Week 53--Holladay, UT

Putting up the "shakas". Apparently that's what they call the hang loose sign in Australia and Hawaii

This week has been good! and yes my life is awesome Uncle Aaron!!!!! Thanks for the package; it was very refreshing to be reminded of my loving family. Thank you so much for your support and the individual experiences I've had with each of you.

That actually kind of takes me to the things that I wanted to share this week. Elder Baldry has been struggling a little bit. For awhile I didn't really understand why. I realized that with me I thought
subconsciously that every one had the same strengths and weaknesses that I did. There was a talk given in sacrament meeting a few Sundays ago that has really stuck with me. She is a professor of history at a college in Utah. She talked about the concept of multi-perspectivity. What it means is that as far as historical figures go, the more witnesses or accounts you have of one person the more accurate the picture is of that person. If you only can see a small part of their life and you only have an account of someone who hated that person it's going to be very different then what the person was actually like. Anyways, I only have the perspective of Elder Baldry on his mission and how he is when I see him. There's a lot more to his story. He was inactive for most of his life. His Dad was excommunicated and is anti. Literally all he did when he was in Australia is surf and play rugby. His view of life and the rules and everything else is different from mine. I've lived with him for four months now which is a long time to spend 24/7 with the same dude. We've had to work out some things and come to agreements to make things work. The area has slowed down a lot because my focus is much more in him and on the district than anything else.

One of the days this week, I tried really hard to show him that I cared because I could tell something was wrong. He got up really late one morning and I thought about kind of chastising him and getting
irritated with him but instead I had a thought to wait til comp study to talk to him. He eventually got out of bed and got ready. When it was time for comp study, I asked if everything was alright. I told him that things seemed like something was wrong. I told him that I loved him and wanted him to be happy and that if he needed to talk I was here. Then I we continued comp study like normal. Later that night, he talked about leaving and going home a lot. He doesn't think that he can finish his mission. He said he didn't feel like he was doing any good here. We stayed up very late Saturday night talking about all this stuff. It is extremely hard to get people to open up sometimes. I'm very grateful God helped me. I think he is doing a little better. I am very grateful for this wonderful
opportunity to love him by showing kind gestures and to build his faith in himself and in the Savior!

-Elder Bass

Later notes:
Elder Baldry was an amazing companion for me. In order to really connect with him and help him, I needed to love him and i also needed to show him that i loved the work and i loved the gospel and i loved the people i was working with. It really helped me. One of the profound experience that changed my mission was Elder Baldry's birthday. I called him lazy i think. I was just so sick of me doing most of the work. I thought that he needed to do more of the work. He was being lazy and not helping me so i just decided to turn 360 and play devil's advocate. I was extremely sarcastic. I said everything i could think of that a lazy disobedient missionary would say and do. We went out for a little bit, but we ended up going home and i said i was going to take a nap. I did. When i woke up, Elder Baldry's stuff was packed up. I think he had gone to play basketball at the church. I apologized to him and after that i really tried hard to be his friend and help him. He is one of my good friends now.