Week 75 - Goodbye Panevėžys

 Hello Everyone,

Well the time has come for me to leave Panevėžys which means a few things:

1. Church will be more than just me and my companion on beanbags

2. We'll have members and other missionaries in our city

3. Savelis and Algis (the 2 members here) will have to fend for themselves

Our landlord sold our apartment to someone else. That mixed with some other situations with missionaries in Lithuania make it so we're leaving much earlier than we planned. 

It's sad but I'm actually pretty excited to go. Church is not the same when it's just a zoom call with your companion in beanbags. As much as I loved the beanbags, it just didn't feel like Church.

Elder Morrissey and I will stay as companions for 2 weeks and then more switching will occur but we're not 100% sure what will happen. 

We've been doing lots of service which I love. I'm really tired of using Facebook even though it's useful. I can't wait to stop using it and throw my phone off a cliff once I get home. 

Today we went out to eat at a restaurant and the waitress didn't switch to English which was kind of her. Lots of people still switch even though we understand what they're saying. 

Our friend Simonas started reading the Book of Mormon which is awesome except we are leaving and can't meet up with him anymore. Sad day

I got my first sunburn of the season which is spectacular. I will now be making the transition from paper white to lobster red. 

Being a missionary has been hard lately. I expected it to get easier as it went on but that's not the case for me. It's been a struggle to focus on the work. 

Something I've been studying and thinking about is the Sabbath day. I came across this quote from James E Faust's talk in 1991 in General Conference, "Where is the line as to what is acceptable and unacceptable on the Sabbath? Within the guidelines, each of us must answer this question for ourselves. While these guidelines are contained in the scriptures and in the words of the modern prophets, they must also be written in our hearts and governed by our conscience." This has been a particularly interesting question for me because as a missionary, everything we do is supposed to be focused on Christ. So with the exception of Church meetings and the sacrament, most of our days are quite like Sundays. If you have any good ideas of how to make the Sabbath more of a delight and a day devoted to God, I'd love to hear it :)

One good scripture nugget I found this week was in Helaman chapter 5. This is one of those chapters that's quoted a million and one times. Don't worry, it's not verse 12. Verse 12 is good but that's not what stood out. It was actually the end of the chapter. Here's a brief review of what happened in the chapter:

Basically Lehi and Nephi (sons of Helaman) are being missionaries but they get thrown in jail. Then there's a fire that encircles them, darkness comes over everyone there and there's a voice from heaven. The voice from heaven tells the people (the ones who just threw Lehi and Nephi in jail) to repent. Then it tells them to repent again. Then a third time it says some "marvelous words which cannot be uttered by man." All while this is happening there is some thundering and the ground is shaking underneath them. The people are freaking out and have no idea what to do. Then my favorite character of the story comes into play. "Now there was one among them who was a Nephite by birth, who had once belonged to the church of God but had dissented from them." His name is Aminadab. (*dabs*) This guy is the one who tells the wicked people what they need to do. Even though a literal voice from heaven just told them, they needed it from Aminadab. I like it because this is someone who has broken off from the church but he still had a part to play in bringing people to repentance. It also showed me that people may have experience but not know how to interpret it or know what it means. A role of a missionary is frequently helping people make sense of what they have already experienced, for example feeling the spirit. There are other good insights but you should read it for yourself and it'll be all the better.

I hope you're all doing well. I'd love to hear from all of you and hear how you're doing. 

Čiao

Elder Smith