The Thrilling Two-Part Season to My Life Finale: Part 2: Peace

Servus!

Well folks, we made it. The past week has been suspiciously normal. We've just been finding a lot and working with the investigators we've had. A few fell off the face of the earth after experiencing difficulties with the commandments, but we are going strong. It's been a good week! A long, long week, but a good one.

I can't believe that I am concluding my mission with this email. This seems unreal and I honestly have always been somewhat skeptical of my ability to endure to the end. But, nevertheless, I have, having grown through all the challenges and annoyances and repetition, and I am happy.

I am happy that I didn't waste my time out here. I am happy that I didn't waste my money or my parent's out here. I hope we all find solace together in the knowledge that I used my time to the fullest.

As with all things in life, there will always be things that you could have done better in hindsight. I should have been more bold in my second and third transfers. I should have had more patience in my fourth. I should have sought charity and confidence more in my fifth. I should have slowed down a bit in my sixth. I should have been more aware in my seventh. I should have been less trunky in my eighth and ninth. I should have been more humble in my tenth, and eleventh. I should have made more goals and plans in my twelfth and thirteenth. I should have sought after ways through which I could have helped people in my fourteenth and fifteenth. I should have enjoyed the culture more in my sixteenth.

But, on the other hand, as I have realized through the months the things upon which I should improve, I have received great joy out of seeing myself develop. I feel that I am more bold, patient, charitable, confident, easygoing, aware, focused, humble, goal/oriented, and helpful than I was when I started. I don't mean to say that I am perfect at any of these things, nor do I even mean that I exemplify them, but I have developed them more from what they have been previously.

I told President Boyer in my Leaver's Interview this week that I hope to have grown in love towards others. I don't think I was really good back home at taking deeper interest in people's lives. But, as I have said so far, we acknowledge our failures and faults and we move forward.

I consider myself a successful missionary. I've given it my best to be exactly obedient. I've worked my heart out, and my shoes are physical evidence of that. I have tried to love and have loved the people here with all my heart. The Germans are one of the most respectable groups and cultures of people that have graced this earth. I am going to miss their diligence, honesty, integrity, and commitment. There's a reason why German engineering is world-famous, because they take pride into the things they are good at and they excel with it. They can be stubborn, yes, but we all are stubborn in our own ways. Let's be honest, who does have an easy time changing their life to be more perfect?

I love my Savior. He is my Leader and He is my Redeemer. I believe in Christ, because He has ransomed me, and He has set me free from Satan's grasp. He is the source of truth and light! I love my mission for the knowledge it has given me about that.

Though I have been a successful missionary, I don't think it will count for much if I don't keep going after my mission. Walt Disney, a historical rolemodel for me as many of you know, had the motto: Keep Moving Forward! It is also emphasized by my favorite animated film, Meet the Robinsons.

LET IT GO.

LET IT ROLL RIGHT OFF YOUR SHOULDERS.

DON'T YOU KNOW?

THE HARDEST PART IS OVER: (I bet life will get harder, actually, but we will see)

SO, LET IT IN!

LET YOUR TROUBLES FALL BEHIND YOU

LET 'EM FLY.

IT'S THE HEART THAT REALLY MATTERS IN THE END.

OUR LIVES ARE MADE.

FROM THESE SMALL HOURS.

THESE LITTLE MOMENTS.

THESE TWISTS AND TURNS OF FAITH.

TIME FOR SOME RAIN.

IN THESE SMALL HOURS.

THESE SMALL HOURS.

STILL IN ME.

I have forgotten most of the lyrics but that's my rough memory of them. Fitting, eh?

Let us all build our lives from the most important principles together! Let's truly live the gospel! The blessings are rich which are in store!

I will see you soon!

Unless you're on a mission, then I will see you anywhere between 1-24 months!

Love,

Elder Wallentine

The Thrilling Two-Part Season to My Life Finale: Part 1: Return of the Currywurst

Hey friends and family!

I have an hour left--actually, 45 minutes left of preparation day. I thought I would just wait until the last moment to write a briefly--and poorly, mind you--written e-mail to the group. Again, I'm not sure how many people read these things. It also would probably help if I was consistent in sending these to the same people every week, but due to my hastiness, I have often forgotten to add anyone aside from my parents and grandpa to the receivers. Please don't be offended. I hope that this e-mail can help me summarize a bit of why I am grateful for my mission as the curtains approach a close on the stage. And actually, I want to take a bit more time, so it won't be as poorly written as anticipated.

Before I start, however, I am thrilled to report that Tony was baptized on the 19th of June! All went well with the confirmation on the following day. It was phenomenal to be able to conclude my mission with a convert baptism. He has made such great progress, and his conversion has shown me how a true convert to the church acts and thinks. I've been incredibly impressed, and have felt tremendously blessed, by his willingness to keep the commandments and make changes to his life in order to live as God would have it.

