The Finale

  

Well, this chapter of my life is coming to end. In 2 days, I will no longer be a set apart missionary for the Lord Jesus Christ and that is super odd. Luckily, I'm a decently calm person in general so I've kinda just let it all happen and I've been alright with it. I don't predict that the transition will be that gigantic, I have been using technology and speaking English for the entire 2 years of service in America. Somebody asked me the other day if I was nervous to be coming home and I couldn't think of one thing to be nervous about. Excited? Oh yeah. You bet. There's a lot waiting for me back home that I'd love to get to. Christmas with the family will be heaps better than what I experienced last Christmas as a missionary. I just said prayers all day with people then. It'll be different for sure, I mean for the last 2 years I have somebody who has to back my car up from the outside while I'm in reverse every single time I go in reverse. To not have that person there will be a change. I've had somebody who is within my sight and sound for the last 730 or so days. That will be a change. I haven't flirted with a girl in over 17,520 hours. You bet that'll change. The list goes on and on but I'm ready for it.

   To put a whole bow on this missionary service, we were blessed with a baptism last Saturday of a wonderful lady named C. She is a doll. I found her on Facebook by just saying hi to her in her direct messages and we got to talking. Shared a few scriptures and asked if she'd like a Book of Mormon and to come to church. Here we are. She's a middle aged woman who is a therapist and she has such an outgoing personality. Her character will definitely bring such a light to this ward here in Prattville. We were able to have only members do every single responsibility for her Baptismal service which is always one of my favorite things to witness. I only just had to show up to her baptism and watch. We taught her solely over the phone having a member join over the phone from their house. It was a big conference call and it worked wonders. C became best friends with the member who brought over the phone before even knowing what she looked like. 

   I think lastly I just want to share a couple of important things I've learned, but not too much since I am giving a talk very soon. Here's a couple:

-Missions are difficult and tedious at times. They aren't always fun but boy are they good for you. They test your patience, they try your tolerance, and mentally wreck you sometimes but all of that is so necessary. You gotta learn to endure the bad and look for the good that you get from it. Whether you like it or not, you will learn how to be patient and tolerant of things you aren't fond of. I definitely have. 

-Your belief in God needs to be won every single day. Every day I woke up, I had to choose whether or not I cared about the rules I had to follow. I had to choose whether or not I wanted to dive deep into the scriptures and actually pray, or if I wanted to waste that time and not pay much attention. Your conversion really is your willingness to do the nitty-gritty habits everyday. Doing 1 hour of scripture study for one day does little to nothing for you. Doing 1 hour of scripture study every single day for 2 years changes your entire life. Persistently being consistent is everything and I've had to learn that because I sucked a lot sometimes at keeping up the habits. 

I don't want to share too much since I do have things to see when I speak, but I just know that this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is really Christ's church. It has to be. There is no way that this responsibility could be trusted to 18-21 years old boys and girls unless this gospel were true. It's gotta be true. I've had the ability to see how a church congregation runs from the ins and outs and I've witnessed firsthand how perfecltly setup this structure is. That's because it was created by a perfect person. I know that Jesus is the Christ, I know that God is 100% real. You can't change my mind on these things because of what I've seen. I've lived the truth and witnessed it. 

Have a blessed week. 

Elder Batman 🦇 

It’s The Final Countdown

 

We've just been running full speed recently trying to finish off the last few weeks of my mission. We recently set a record for baptismal dates as a Zone at 50 which is crazy since our mission is only going for 200 altogether. That's 1/4th of all dates set. Crazy. We've been going around telling missionaries that in order to baptize people you need to ask them to be baptized and it's really sparked a flame in them. Some missionaries make putting people on date as some huge statement and grand presentation when really it's a simple question. If they say no, you get a key opportunity to find out exactly what their need is. It's not as hard as we make it out to be. 

