The third area in which I served in the mission field was a place called Choluteca. It was in southern Honduras and was so hot that it was called El Horno, or, The Oven in English. It was just a few miles north of Nicaragua. And, as it turned out, I was transferred there during the hottest time of the year. I remember it being so hot at night that even turning on a fan was uncomfortable and it felt like someone was holding a hair dryer in front of me as I tried to get some sleep. Air conditioning? There was none.
During the day, temperatures climbed at times to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but I became somewhat accustomed to the heat during my waking hours. It was at night when I suffered most from the heat. The walls of the house where we stayed would soak up the mid to late afternoon heat and then radiate that heat back into our room all night long. There was one hammock outside in the court yard, but this always went to the guy with the most seniority, and I was never that guy. We all envied him.
The mornings were the coolest and were, by comparison, delightful. But by about ten o'clock you could begin to feel the cool of the morning slipping away and by eleven, it was really hot and very humid. The heat would continue to build until about one thirty or two when it would be broken mercifully by heavy rain. When you could see the big thunder heads forming you knew relief from the intense heat was near at hand. How I loved the rain!
There were many times when we were caught in the middle of a downpour and, even though we carried umbrellas, we refused to raise them preferring the deliciously cool rain to dry clothing. Everyone else we passed were all huddled under their umbrellas and we were a strange sight to see, no doubt. After all, most adults have sense enough to come in out of the rain, right? But not us. And although we undoubtedly looked foolish and peculiar, we spent so much time out in the stifling heat of the day that when the rains came we could not be prevaled upon by social convention or any other persuasion to come in out of the rain.
There was one family we visited that lived quite some distance from where we lived and it would take a bus ride followed be a long two hour walk to arrive at their home. I got to know my companion very well because of the conversations we had with one another during these long walks to and from this home.
Junior companion is the designation an Elder receives when he is new to the mission and inexperienced in doing missionary work. I had just been promoted to the role of senior companion and this Elder came to me directly from Salt Lake City, Utah. I was his first companion in the mission field and he was not impressed with either me nor with what he considered the serious lack of results with which our companionship was, in his words, plagued.
He was at least partially right about the lack of results because at that time, we were spending quite a bit of time with members of our church instead of finding new people to teach and he informed me that he hadn't become a missionary to chat with members of our own church and wanted to focus exclusively on finding new converts.
That's actually what I wanted to do too, but I told him that one of the assignments the mission president had given me before sending me down to Choluteca was to try to mend the rifts which were developing between some of the members of our church in that area. He wisely predicted that this problem would need to be solved first before any further missionary work would be effective and he wanted me to find out what the problems were and make recommendations prior to a visit he was planning to that area.
I tried to explain this to my new companion, but even so, he was reluctant to follow my lead and the way he felt about me and this situation was becomming unhealthy and was impacting our work together as missionaries. How could I convince the members of our own church to forgive one another and learn to love each other when my companion and I struggled in our opinions, each thinking he was in the right? This is something which can not be hidden and became more obvious to others as time went on and things soured between me and my companion.
After praying about this issue together we both felt impressed to turn the lead over to my junior companion, so I said, Elder, we're not not being very effective and are failing in our call to preach the gospel. Do you feel like you can lead us to success better than I have been able to do? He said, not to be offended, but that he thought he could. So I told him that I would follow his lead until we both agreed otherwise. This is never done, but I felt this was our only way forward and out of this situation. And, because I felt inspired to do it, we gave it a try.
The next morning after scripture study, I asked him where we were going and what we were going to do. He didn't have a plan so I waited patiently until he did. The first morning we got out of the house a little late, but after a couple of days, that was no longer a problem, and my companion became quite decisive and sure of himself, at least at first.
He took the lead for a couple of weeks and during that time we had such little success that he pleaded with me to assume my role as senior companion again. It wasn't really his fault and I was genuinely impressed with his ability to lead, but during this time, although we worked as hard as we ever had, we were unable to get anyone to listen to our message and lost the few people who we were teaching at that time.
I honestly think that the Lord was teaching us both a few lessons. My companion was learning about obedience and lines of authority and, perhaps, a little humility as well. I was secretly praying for answers which would allow me to do as the mission president had asked while making this a positive first missionary experience for my companion.
And the answer finally came one day during one of our walks together down that long, lonely deserted road. In a flash of inspiration I turned to him and said Elder, I know what we need to do. I told him that what we needed to do was to ask the members of our church to help us with our missionary work and that this would build friendships within our church as well as help us to find more new people to teach.
It was a brilliant idea and worked better than either of us could have imagined or hoped. Within a couple of weeks we had more people to teach than we could handle and within a couple of months, most of the problems within our church had resolved themselves. It is amazing how many problems get solved when people lose themselves in the service of the Lord. And, perhaps just as important, my companion was, for the first time on his mission, happy.
I would like to take credit for this idea, but because I received it through inspiration, I have to give all the credit to the Lord. I reported our success back to the mission president and he cancelled his trip out to Choluteca.
My companion and I grew to be good friends and several months later, and several companions later, he told me that he was sorry he had been so difficult and that I was one of the best companions he had ever known. That really meant a lot to me and made my day and I told him that I felt the same way about him.
It was important to me because the whole time he was questioning my ability to lead, I was asking myself those same questions and I felt very inadequate in my role as senior companion because before that time, I had never taken the lead in missionary work. Because of that I really was forced to examine my own abilities and motives deeply and there were times during this period of my mission when I wasn't sure how to proceed to overcome our problems both in our companionship, and in the church at Choluteca. What was amazing was how much buy in I got from a companion who, to that point, had constantly resisted the methods I had tried to employ. I guess the right solution really can change everything.
Sometimes leadership means to just keep trying instead of giving up and to keep trying until the right solution presents itself. You don't have to have all of the answers to be a leader, but you do have to earnestly seek them and never give up. Humility and determination, sometimes, are the only things separting someone from the success they desire.
While my companion and I discussed this new plan and worked out the details of its implementation together, as we walked down that road together, we were so distracted by our conversation and so used to walking together in the rain that we barely noticed when the rains started falling. The time flew by that day and before we knew it we were at the turnoff leading to the home we came to visit.
We were on the far side of the road and when we looked up we couldn't beleve what we saw. We had become so immersed in our conversation that we haden't noticed the water building on the other side of the road. When we finally did look up, the water had formed a fast moving river wide enough that we couldn't jump to the other side and swift enough that our feet would have been swept out from under us if we tried to forge our way across.
We had to walk another half mile down stream before we found a place narrow enough to make the jump across the river. When it rains in Choluteca, it really rains and we both wished we had picked the other side of the road to walk down that day. What a good day that was.
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