I've applied principles of goal-setting and diligence in the past three transfers more than I ever have on my mission, and we've seen the fruits of it. The zone conference we had this past week actually centered on proper goal-setting and planning, and there are plenty of important, new principles I have felt I've learned in preparation.

One thing I thought about was what a goal is, and to explain the importance and potential of goals, I would ask a question to you: 

Why do we pray?

God knows what we want, what we need, and he knows it regardless of whether or not we think or say the words. He knows us perfectly, including our desires, character, past, future, and present situations. It is not as though he will learn anything new at all as a result of seeing us pray. That cannot be the reason why we pray, if at least we believe in a God who truly is omnipotent and omniscient, as we involve God with our prayers.

The reason why we pray--and this will be clear to you--is so that we can grow in faith and humility. God has blessings ready for us, but he will wait to give them to us until we, often times, ask for them.  When we request things from God, and acknowledge our dependence on Him, as well as love, by praying, He is often more than willing to grant us what we desire as long as it is righteous and remains within His will for us.

Well, replace the words 'pray' and 'prayer' above with 'set goals' and 'goals' respectively, and you will see that they fit in nearly the exact same way. As we set inspired goals and make inspired plans with God, as guided through the Holy Ghost, we acknowledge equally our dependence on His mercy and love, as well as His power. Setting goals ultimately shows that we do have faith, but only if done within the borders of God's will for us. Setting goals in contradiction or opposition to God's plan for us shows the opposite.  Prayer stems from a Latin word that doubly means 'prayer' and 'request', and our goals can indeed be requests as we present them to God and obtain His approval.

"Well, Elder Wallentine, I hope you didn't just waste your time typing this! I, you know, am no missionary. What can I learn from this if I'm not actively doing God's work in an assigned field?"

I don't think I did waste my time typing this! The fact of the matter is that we have been assigned by God. We are to labor where we stand, and exert our labors on the earth. That, cheesy as it potentially may sound, is our calling, and it doesn't only even apply to the church. In our families, studies, work, and other righteous endeavors, do we not think and feel that God actively cheers us on? Do we not feel that He is wanting our success, or wanting our pursuit of that which we currently seek to obtain or improve? If not, we may have to concentrate a bit more on His character, and if we still can't feel that, we might want to then change what we are doing so it is in accordance to His will.

I promise you that as you seek to align everything in your life with God's will, your effectiveness will increase in ways you yourself cannot increase it. I promise you than your efforts will be consecrated to your benefit, as well as the benefit of your families and communities. On top of it all, your faith will be strengthened as you see the great hand of God work in your life.

This is one of the principles I've learned on my mission that I will apply as I return.

Here's the other key:

The Atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite in its expanse and capability to heal. We can all help others to access it regardless of our history or the history of the helped.

People who have been in dark places in their lives may feel that there is nobody else that can help them. Perhaps they feel they are entirely alone, and that anybody who tries to help them does not understand what they know or have experienced.

It should first be noted that we should seldom act as though we do know what those people experience who are in the middle of or are recovering from hard experiences. Even if one mother consults another mother, both of which are people who have lost a child, the one who is comforting does not know where the levels of faith or resilience of the other lie. Perhaps it was, though excruciatingly painful for both at many points, harder in some aspects for one than with the other. 

On the other hand, the goal of the healers and comforters in and out of the church should be to guide these people to the Ultimate Healer and companion-comforter, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost respectively. We can relate better to such if our experiences are similar, but we are not to be their primary anchors. Rather, it is the Savior. That is why we as missionaries, very few from the collective worldwide of which have ever smoked or drunk alcohol, are still able to help those with such problems. We guide people to Christ, as we ought to, and He is the True Healer. Our main goal should be that. I've spoken to a few people who say: "You can't expect me to stop. You don't have the same experience as I have had." That may be true, but that is why my goal has only been to point people to One who has experienced all of that in a very personal degree.

I am a firm witness of the fact that Jesus will take our weaknesses upon Him as we repent and grow in faith. I have absolutely no doubt in any part of my mind that He has done what He has done. Some think that is mad, but people must experience His grace personally before being able to come to a full understanding of His reality and gospel.

I've spent way longer on this than planned. This will be fun for me to read again in the future. If you bother to, you're welcome to read it all as well. If you're reading this right now, you probably read it all anyways, hahahaha.

I love you all!

Elder Wallentine

Pictures: You can tell I was stressed out the entire day because of the MASSIVE vein in my forehead. I'm glad it went well!

Hi!