   I'm not sure if I've mentioned yet, but I did stay in my area for my last transfer and with the same companion. That's 4 transfers with one companion making it the longest companion I've ever had. It's alright though, we get along just fine. We are absolutely nothing alike but it's chill, we make it work. He's a farm boy who's never played a video game in his life and doesn't know much about pop culture and I'm the complete opposite. One thing we do have in common is we both love social media work as missionaries. I think it's a big reason we are still together because he admits that I am the only companion he's had that is okay with all the social media meetings he has to attend since he’s the head of social media for our mission, and all the work he does online. We firmly believe that if we are going to find a family to baptize for Christmas, it'll be found through social media. We'll see what happens. 

   Our mission has been making a big push with doing 10 minute long lesson which is a huge change because before, the average lesson was around 45 minutes to an hour long. Our mission president went to a mission president seminar recently and a lot of the general authorities and missionary department told him that the only thing that's holding us back from achieve 100 Baptisms is our teaching skills. They emphasized short, powerful lessons that get the people yearning for more. Well, we've been doing this the last couple of weeks and it has proven to be amazing. Our friends are so much more willing to meet because they don't have to sacrifice as much time to see us. We leave them on a cliff hanger every lesson so they are so ready for when the next lesson comes. Also, we've been counciled to try and set up the next lesson for the next day, not next week. We can't have any room for Satan to get on these people and make them look at stupid websites that'll ruin everything. The conversion of the people we are teaching has gone up so much since we started doing this. 

   I'm in the last 3 weeks of my mission right now and it feels surreal. It always sounds like a cliche when people say the mission feels like a blur and goes by quick but it really does. I've been at this for so long that this is an adapted way of life, it doesn't feel like a 2 year detour from normal life. It just feels like normal life. The transition back home should be a whole new ball game, but you can't be too worried about it. I just need to make sure I get my spiritual habits in check, reading and praying daily. Some missionaries when they get home say phrases like ''I miss the spirit in the mission'' but I think that can be avoided if you just stay spiritually in shape. Anyways, I got a lot to do before I finish off this milestone of my life. Can't slow down now. 

Have a blessed week. 

Elder Jackson Batman

Temple Trip

 

   Wow, we actually got to go to the Temple for the first time since the first two months of my mission. Let's just say it's been a long while. It was a surreal experience, we had a few recent converts who came with that were able to be baptized for their parents and grandparents. Talk about an unforgettable time. They were very emotional, the spirit was heavy. Since I'm still a Zone Leader, it was actually my job to choose who does what responsibility in the Temple and that was awesome. I got to prayerfully consider who needs to be doing what and the service ended up being wonderful. I'm pretty sure the mission is going to try to do a Temple trip every transfer from now on so lucky them I guess.

   We had a baptism of a couple named the L's last weekend. They were being taught by the sister missionaries that share the Prattville area with us, but the L's had us over all the time to do service and to basically minister to them. R, the wife, actually had me speak at her baptism and talk about the gift of the Holy Ghost. I was honored to do that. It's remarkable because J, the husband, actually was an atheist when we first met him, but overtime as he's read the Book of Mormon and figured out how to pray, he's learned that God is truly real. Both of them are super excited for their future in the church. They've been calling themselves members before they were even baptized.

  They've got us going on exchanges with every Elder companionship in the Zone which in our zone turns out to be 7 companionships. It's tiring for sure, a lot of work. Almost every week of the transfer, we had 2 exchanges and we still have 2 more. The idea is that they want the Zone Leaders to keep the missionaries in check on a more personal level rather than having us wreck them in a public sermon. It seems to be having a positive effect, I've become good friends with a lot of them when I don't know if I would've had the time otherwise. With all these exchanges, it is making time fly so fast. I have 7 weeks left now and I have no idea how I ended up here.

   I've mentioned the 100 baptisms our mission is trying to go for during Christmas time, but recently our mission president gave a promise that if we get the members and ourselves to start praying for a family to be prepared to be baptized for this Christmas season, as well as putting the necessary work to help find one, we'll have a family baptized. Anybody who reads this is more than welcome to join the movement, any prayers are always helpful. This could be the perfect end to my reign as Elder Batman if I were able to be apart of a family being baptized before I depart. We'll see what happens.

That's all for now. Til next time. There's not many next times left.

