All Gas - No Brakes

Dear Family and Friends,

August has been a pretty awesome month for us here in Michigan. The best two things?

1. Gavin came to visit!

2. Elmer’s 60^th Birthday!

Thank you to everyone who sent a nice note to Stacy and to all our kids for helping to reach out to friends and family. It is a very special gift. Many of our missionaries wrote great things even though we had only been here a month when the deadline for the letters came. Elmer was very touched by your love and thoughtfulness and liked it much better than the party I was planning had we been in San Diego still.

We celebrated with a trip UP North. Some new friends Lansing let us stay at their lake cottage. Seeing as it was Elmer’s birthday, of course, we hiked the Sleeping Bear Dunes, kayaked, and took out the paddle boards, ate too much, and even crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the UP. Here’s a tip for you non-Michiganders: There’s Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island and Mackinac Bridge, but they are all pronounced Mack-in-aw. There’s a whole video on YouTube about how to pronounce the names of places in Michigan, and even Michiganders don’t know a lot of them. We are mispronouncing about half of what we say.

We moved into the new mission home on August 20^th and spent quite a bit of time unpacking boxes and sorting through all the junk the movers brought over from the old mission home. Gavin was a big help when he was here. He got to crawl around the attic of the old mission home with me and Elders Caldwell and Hall (our office missionaries) looking for treasures that will help us outfit new apartments for our missionaries. We found cornhole! We were at zone conference when they moved us. In the end, they brought everything except several things we specifically told them to bring like the snow blower (we are told we will need it) and the new bedding that was in the basement. They brought over a lot of old stuff. I gathered 16 boxes for the FM people to take to Goodwill, and there will be more before it is done. I’m doing Marie Kondo proud.

On Friday, we had a three-hour training that was held for the five new mission leader couples in the North America Northeast Area. President Heap and I proudly representing the great MLM and others from the New Jersey Morristown Mission, the Ohio Columbus Mission, the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission, and the Maryland Baltimore Mission also attended. Normally if someone signs me up for a three-hour meeting, I want to say, “I thought we didn’t do those anymore!” But when I heard that Elder D. Todd Christofferson would preside and speak at the meeting and that Elder Robert Gay one of the Presidents of the Quorum of the Seventy would also address us, I was all in. The North American Northeast Area Presidency was also there with their wives and others from the Mission Department. I don’t know how worried they are about new mission leaders, but it seemed like a respectable amount of spiritual fortification was being brought to bear for our benefit. And we were truly spiritually fed.

I want to share with you what Elder Christofferson told us. He said the Quorum of the Twelve are seeing a hastening of the work and that the Lord is in it. Speaking of the global pandemic, he said that it is no surprise to the Lord and that it is being turned by Him for His purposes. All the things we are learning today about how be better missionaries are arrows to our quiver. One thing we are seeing is a softening of hearts. People are more responsive to spiritual things. He said, “I hope you are seeing it in your missionaries as well – that their hearts are softening too.” People are learning that it is not adequate to trust in the arm of flesh and that we must bind ourselves to the Savior. For a while, there has been a feeling building throughout the world of “I do not need God.” People have forgotten that the simplest things have been given by His hand. We have air to breathe because He provided it. This time is pulling us back to both a dependance on and an accountability to the Savior and our Heavenly Father. We must live in a way that shows we recognize that there is a day of judgment and accounting. We must be serious about our lives and our choices. To gain a glorious immortality, we need a sense of what we owe to God. Those with gratitude will be able to stay On the path that leads back to our Heavenly Father. He emphasized that things are going in the right direction. We have things to overcome, but the Lord is guiding it and is mindful of us.

I think the thing I loved the most was when Elder Christofferson shared this thought with us:
It is a miracle, frankly, that the Lord, being perfect, lets us touch anything of His as imperfect as we are. But he does. It is our great privilege labor with Him. He is the Lord of the vineyard.

Saturday, we drove to Grand Rapids so I could watch the live streaming of Marilyn Prock’s funeral. I felt blessed to watch the service with Marilyn's granddaughter, Hermana Prock, and Hermana Garcia as we serve together in Michigan.It was a sweet moment to be there together and see all the Prock children pay tribute to their mother, honor her unwaivering faith in Jesus Christ, and talk of her wonderful life and influence for good. She was a dear friend to our family in the good old Phoenix 16^th Ward and one of my favorite leaders when I was a youth.

On Sunday, we went to church for the first time since March 8^th, and it felt pretty great. We didn’t even mind driving an hour and 45 minutes each way and speaking in order to get the invitation. We went to the branch in Caro. I think most of the people in the branch are related to each other. Because we cannot have more than 25 people at church, you need to be invited. After two months here, we finally got the nod. Actually, we were invited to the Petosky Branch earlier, but we couldn’t make it work in our schedule. On Sunday evening, we also had an amazing mission fireside with Cinco Paul, the screenwriter of the Despicable Me movies and more, who is my childhood friend. He told the story of his own conversion, the path of his career, and shared his insights about living the gospel of Jesus Christ with us. He also played and sang a fun Book of Mormon song that he wrote. Even over zoom, the missionaries were freaking out they loved it so much. The prior Sunday, we had Mady Sissoko, a freshman on the MSU Basketball Team, as our guest. Mady is not a member of the Church, but is a man of great faith and true to his Muslim heritage. He shared his story with the missionaries of how God has helped and guided him as he came from Mali, living in a village with his family on their farm, to play Division I Men's College Basketball.

Today we had the last of our 11 sessions of Zone Conference. Even though it sounds like way too much church, these zone conferences have been so special. We were sad to see them end - until we start again in a couple of weeks. We ended with the Grand Rapids Zone. I think its last zone conference was over six months ago. You can imagine how happy all the missionaries were to see each other. In August we held the historic, first-ever zone conference of the Spanish Zone in the Michigan Lansing Mission. Some of our original MLM missionaries spoke about coming out and realizing that there were 5 or 6 other Spanish-speaking elders and thinking, “Well, this is my district for the next two years. I better get along with these missionaries.” If someone had told them there would be 35 Spanish-speaking elders and hermanas in the MLM one day, they would not have believed it. We have more Spanish-speaking missionaries than we can fit into the zone. And more are coming. It’s a very exciting time!

Next transfer, which is the six-week period mission life is organized around, we will have about 213 young missionaries. The mission growing so quickly. In September we will receive 38 missionaries and send 5 home. Good things are happening as the missionaries continue to thrive, not simply survive, in this unprecedented and unusual time. I know some people could feel sorry for missionaries serving during a global pandemic. But that’s not the feeling we have here. Our missionaries say, “All gas. No brakes.”

That’s also how Elmer and I feel we are living life as mission leaders right now too! All gas. No brakes.

One of our assistants, Elder Griffin, sent this LeBron James quote out with a mission report:

“As I prepare, I’m recommitting to myself. I’m gonna bring every ounce of energy to the task at hand, every last scrap of my skill, knowledge, and ability. I’m gonna take everything that I’ve learned, and everything I got, and I’m gonna pour it into this one game, this one moment that’s right in front of me, and if I do that, win or lose, I can live with the results.”

I didn’t even correct the grammar; it was that fitting.

We love you all!

President and Sister Heap