Hi!

This week's been great! We had 7 people at church. That was awesome. Tony is going to be baptized this weekend! No problems in sight. Please, if you could pray that he makes it, I would be very grateful. 

I'm doing a P-Day tour as I journey throughout all the land once every week through the next three weeks. Today we visited some cool ruins. Pretty cool. Yeah. We want to pay Heidelberg a visit, too!

Okay so get this. A few weeks ago I'm talking to this totally cool dude in the bus. He's very polite and happy and just a great dude. We had an awesome conversation, and I totally would have expected that he would have agreed to give me his number. I mean, of course, right? Then I asked him for his number before he gets out, and he politely decline. I tried to convince him, but he again denied the offer. Bummer. But that's not the point of this story--rather, it is what happened subsequent to this interaction.

He stands up to get out, then as he goes to the door, a foolish man who is boarding gets in his way. For some reason, this guy flips a LID. The polite man I talked to transformed 180° into a banshee-dementor, with a voice that could easily put an M1 Abrams tank out of commission and screamed "FIRST LET US GET OFF, THEN GET IN.

FIRST OFF, THEN IN!

FIRST OFF, THEN IN!" 

By this point it looks like some fists are going to be thrown. Luckily they're not, and the poor screamee gets passed up by the screamer, who then ran off.

And thus, he was never seen in the land again.

Also hahaha, businesses do NOT want our business here in Germany. I had two experiences last P-day to illustrate this:

*walking into haircutting shop*

"How much for a basic haircut here?"

"50 euros, you peasant."

"Okay. Huh. Do you know where I can find a cheaper one?"

"Yeah just go down the street and take a right. You'll find my competitor. They do theirs for 10 euros."

*walks into sporting clothes shop*

"Hey do you have any good deals here?" (My exact wording in German)

"No."

*takes 180 out of sporting clothes shop*

Also, unrelated to aforementioned experiences:

>Sisters trying to buy a train ticket

>ticket machine decides to go on a vacation to Hell, the place, in the middle of their working on it (Not cursing--I  think that's actually where it went)

>old lady behind them has a literal breakdown

>tries to take control of machine from them

>machine still on vacation

>lady probably on verge of exploding

>Sisters ask us what they can do to get their tickets

>"have you tried giving the woman words of affirmation"

Well, that's all folks!

Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Here are some pictures included as well. Three of them are my newest near-complete New Testament comic project.

Claudius and Timothy

Hey!

This week has been great! First things first, we only got three investigators at church, as opposed to the planned 10.. haha, a lot of people randomly fell through. We will get them next week though! I hope to see that happen soon!

Tony did come, though, and enjoyed it a lot. He even explained repentance after baptism through the sacrament to another investigator who had a question about that! He's starting to act more like a member and less like an investigator, and he continues to progress phenomenally.

In other news, we got to go on a split with the Offenbach Elders, which includes Elder Stacy, my former Bayreuth companion that I trained way back when. It was a great split and we got good work done!

Our apartment is more infested with insects than my others have ever been before. One reason may be that we are on the bottom floor and live next to a marshy area. I wake up with bites on my arms and legs sometimes, so we've been purging the apartment of all its six and eight-legged sinfulness. As part of the process, we've actually adopted two spiders to help oversee the process. Their names are Claudius and Timothy, the former being the more senior adoptee, and officially named trainer of Timothy. They're contained together but they seem to be having a hard time adjusting. It actually seems that Timothy's skills and strength exceed that of his superior's, but his wisdom lacks in the most important departments. 

They're helping to keep mosquitoes out. Well, or scared at least. 

I'm pumped to talk with my family next week! It's also going to feel somewhat minor considering my return in 3 1/2 to 4 weeks. But hey, I'm taking whatever chance there is to Skype home.

Lastly, I'm been studying Mormon 5 and 6, partly because it was asked of us to teach a seminary class about the two chapters. While studying, I thought about, as well as asked myself, if we read the Book of Mormon with the best goal in mind. You see, we may get caught up in the intricacies of the cultural clues, historical background, realistic war descriptions, or whatever of the book, all of which are interesting and can further develop our understanding of even testimony of the book. But all of those are merely incidental to the book's main purpose--which is to testify of Jesus Christ. 

Mormon said he didn't want to harrow up our minds more than necessary with the vision of the destruction of the Nephites. Rather, he made it a point to direct us throughout his historical record to its overarching purpose of providing the knowledge to our souls that Christ is living and true. 

As we read the Book of Mormon for this purpose, we receive greater assurance of its validity along with an increasingly impenetrable testimony of God and Christ.

Thank you everyone!