Have a blessed day, 

Elder Batman 🦇 

Breaking Records

 

Man, General Conference is quite something. The opportunity to hear from prophets and apostles of God especially as a missionary who is trying to dedicate His full time to God, there's just nothing like it. I find myself not just receiving answers for myself and my own concerns, but also the concerns of others whom I serve. Unfortunately, it'll be the last time I get to experience conference as a missionary, but dang am I thankful for the opportunities I had to watch. 

   Our mission made a big push for trying to invite as many as we can possible to watch either of the five sessions. We are preparing for this Christmas season for what we are calling a ''White Christmas''. The goal is 100 Baptisms in one transfer for the whole mission. The transfer that we plan to hit it will be my last. To increase our odds of hitting that goal, we need to bump up the other statistics as well. More people coming to church, more people on date for Baptism, etc. So, with General Conference, our mission set a goal of having 400 people watch as a mission. For our Zone specifically, we wanted to get 55. Astoundingly, our Zone had 88. Elder Boswell and I went crazy on social media inviting as many as we could and we managed to get 15 people to watch Conference. It's amazing because now our zone has so many people who just had one of the most spiritual experiences they could have, we just need to capitalize on that. We got reports of so many investigators saying they loved Conference and want to watch more of it. That's what I'm talking about. 

   We did have transfers this last week and surprisingly, I stayed in this area with the same companion for the 3rd transfer in a row. This would only be the 2nd time that I've had a companion for three transfers, the first would be my trainer. It does beg the question though, am I going to finish my mission here in Prattville? Who knows. The running joke is that I'll get sent to the middle of nowhere land my last transfer training a new missionary who has no testimony of the gospel and I'm supposed to fix him. That would definitely make that last transfer fly by, but I don't know if I desire that. 😂 I'm glad I stayed in my area with the same companion, we've really found a rhythm of how to do the work here effectively and it is going to pay off real soon. You just wait for the pictures incoming. It seems as if the ward trusts us and are now willing to help us, and that's exactly what you need when you want to finish off a baptism or two. I'm stoked for the future in this area. 

   We did have Stake Conference the previous Sunday and that was an interesting adventure. It was held at the Davis Theater in Montgomery which is not a church building of any kind. We brought a few of our investigators with us and there had to have been about a thousand or so people in that theater. We unfortunately sat a little towards the back since we were a few minutes late and that was a big mistake. The microphone was terrible. There were two youth speakers with real timid voices and I couldn't tell you a word of what they said. Every once in a while you'll get a loud expressive voice that makes it easy to hear, but majority of the time it was annoyingly quiet. Somehow, miraculously, our investigators enjoyed the session. Try to tell me God ain't real when they enjoyed something they couldn't hear. The gospel must be true. Holy heck. 

   Things are moving in the Prattville area for sure though! I'm trying to maintain motivation and focus while the days of my mission death approaches. It's said a lot in the mission that the true colors of a missionary come out in the last couple of transfers. Hopefully my colors are pretty. 

Have a blessed week, 

Elder Jackson Batman 🦇 

Right To Bear Arms

 

Forgive me for my slothfulness in writing emails on the schedule that I set. There's not really much of an excuse besides that I didn't really feel like it, but now I sorta do so here it goes. The last 3 weeks have been decently eventful. I think for this email specifically, I'm just going to highlights a few things that have happened in the form of bullet points. So... 

-Yesterday at church, us and the Prattville Sister missionaries were able to fill an entire row of investigators attending church. It felt pretty cool. We basically just took all these people and marched them right to the front and had a couple of members sit by them. One of them is a single father named David and his son who is 8 years old named Jace. Prime age right there, that's what we like to see. They are looking hard for another church even though they were baptized not even 2 weeks ago in a different church. They've had bad feelings about the church they were attending and they see it as no coincidence that we randomly contacted them as soon as they were looking. Something super cool that happened at church is that we also had a guy named John there who is looking into our beliefs. We coincidentally had John and David sit by eachother, but it turns out that those two graduated highschool together in the same class. Bonkers man, you can't make this stuff up. After the service, they dapped eachother up and said ''I'll catch you next Sunday Bro.'' Music to my ears. 

