Elder Thomas Farr: A Gumball Machine of Blessings

Welcome to week two of my weekly emails. I promise to be on time from now on :)

This week was a blast. This was my first full week as a missionary and I am loving it more than ever. The language is super difficult but the spirit is so strong. That's kind of been the theme for me this week. Strong feelings of peace amid world-shattering stress.

But before we get into all of that, I received some super exciting news earlier this week! I have been reassigned to the New Hampshire Manchester Mission! I'll leave the week of December 16th. Which is perfect because I packed for two years on the equator with an average low in the 70s and average humidity of 87%. But jokes aside, I'm super excited to serve the people in New Hampshire (and some parts of Maine and Vermont).

My Companion, Elder Card, and I started teaching TRC's this week. For anyone confused, TRC stands for Teaching Resource Center and it basically provides us missionaries-in-training opportunities to teach real people about the gospel. We did two of them and they were both super cool experiences. We got some feedback and it seems we did pretty well. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same when we start teaching in FRENCH later this week.

Speaking of French, we are moving through the language super quickly. Sometimes it's really hard to keep up honestly. Luckily, I have my district mates struggling by my side. I've gotten to the point where I'm decently comfortable praying in French. I can hold a very basic conversation and I'm right at the brink of being able to form my own original sentences. Luckily, I love the language and am motivated by the fact that I'm not learning it for me. I'm not learning French so I can have a cool party trick, I'm learning French to be more able to share the gospel. What a fantastic motivator that has been.

The district is becoming more and more tight-knit every day. Twice this week we spent our (extremely limited) free time on a zoom call just hanging out together for 2-3 hours and we've committed to do so at least 3 times a week for the rest of the MTC :)

The other day during class we were told to grab the most random item we could find in a minute. So naturally I ran upstairs to grab the gumball machine we keep in the corner. After we all returned with all of our random items (pic below) we were told that we had to relate our items to the gospel somehow. My analogy was that, just like a quarter in a gumball machine, we have to put in some effort and faith in order to receive "those sweet, sweet gumball blessings."

Spiritual thought: In 1st Corinthians 12:27, it says "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." In class, we talked about how, no matter what shortcomings we may have or what spiritual gifts we long for, we each have a specific role to play in our Heavenly Father's plan. I can testify that this is true so long as we make the effort to fulfil His vision for us.