Love,

Elder Wallentine 

Short

I can't bear the emails today. I'm pasting my letter to my President:

Things are going well. This week as well as next week will be decisive for our investigators. One of them, Jose, could really make it for the 19th, but we're going to decide this week if it would be wise to keep it at the 19th. Tony should really make it though. I don't see any reason why he would not be baptized on that day.

I look forward to telling you next week that we had 10+ investigators at church, because we got 9 this last week!

Thanks for all you do!

Elder Wallentine

Also for you family, here are a few doodles.

Running Out of Time

Hey friends and fam!

It's been a good week! Had 7 people at church. We are getting there! Baptismal investigators are doing well but we are postponing two of the dates because it'll  be pretty tight.

I'm working on the church's My Plan program right now for the final six weeks of my mission. It's nice to think about my goals. It feels good to have an idea about what I want to accomplish in the summer, year, next 5 years, and decade. I'm writing as much down as possible to keep it accessible. I don't really feel nervous about the prospect of moving forward, which is a blessing.

I know some funny things happened this week because it's freaking Germany, but I can't put my finger on what actually happened. It's been a good week though.

It's a good life.

I would write more but I'm currently typing from a phone which makes it horrendous to try and communicate anything longer than a few paragraphs.

I love you all!

Elder Wallentine 

PERFECTION AND ALSO I HAVE SEVEN WEEKS LEFT

Hey everyone!

The work here continues to move faster than I can go! It's awesome. We just set a baptismal date with another person, whose name is Jose. His date is also on the 19th of May. All four of our baptismal investigators are currently scheduled for the 19th, and are keeping all four of the commitments to read and pray, come to church, keep the commandments, and be involved with members. I don't currently see a reason why any of them should not be baptized on that day. We are giving them all we have and are seeing miracles come because of it.

We came here in February and have been blessed tremendously for our efforts since. The work is paying off and I've never had so many baptismal investigators that have all been so promising.

We also hit our goal for last week to get seven investigators at church! This week, eight!

In other news, I am beginning my final transfer. Seven weeks, guys. Seven. Freaking. Weeks. Let's make it FLIPPING count.

I said goodbye to the fantastic and easygoing Elder Winsborrow this week, concluding one of the best chapters of my mission. I am now companions with Elder Blackner, and we seem to have had a great time so far. I am excited to open up the FINAL CHAPTER.

To build off of my thought from last week, I have been asked multiple times from people on the street: "Why do I need religion? I understand that some people need a God to tell them that killing is wrong, or that they need to serve others, but I can be a good person regardless of whether or not I believe in such a thing." I've been confidently told many a time on my mission that religion is a crutch for us to learn to be good people, as though we otherwise wouldn't be, and that it is in some way weak to believe in a God that would help us become good.

The problem, however, is that being 'good' is not our goal. I believe most people are good. At least, most of the people I have known in life. Perhaps there are people who need Christianity or, generally, religion to be good. But that is not the goal of religion.

The goal of religion is not to prevent us from being bad, and it is also not to make us merely good. It is to prepare us to be perfect.

Anyone can help anyone. Anyone can avoid robbing a bank. Anyone can be honest. Anyone can donate to charities. Anyone can serve their siblings and parents. And we aren't audacious enough to claim that anyone who doesn't believe is automatically bad, or cannot do these things, because that simply is wrong. But no person, without the help of a divine entity, and according to my belief without the help of a divine Savior, can possibly expect to reach perfection. That would be simply impossible, and preposterous to assume, if we were all alone. 

The glorious message of repentance is that this has been made possible. This may lead others to ask: "Why, though, would perfection be so important for me?" It's difficult to comprehend in an imperfect world, I must say, because I can't really understand fully what that would be like, either. However, the scriptures are clear on the matter. Here are a few examples:

1. Doctrine and Covenants 50:24-25: 

That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. And again, verily I say unto you, and I say it that you may know the truth, that you may chase darkness from among you.

2. Moroni 10:32-33: Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye 

sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.

3. Mosiah 4:3:

And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them.

4. Doctrine and Covenants 76:50, 69-70

And again we bear record—for we saw and heard, and this is the testimony of the gospel of Christ concerning them who shall come forth in the resurrection of the just—...These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood. These are they whose bodies are celestial, whose glory is that of the sun, even the glory of God, the highest of all, whose glory the sun of the firmament is written of as being typical.

To learn more, one must study deeper in the scriptures. However, the promises are exceedingly great and precious. It is possible that some still do not want them, and if they do not, that is okay, as all men are free. But I am grateful for this prospect. I am grateful to know that, if I am faithful, and if we are faithful, we may all progress into perfection, and we may receive the fulness of joy, peace, and glory that awaits us, if we are but faithful!

That is the promise!

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Wallentine