-In the span of a 30 minute period, I had two different guns pointed at me. It's not as bad as it sounds, allow me to explain. We were trying to go visit a person who was taught years ago, but they live all the way in Timbuktu (meaning the middle of nowhere) and the address was super faulty. Well, we ended up pulling into the wrong lot of land and this guy who owns the land has like 15 dogs that ran at our car. They were riding our tires, so we drove super slow trying to figure out how to turn around. Then, the man came out with a shotgun and pointed it right at me, but then he explained that he was just trying to scare his dogs away so I could turn away. Seems like a really weird way to handle that, but whatever. I only was a little scared. The other situation was not so crazy, he just had no idea who we were and thought we were trying to sue him or something since we are so professionally dress. Both guys in both situations were super chill after they realized who we were. So yeah, that was something. 

-We went on exchanges with another set of Elders and I was with this one missionary just walking around a neighborhood trying to talk to as many people as we saw. In that little walk, we talked to around 15 people and every single person turned us away in pretty harsh ways. This one guy actually turned his back to us as soon as he saw us and continued to have a conversation telling us he doesn't want to talk and for us to get away. I guess he thought he'd turn to stone if he looked me dead in the eye or something, I don't know. The reason I'm saying this is that the mission isn't always sunshine and rainbows, miracles happening right and left. It's a tough life sometimes. But wait, it does get better. The Elder I was with and I set a goal to find 4 people to teach on that exchange but only managed to find 1. BUT, later that day with my actual companion, we were blessed with 5 people to teach. So, the lesson here is sometimes you gotta go through some trash, and I mean straight garbage, to find some treasure. 

Anywho, that's all I wanna write right now. The mission is quite the journey, and sadly it's getting close to the ending credits. I plan to make it count and not be that missionary that becomes a couch slug his last transfer. We'll see. 

Have a blessed one, 

Elder Jackson Batman 🦇 

Hurricanes

 

    There's been a lot of commotion happening here in Alabama. The month of August is usually known for it's craziness with storms and natural disasters. Recently we had Hurricane Ida happening and, for safety precautions, our mission president evacuated 3 zones further up north. Where I'm staying at, we didn't really feel much of it. But, you can definitely expect that we'll be cranking out some service very soon here. Hurricane Sally cleanup last year was quite memorable, I would absolutely love to do it again. We may have our Zone Conference this next week canceled, who knows. The other commotion is the new Delta variant of COVID, we had 2 zones that were playing it very safe since there was a lot of increased cases in that area. I wonder if we'll all be locked in again before the end of my mission? Who knows. I would be a lot better at finding on social media than I was last time. Last time I just started at my hand and read books.

   It's actually been a little bit of a tough week. We have this woman named B that was very close to getting baptized. She's an older lady that finds a lot of comfort in learning about and attending our church. Unfortunately, she does have a boyfriend that she lives with so in order for it to be possible to get baptized, somebody has gotta move out or they gotta get married. Believe it or not, B actually moved out to live the Law of Chastity. She went to go live with her daughter. It was looking so good for her to get baptized, but last second she raised a lot of doubts with the certain commandments. She then moved back in with her boyfriend and now we are back at square one. She is still working with us, but we'll have to slow down quite a bit to help her understand the importance of it all. We also have a few other people that were on date for baptism that we cannot seem to get in contact with. They disappeared, they're never home. When this happens, it just means we gotta find more solid people. Luckily, we've been blessed with a lot of people recently that have very high potential. Out with the old, in with the new I guess. 

   I'll tell you real quick about J, this is one of the high potentials. He wanted Family History help and put in a request through our Family History Facebook page, and since he's in our area, we get to help him. We met him at our church building and started helping him out. He came SUPER prepared with all sorts of dates and other things to make it very simple. We were able to fill in so much of the man's tree and he was astounded on how much information FamilySearch had on his family. He was very excited about it all. Once we were done, we prayed with him and he said that our prayer touched his heart deeply. He felt the spirit super strong. We have another day to meet with him to continue, but this guy is very prepared to hear the gospel, I just know it. We'll bring it all up next time and it'll go fantastic. 

