Hi Family & Friends!
Question: What's new this week?
Elder Doxey: To get to know people in the community, recently we met with Elders and Sisters at a church parking lot near our home and had a free car wash and ice cream. It was a good way to casually get to know a lot of new people we had not known before. I’m not sure that it led to a huge number of lessons scheduled to be taught, but it at least “broke the ice” with talking to a whole new group of people.
Question: Are there any memorable lessons you have been teaching lately?
Elder Doxey: Lately we have been teaching some object lessons to several youth in the area. Kids love these, and seem to really understand. One that we do involves positioning forks or butter knives suspended in the air, with one end resting on a support. Then, in the middle of the forks we stack up something heavy (like books). The idea is that the heavy objects represent temptations we all face, and the forks and support are principles of the gospel we learn, the foundation of which is faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost.
Question: How have other teaching efforts been going?
Elder Doxey: We have been teaching a man named Stefan. He works at Walmart so we sometimes go say hi to him there. After his shift, we meet at a church member’s home for the lessons. This church member is really special—they literally brought Stefan in off the streets and helped him get back on his feet with a job at Walmart, a short-term place to live and more. This is how we came into the picture and started teaching him the gospel. Church members here are very much actively engaged in missionary work. Right in the middle of teaching Stefan our area got changed around, (we are now in the Bella Vista ward) so he is now being taught by another set of missionaries.
Question: How are things in managing your Zone of 30 missionaries?
Elder Doxey: We're blessed to have a really great group of missionaries in the zone. Things are going really well. On P-day, we had a big Zone activity and hiked to the top of a little hill here called Lone Mountain. It is actually a decent hike, but nothing like harder stuff I’ve hiked before (King’s Peak in Utah, the Pinnacles in the Bay Area, the Wind River Mountains, the Uintas). It was a really good way to get to know those I serve with, “out of our mode” of being missionaries. Being united helps us in service projects as well.
Question: Anything else memorable this week?
Elder Doxey: Well, because it looks like we are going to be having a high number of missionaries in our mission (we are getting close to 300 now) for an extended period of time, a decision was made to not rent all the extra cars we were renting anymore. The mission had to rent a bunch because there were so many missionaries reassigned to our mission (like me) from international missions.
The thought was to rent until Covid subsided, but here we are still in Covid mode. So, the decision was to just buy like 8 brand new 2020 Chevy Equinox cars for the mission, so the mission could also put speed governors on them. So, we went and literally bought 8 new cars, right off the lot. The one I drove to our new area had 4 miles on it. I like my Rav4 at home, but this will do for now -- it's just a bit different than the cayucos and boats we used in San Blas Panama. Ha Ha.
Gotta go. Love you all.
Elder Doxey
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