someday. But right now he's just not sure what
he needs to do.
So as Elder Adams and I contemplated that visit, we headed to our next
appointment. And on the way, we found a film crew up on Flatbush Ave. As we
walked by, one of them asked us if we wanted to be on TV. Well obviously we
said yes. They were from the History Channel and they asked us to walk
down the street and then walk back towards them. So we went off. And
as we walked back, this dude came up to us in a lab coat, dragging
this box behind him. He stops us and asks if he can ask us some
questions. The camera was still on us, so we were like sure. He pulls
out a rubber bike tube and asks if he had a giant slingshot made of
these, what would be a cool thing to launch with it. We were not
prepared to come up with ideas for things to launch. And he didn't
really explain why we were launching it. It was confusing. But we
threw out some random ideas. The best one we had was to launch a
cornucopia of food. He actually wrote it down in his idea book. Then
he left. We talked to the film crew afterward and it turns out the
idea they're looking for is to launch a giant paper airplane. Like we
were going to think of that.
Not too much else happened for the rest of the week. We had a fun ward
party on Saturday afternoon. They all met at Prospect Park and we had
a bbq and played soccer. There was a surprisingly good turnout and we
had a fun time with the ward.
The real party was on Sunday though. Saturday evening I got a call
from the bishop. It turns out one of the speakers for Sunday dropped
out and he asked if one of the missionaries could speak. I asked if
anybody was interested in speaking, nobody volunteered. That meant I
was up. I was kind of frustrated with it at first. But then I saw a
golden opportunity to finally make things happen in this ward. So I
crafted a baller talk. I talked about the mission vision and about the
scripture in Isaiah that talks about strengthening the stakes and
lengthening the cords of our tent. Then I told them that things really
aren't working right now. We can only do so much without your help.
And we really need your help. Then I began to talk about all the
things that need to start happening in the ward before we will see any
success in missionary work. In essence, I declared myself the son of
Odin and then dropped the hammer of Thor on the ward. It was awesome.
It's funny to look back to a year ago in the MTC when we would freak
out about having to write a three minute talk every Sunday. And know
I'm pulling out 15 minute condemning talks. I have come a long way in
the last year.
I was worried about offending people, but the bishop told me that the
ward needed this and thanked me for it. So hopefully we start to see
some improvements or at the very least some changes around here. But
until then, we'll just keep chugging along. It's all we can do. Until
next week.
Love,
Elder Erickson
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