   I'm sure there's more to share, but I can't think of much for now. I've just been trying to maintain motivation and dedication to the work even though it's getting towards the end. Luckily Prattville is keeping me busy so there's a lot to do. 

Have a blessed day, 

Elder Batman 🦇 

No Subject

 

   I had an alright past couple of weeks, nothing too spectacular. We've been grinding out down here in Prattville and I think it's safe to say that we have a firm hold on this area for now. Our Zone has been popping off when it comes to numbers and it makes me super proud. Apparently we beat the record for people on date for baptism for this zone. That's what's up. I guess I can go over some notable experiences from the last couple of weeks. 

   I had exchanges with a greenie named Elder Hurd. He's a super cool dude. He requested to lead out in his area even though he's only been out for like a few weeks so we granted his request. I just let him do everything and helped out when I could. Since I've been out for an ancient amount of time, I was able to drop some premium mission knowledge on my man. He was super grateful for the pointers. He actually had no idea how to report things into area book, which is just the planning app we use as missionaries, so I rocked his world with a tutorial on all of that. The dude loves to fish, so a big portion of their finding is to go to the Walmart fishing section and talk to anybody that goes down that aisle. Weird, but it works for them. We tried it out and actually found a couple of people to teach miraculously. Then a guy brought up politics with us so we ran away. Anyway, that was basically the exchange. 

   Our mission president is making a big push for getting as many people to church as we possibly can, so the Assistants challenged our zone to get 30 people to church for 2 weeks in a row.  For reference, we only got 26 last week and that was because one area had 11 show up due to good member missionaries. If we get the 30 people 2 weeks in a row, they said we can have a Zone P-day which aren't allowed in our mission but they'll make an exception. In our area, we tried SO hard to get people to church. We had 8 people that said they would go, but unfortunately only 4 showed up. We even drove to people's houses before church started to wake them up and it still didn't work out as well as we wanted. Luckily, we had some members that were willing to give rides to some of our friends so that was pretty cash money. Sadly, with all the effort from the Zone, we were not able to hit the goal which I'm not surprised. It was a pretty crazy goal. It's okay, we still did very well. 

  Other that, not much else is going on that's too special. We teach a lot of lessons here, but we are in a car share with a set of Sister missionaries so every other day we don't have a vehicle. It's quite complicated, definitely makes a lot of problems but we do what we gotta do. My companion is the social media lead for the mission so we do much extra stuff for his responsibility. It kills a lot of time but it's real important so can't complain. 

   Well, that's kinda all I got. I'm getting close to the end of my mission which is fricken weird. I don't know what a 20 month old missionary is supposed to look like but hopefully I'm in the ballpark of that appearance. What can I say, I'm an artifact in this mission nowadays. Sooo old. 

Alright, have a blessed week guys. 

  

Elder Batman 🦇 

Beach Baptism

 

   Woah what a last couple of weeks it has been. I've had a lot of stuff happen since I've got to this area, I think it's safe to say we have (for the most part) successfully defeated the white wash. The first week we were so lost since there wasn't many notes written down for the people the old Elders were teaching so we had to start basically from scratch. Our goal was to try and put as many people on date for baptism as possible to see if they are solid people or not, and right now we have 3 people on date. Let me give you some details of lit things that have been going on. 

   

   We had Zone Conference and since I'm still a Zone Leader, I had to give a training in front of everybody. Our Zone has been struggling with putting people on baptismal date, so our entire training was based on that. We challenged them all to attempt to put 2 people on date in 1 week and now our numbers for baptismal dates is the highest it has been. Zone Conference made me feel super old in the mission. The mission president kept telling stories that he's told in the past and I had heard them all and it seems like I was the only one who had. I'm actually the oldest missionary in my zone currently which is kinda weird since I ain't THAT old. It was super intense though, President seperated the Elders and the Sisters into different rooms and wrecked us about the Law of Chastity. We have a lot of new missionaries so he wanted to scare them to make sure they don't get sent home for stupid reasons. Immediately after Zone Conference, we had interviews and it was super awesome because President just hyped me up the whole time. He said he was super proud of who I have become. He says that I know what my potential is and that I am living in a way to achieve it. That was very nice to hear for sure. 

