Elder Jacob Hill: Mr. Worldwide

Malo Soifua!!!

Today on the Elder Hill Show:

** Giving service is so much fun, 10/10 would recommend

** Elder Lee and I got to go back to Manhattan!! (More on that below)

** Elder Bassett is an amazing guy (also super hilarious when he wants to be)

** Member meals are the best

** In terms of transfer news, there is no transfer news (Elder Lee and I are both staying)

We started doing service at a food pantry here in Bridgeport. It reminds me a lot of NDS from Staten way back when on my mission, only on a much larger scale. We did a bunch of warehouse work (cleaning shelves, restocking, organizing), and it was a ton of fun. It threw me back to my Walmart days, so that was great haha. We're scheduled to go back each week, and I'm super excited to keep helping out there.

So we had a Mission Tour this week. Elder W Mark Bassett of the Seventy came and spoke to our entire mission multiple times over the course of the week. As part of the tour, our zone was scheduled to be in person at the chapel in the Manhattan Temple on Wednesday morning for the first round of meetings. Since Pres Holmes knew that it's a long trip from CT to Manhattan, he has us all come down the night before and stay with missionaries throughout the city. So with all that in mind haha, Elder Lee and I drove down into the Bronx to stay with some Elders there for the night. One neat thing about that is that I have now physically been to all five boroughs of NYC (not an impossible feat, but not super easy). Just good times all around.

Wednesday we took the metro bright and early, and we rode down into Manhattan. It had been a transfer for me since I'd been in the city, and much longer for Elder Lee, so we were both really happy to be back in our old stomping grounds in Manhattan. We got to the meeting, and we had a brief meet and greet with all the missionaries we hadn't seen in a while. After a few minutes, we all took our seats to prepare for the meeting.

I'll stop there with the linear narrative, and just talk about the meetings as a whole (I went to five meetings from Wed to Fri). In short, I love Elder Bassett. He's funny, relatable, and very human, but he also had moments were he literally glowed as he just rolled back the curtains of heaven and gave us all a glimpse. My favorite talk that he gave was about sacrifice. He broke it into three main sections: first he talked about the sacrifice the Father made, second the sacrifice the Son made, and third the sacrifice we are asked to make. It was so cool how he talked about sacrifice, and how some things are meant to be for our benefit, not God's. He compared our missions to the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice Isaac. God already knew that He wouldn't let Abraham do it, but Abraham himself didn't know. So why make him do it in the first place? In short, "Abraham had to learn something about Abraham." Elder Bassett explained that a mission is not a sacrifice, it is a privilege. While on a mission, we are asked to put those things that we hold dear "on the altar" like Abraham did Isaac, so that we ourselves can grow. In short, "you need to learn something about you."

I could go on and on about what he taught, but I don't wanna make this email tooo long haha. It sufficeth me to say that it was amazing. (Also, W. Mark Bassett has one conference talk that you can go listen to on Gospel Library, and I highly recommend it).

Lastly for this, on a much different note, Church members here are realizing that Elder Lee and I are not eating with members every night, and they are immensely bothered by this haha. We had dinner with Everly and her mom on Thursday, then another dinner with a member family on Friday, and finally an amazing dinner with our Bishop and his family last night on Sunday. All of them were spectacular, and all of those members are awesome. A few members of the ward council have been talking about circulating a schedule, so that'll be all kinds of fun, haha.

P.S. another awesome thing to do in your free time is to watch the Joseph Smith Papers podcasts. They're pretty short, and they're super interesting. The third series is coming out this fall, so I've been listening to the first two to catch up. Good stuff.

Mafaufauga faaleagaga: See the aforementioned meetings with Elder Bassett.

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou,

Elder Hill

Ata: