Entry Nineteen: In Memorial of Forest City

May 26, 2025

Entry Nineteen: In Memorial of Forest City

5/26/25

Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful day off from work. Also, congrats to all those who graduated this past week! It feels crazy to be a whole year out of high school already, but it was a great year. To all those who did just graduate: Life’s just begun, and you have such great things to come.

But, let’s get into this week! I’m not sure if I’ve just never really noticed this before, but it feels like the whole world shut down this weekend for memorial day. It seems like every single person was too busy (members included) and it didn’t feel like anything got done this week. However, our zone did a mini May Madness challenge and we were competing over how many church invites we could get in a day. Our mission has the base goal of 100 invites every day, and we decided to stretch that even further. My record from this week is 223 invites in one day, which I think is pretty good, plus it meant we beat Weaverville in the bracket. Not even close to the Pohnpein Elders though, they got 508 🤯

Now time for the short but sweet things of the week!

1️⃣ We went on one last exchange for the transfer and I led out the area with Elder Farr. Love that guy, he’s got one of the purest testimonies I’ve ever heard.

2️⃣ It was Elder Driggs’ birthday on Saturday! Shoutout to literally the BEST TRAINER EVER!!! 🥳🎊🎉

3️⃣ I got to talk with a Buddhist this week. It was a very enlightening experience haha

4️⃣ My grandparents were in Asheville on Saturday and were able to stop by Forest City for church. It was awesome to see them. I love them so much! ❤️

Spiritual Thought!

It’s very typical for missionaries to face a lot of rejection. It makes sense, people have their own agency and are free to choose for themselves. It can be disheartening to see people choose a different path than the one we know can bless them, but we gotta remember the reason why they’d choose that way. The scriptures teach us that:

“Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.” (2 Nephi 2:16)

When it comes to decision making, people may not understand one of the choices presented to them, so they go with the one they know better, even if it might harm them more in the long run. However, we ought to remember it’s a 2 way thing. Preach My Gospel says, “Whether you reach [a] goal depends on other people’s agency. But do what is in your control to accomplish it.” (page 150)

It may seem sometimes that things are out of our control, but we have agency ourselves. I really like the talk Be Responsible by Elder Lynn G. Robbins. He really leans into that idea of doing everything that is in your control to accomplish it. A universal truth is that agency does not work without accountability, and so we must hold ourselves and others accountable. It’s incredibly easy for people to avoid accountability. It may take a lot of faith to follow up with people on commitments they make. But we know that a mustard seed’s worth of faith can move mountains. When we do EVERYTHING in our power we will begin to gain control over positive outcomes.

I’m really not sure who needs to hear this thought from me, but it’s something I really enjoyed learning about this week lol. Plus I gave a fire training during district council on it, so that too. But! That is all from me. I seriously hope y’all have the bestest week ever! I’m love you all and pray for y’all’s success wherever you are!

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to thee, how great thou art! How great thou art!

See you next transfer!

Elder Clayton

Weekly Pics!