   In my interview with President, I asked him if I could make a special request to go to one of my old area's baptisms and he said he'd let me choose. It was 3 hours away in Pensacola, but we made that long haul. The baptism of Jared and Scarlett was such a memorable experience. They requested to be baptized in the ocean and that's exactly what happened. If you don't remember who these two people are getting baptized, they were apart of the solar summer sales team that wanted to learn more about our church. Both of them had to give up so much to be ready to be baptized, but them and Nate all held eachother accountable. The thing that made me the happiest about all of this was that Nate, a less active YSA, was able to become worthy to baptize Jared. It was so surreal. He also had to drop a lot of bad habits, but he did it and was about to perform the ordinance. Since it was a baptism of people doing summer sales, a lot of other summer sales people showed up so there was like 60 people at this beach baptism. Many of them were nonmembers and thought it was super cool. I perceive this is going to be a missionary referral machine pretty soon here. Definitely one of the highlights of my mission was being apart of this baptism. It doesn't get much better than this.

   That's basically the last couple of weeks. We've been finding a lot of new people to teach, but the biggest success we are seeing is with the Part-Member families. There's A LOT of them in our ward, many of them are ready and willing. We'll see how that turns out. 

Love y'all, Have a blessed one. 

Elder Jackson Batman 🦇 

   

Prattville

 

   Well, I got transferred again after only 1 month in the Pensacola Area. I was pretty ticked to hear the news, not going to lie. It's frustrating after you learn an area and all the people you served there, you even set people up for baptism, but then you just get ripped out. Jared and Scarlett are set up for the 24th for their baptisms and they told me to beg my mission president so I could make the long drive and be in attendance. We'll see how lenient the mission president will be. Any who, I'm now serving in Prattville! My last companion, Elder Johnson, served in this area for 7 and a half months so I was able to get a lot of inside info on the area before I even got here which was sick. I did get white washed into Prattville as Zone Leader 1 (white washed just means they take out a whole companionship out of an area and add a completely new one), but I am serving with another Zone Leader which is always nice. His name is Elder Boswell and he's from Independence, Missouri. He was just in my other last area, Daphne, serving with my old companion, Elder Hulet so that's sweet. 

   Whitewashing is annoying because we know nothing about any of the members and it doesn't help that the last Elders in the area wrote little-to-nothing down for notes to help us out with the people they were teaching. Basically just going in completely blind. Ohhhh yeah, and just to add salt to the wound some more, we are in a car share with a set of sister missionaries and we can't get in the car with them because it's against the rules! 😁 We basically just switch off the car every single day and do a lot of walking on our car free days. But, on the flip side, they had a lot of people they were teaching so our pool is pretty big. We just have no idea who the frick the people are. 

   I figure I should tell some sort of story from my new area so here it goes; there's a part-member family in this area that was taught a while ago in the past. The husband, Shaun, is the nonmember and we randomly called him up and asked if we could come over and share a spiritual thought and get to know him better. He said, "You know, it has been a while... Sure!" We pull up, the dude has like 6 dogs that we had to run through to get to the spot we were going to sit down and talk at. He put the dogs away and we just got to know the guy and learn his past experiences with missionaries. He's a scary guy, retired military, gives you a death scare that brings the chills fast. Anyway, we got to talking and he said he's had some rough experiences with certain members in the past that's kinda hindered his progression, but eventually we got to the topic of having the 5 discussions and he said he had never had them in an organized manner like that before. He said he'd love to hear them and they'd probably fill in a lot of blanks that he has with the doctrine. He grew to like us a lot through that discussion and if we get to him, we get to his 9 year old daughter. Heaps of potential there.

   Oh, I'll say one more thing. There's a woman in this ward named, we'll call her Debbie, that really really loves missionaries I think. The reason I'm assuming that is because she's called us 27 times since we've arrived 3 days ago. She always wants missionaries to come visit her so she'll just keep calling until that happens. It's always at the most unfortunate times when she calls, like mid-lesson we are bearing testimony. It's just something people deal with in the Prattville area. 😂

   Alright I'll shut up. Have a blessed one. 

-Elder Jackson Batman 🦇