It’s been a decent week here in Tarzana. My depression-like feelings went away temporarily as my birthday helped me to be in a better mood, but they started to come back on Friday. I’m going to focus on the good first, then we can go back to the bad feelings.
Last Monday for preparation day we had a really awesome zone activity playing softball. I got quite a bit of sun, which helped my farmer’s tan a bit. As always, it was nice to able to play a game with fellow zone members. We also taught our investigator to Mel on Monday night, plus a few times afterwards, but we’re going to have to drop him because of a lack of commitment (ie coming to church).
On Tuesday, we did weekly planning, which hasn’t improved at all. It is still Elder Agamata “stealing the show,” or so to speak. He doesn’t involve me and it’s frustrating me. I don’t care who is the senior companion, senior vs junior is absolutely meaningless. For example, a husband and wife make decisions TOGETHER – not just the husband, neither just the wife. The same applies in planning as missionaries. We need to make decisions (steps to take to help investigators progress, when to visit people, etc). TOGETHER. I honestly think that a big part of this depression-like feelings are because of this and knowing that I’m not able to reach my full potential. When I brought it up in companionship inventory, he immediately jumped to conclusions and claimed that he doesn’t involve me because I don’t study for investigators, which is not true.
Wednesday, as I mentioned, was a good day. It started off with the Sister Training Leaders dropping off a gift basket. In it were some protein bars, pink velvet cake mix (what the difference is between pink and red, I know not), frosting, a pair of sunglasses, a balloon (see attached pictures) and an American flag (because it is a national holiday ya’know?) During studies (now before you say that Elder Agamata is right that I don’t study for investigators, I only dealt with the cake for perhaps a total of 5 minutes of study time (getting it out of the oven, etc.) I baked the cake. After it cooled off, I cut it in half, made a two layer cake and frosted it. We went to operation gratitude where we assembled several hundred care packages and then as a zone gathered in their break room for a small birthday party. Lager on in the evening, we had cake from our Bishop’s wife.
On Thursday, we had exchanges and I stayed with our district leader and we had a awesome district meeting.
Friday is when things got rough again. It seemed to be going just fine until about 8:15pm when we were trying to stop by a referral. We had plugged in the address in my GPS and I was following it when ACCIDENTALLY, not purposefully I left our area (the GPS wanted me to turn down a different road to go back in, but subsequently left our area.) It was all fine and dandy when I was collecting my mistake, Elder Agamata had to put in his two cents and told me that I was disobedient. What ensued afterwards was neither of us are exactly proud of, but nevertheless it happened. We got in a 5 minute long argument about disobedience vs mistakes. Neither of us would accept the others point of view so we agreed to stop talking for the remainder of the trip.
Saturday, we had the opportunity to witness several baptisms. I played the piano at both, which I consider to be a high honor. There was what seemed to be a massive fire that was in Santa Clarita, the smoke from it almost covered half of the San Fernando valley.
And now, as to why I am emailing you today. I simply cannot do this any longer. I am sick of this situation. I quit. I don’t want to quit, but I simply cannot stay off a computer and I’m tired of being criticized for how I use them. Again, it’s not that I’m disobedient, I simply am not perfect. Between this and the planning thing and Elder Agamata assuming that I’m disobedient – I’m done. I want it to be done. I need to get out of this situation because I feel like my faith is diminishing because other people aren’t letting me live up to my full potential. I know that you’re going to call President Henrie because I emailed you today, but this was the only way I could think of to get this situation under control.
With love and gratitude,
Elder Allen J Blodgett
P.S. As you can see, I didn’t email. I decided I needed to skip you and call President Henrie myself.
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