Elder Wride in the Dominican Republic: Week 15 - sprained foot + quarantine pt. 2

Hola hola hermanassss

I’ve been in quarantine all week so I’m barely alive right now and it’s been a really big mental battle. But yea most of this week was honestly just my brain not working. The other day we had a member lesson and I was like “Christ's church is built off of the foundation of postles and aprophets.” and didn’t even realize what I had said until a few minutes later. Luckily I don’t think she was paying attention to our lesson anyways.

Welcome to Missionary Work
Zoom council
Sprained Foot / Spiritual Rant

1) Welcome to missionary work

So, this week was rough. Most of my journal entries in weeks previous start off with “well today was pretty good” but literally everyone this week was “today sucked” haha. I had some low points for sure, but it was a good experience. So most of what we did this week was trying to message people on facebook. So I was sending tons of messages out and after a couple hours of not getting any responses I flipped. I just shouted “What is the point of this?! I’m wasting precious time! All I’m doing is reaching out to people and nobody is responding!”.

Then, Elder Bowles (been out about 20 months), being a veteran and quite used to the labors of the mission field, heard my cry and ran into the room I was in. He looked at me, smiled, clapped his hands together and said “Elder Wride, welcome...to missionary work.”.

Honestly that was pretty funny. I have to remember that I’m not the only one who’s struggling with this. It is kinda wild how you spend all day every day just trying to find people to teach and baptize but only see the results from it every couple months. Missionary work is hard!

2) Zoom Council

So, it’s honestly pretty dumb. Me and my comp are quarantined, but the ZL’s who live in our apt aren’t. But if we have covid, they definitely have it, so anyways it’s just kind of irritating. Especially since we definitely do not have covid. We’re pretty sure Cassandra (who supposedly gave us covid) was lying and said she had covid just to keep us from coming back, because we’ve called her every day since quarantine and she’s never answered. There’s other details too I could add that attest to this hypothesis, but the whole thing just seems kinda fishy. So we’re basically in quarantine for no reason. We had district council this week, which is an in-person thing, but everybody was in person except me and Elder Morgan, who they zoomed in. It was pretty funny honestly. They started off by singing a hymn so we sang as loud as we could through the phone and then they muted us.

3) Sprained Foot

This is a sad story. Okay I know you’re all thinking: “Elder Wride! How did you sprain your foot while being under quarantine?”. Well the truth is, I was trying to moonwalk while in the shower and slipped.

Jk that’s not it. So since we 99.9% do not have covid, we texted our mission nurse and asked if we could leave quarantine early. She said no (in a really nice way), but we were exhausted not seeing sunlight for many days, so we decided to go throw the frisbee in a secluded area and wear our masks. That way we could get some fresh air and not run the risk of “contaminating” anyone. So we were throwing the frisbee in an empty parking garage by our apt and Elder Morgan, bless his heart, threw the frisbee kinda straight at the ground. So it was skrrting across the pavement and I stuck my foot out to stop it and then slipped, rolled my ankle, did the splits, and fell onto the concrete. Boy that hurt. I am a man, so no tears were spilt, but I was in a lot of pain.

So, we contacted our mission nurse. It was just funny because literally an hour before we were like “hey can we leave our apartment” and she was like “no” and then we text her right after and are like “so we were outside and…” haha. Anyways, she wasn’t mad don’t worry (she’s honestly the nicest person ever), we just felt pretty stupid.

But I was in tons of pain. I was moaning and yapping in ferb latin on the couch for the remainder of the day and none of the Elders had sympathy. We still had lessons scheduled though, but our nurse said to keep it elevated and iced so we’d be at our desk doing a zoom call and my right leg is just chillin off the screen.

But, fun fact, we have the priesthood! I found out Elder Morgan has the gift of healing, so he gave me a priesthood blessing. I was pretty emotional. He commanded my foot to heal and instantly as he did that it felt like a bucket of spiritual water got dumped from the top of my head where his hands were and down into my foot. He also said some other cool stuff in the blessing, one of them being that I “am being watched and cared for by many” or something to that extent. Thought that was cool too because my patriarchal blessing touches on something similar to that, and unless he’s been secretly reading mine at night, he wouldn’t have known that. He also blessed me to be able to see beyond the veil more so idk what that means but we’ll see.

After the blessing, I expected my foot to be totally healed, and thought I was gonna skip off into the sunset praising the Lord or whatever. But, immediately after the blessing, it felt almost exactly the same. I could now limp a bit better instead of crawl haha, but it felt the same. I was devastated. I cried on the couch for a bit haha. It just broke my heart to feel like God wasn’t keeping his promises. I’m not the most patient person, so it was a good experience for me.

But now, two days later, my foot feels almost 100% healed. I had some epsom salt so the day after the blessing I soaked my entire foot in a trash can I filled with water and epsom salt haha. The Lord will provide blessings, but ya know you gotta do all you can as well. I wasn’t gonna just wait for the Lord to fix it, I was gonna do everything I could. But yea, point is, the blessing worked. I kid you not that my foot was sprained or something. We talked to a member about it too and she said that based on the sound/looks of it, it might have even been a fracture so…

And who knows, maybe if I hadn’t had the blessing my foot would have healed anyways, but I’m gonna choose to believe that this was divine haha. I can’t expect the Lord to show me greater miracles if I don’t believe the simple ones he’s giving.

Reminds me a bit of satan ya know. At the beginning of 3 Nephi, all of these miracles and whatnot are going on, but people aren’t believing them! It’s pretty dumb honestly. You’d think that obvious miracles (such as no darkness for three days in 3 Nephi as a sign of Christ’s birth) would just prove to the whole world that Jesus is the Christ, but no!

3 Nephi 1:22 says

“22 And it came to pass that from this time forth there began to be lyings sent forth among the people, by Satan, to harden their hearts, to the intent that they might not believe in those signs and wonders which they had seen;”

(also see Helaman 16:22-23, 3 Nephi 2:1-3 for more info on how satan tried to mess up these dudes lives).

Anyways, doubt, fear, disbelief, stubbornness, all of these things come from satan. Wake up fellas! Stop letting Satan prevail in your life! President Nelson said to “Let God Prevail”, not “Let Satan, the Author of Misery, Prevail”. It blows my mind sometimes at how quickly people choose Satan over God. We need to start practicing living God’s commandments now if we ever want to live with him presence again. And if you don’t believe in God, you need to wake up haha. Seriously, miracles everywhere. You think the world just one day blew up into existence? Does that make logical sense to you? Really? Atheists or whatever don’t believe in miracles, but if you ask about the big bang or whatever you know what their answer is? “Oh, well… it was a miracle! Now that doesn’t sound super smart does it. Thank goodness life one day just exploded into existence! It was always funny to me looking back in my science classes, and they would talk about some concept and be like “and if it weren’t without [such and such], life would collapse as we know it”. Whaaaattt??? There’s a million little things that we all depend on for our day to day survival, most of them which we don’t even realize or think about. And people believe that it just one day popped up? All of these intricate details and life sustaining things are just here. Now that is super lucky. A miracle one might say.

But no! There is a God! Everything attests to that statement. People, animals, life, all of this stuff is proof that God exists. Kinda like my boi Alma says in Alma 30:44-

“Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”.

Just saying y’all, God is 100% real. At the end of the day (at least for me personally), either the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, or God doesn’t exist. Thankfully I know that this church is true, for many reasons, that I wish I could expound on more. That doesn’t mean I have a perfect knowledge of that though. I wish I could be like the brother of Jared, who was completely past the point of believing, where he just absolutely knew without a shadow of a doubt, so much that he saw the finger of the Lord. As much as I wish I could know to that extent, I simply can’t right now. Reminds me of what I read in my personal study yesterday that really spoke to my soul.

D&C 78:17-18

“17 Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.”

Just take a step back, breathe, and know that you can’t bear all things now. But, if you let the Lord prevail, he will lead you along. As you continue to practice putting your faith in him, you will see more.

D&C 63:9

“But, behold, faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe.”

So that’s kind of my spiritual thought for the week as well. Just come on dudes! Let God Prevail! He will make so much more out of you than you ever could. This has been the pattern of my life. I want to go one way, and God wants me to go another. I remember praying for answers and getting them and then being PO’d because they weren’t the answers I wanted haha. But, when I choose to take the Lord’s path, I’m always better because of it. THE PATH OF DUTY IS ALSO THE PATH OF SAFETY. It’s my duty to be out serving our here as a missionary, but it’s also my source of protection. I’m preparing myself for a life full of dedicated service to my God. I’m learning now how to be a better son, and one day, father, husband (not in that order don’t worry), and one who is a true follower of Jesus Christ.

That’s it for this week hermanas. If you made it this far, you deserve a gold star. Email me something nice if you can. If there is anything in here that is offensive to you, I apologize! I don't even remember what I said.

“Now I give no more unto you at this time. Gird up your loins and be sober. Even so. Amen.” D&C 73:6

1) Me right before spraining my ankle