Boxing Day

Hi there,
My name is Kim Allen, my husband David emailed you a picture of Elder Massey at our home last week. I thought I would mail you some more pictures of this evening, when Elder Massey and Elder Chu came again to our home for a Boxing Day dinner! Hope you enjoy these!! You have a great son, and my family love having him and Elder Chu in our home! 
Much love!  

Elder Massey's Christmas

    

Week 18

Sorry I wasn't able to say good bye to you mom, I actually went 30 minutes over the time. So I had to just end it. But I hope you like the pictures and that you have a good day today. I'm sorry I cried so much and that I was so rude to you which seemed so long ago, but was just a year ago. I let a lot of unnecessary things affect me so deeply, but i will say my mission has put a lot of things into perspective. I'm trying my best to be the best missionary possible, so don't think I'm not trying. But sometimes I know I could do better and I could try harder, but I'm striving to be better on that as well.
Well I love you mom and thank you for all you have done for me

LoveElder Massey 

 

   

 

 

Week 17

This week has been the most stressful week of my life..... But I'm loving it! A lot has happened a lot of success and some learning opportunities along the way. Let's get down to the good stuff; we had
a baptism this week! But don't get too excited before I tell the story. Arthur Fortes is his name and he is an interesting case, he has been a member for about 7 years and was baptized twice in the Philippines. Apparently their record keeping is poor because we had to teach him everything and re-baptize him and confirm him. But it has been a really chaotic journey to get him here. He actually didn't want
to be baptized and neither did his family. They are a part member family and only his dad is a member, and his dad hated us and missionaries. We had to rebaptism him, we had it all last month but because of some difficulties and misunderstanding we weren't able to
baptize him. So this last week we got the green light and Elder Chu and myself basically just did everything by ourselves and the members helped out with the last little bit, which really was assuring and built my testimony on how members are the most effective means for missionary work. Well we pushed through Arthur's baptism despite the million and one things that went wrong, name something and it went
wrong.  It was a spiritual experience and really ignited a fire with in me on wanting to meet President’s expectations and be not just obedient but perfectly obedient. Well to be honest I have a lot of
stuff to do today and I can't write too much, love you guys

Elder Massey

 

 

Words of Encouragement

The families words of encouragement has given me the fire and motivation this past week not only to continue on working but to work with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. This week I have experience literal miracles of finding the Lords prepared people. People who have literally been seeking out the representatives of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints and people who seeming fell through the cracks of past missionaries hands who now want to enter into the waters of baptism within this coming year. My new companion Elder Chu being the seasoned veteran missionary he is, has been teaching me through his example about the fruits of diligent work and the blessings of being firmly planted in PMG and the white hand book. This week has been hard but it has been rewarding. I have been studying on how to be more of a consecrated missionary and what that actually means in the Lords eyes. I think the biggest thing I have learned from experience is the yielding of not just your might and strength to the lord but your heart and mind as well. Because those are the things that the Lord, through his respect for agency, can not have, and has to be given liberally. I still struggle giving it all up, but Im slowly learning. Thank you all for the good wishes and the fun videos. im sending a Christmas card that should have a little message for every family. but I love you all, and I miss you all!

-- 

Benji J. Massey

 

Email from Elder Muchmore

 

Week 15

   This week has been a full one! Elder O'Hare and I unfortunately have to separate for a season and take on new companions. My fantastic new companion is from Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and his name is elder Chu, he has

taught me so much already with in this first week of the transfer.

    Being a brand new missionary I have been taught a lot of things but I have been thinking a lot about humility and what that means in the

aspect of missionary work. I was thinking about how either the Lord will humble you or you can humble yourself, and how if you humble yourself you obtain numerous more blessings on the account of your

understanding of the heavy reliance you have on the Lord.

    I have been focusing on trying to humble myself even more and becoming more teachable with my new companion. He is experienced with the ways of

missionary work and through observation I have learned how to become a more diligent effective missionary. 

   I have been also focusing my studies on Christ like charity which is an aspect I truly need to work on, and how why with out charity we are nothing. My understanding of charity has grown and actually is essential for not only effective missionary work but for salvation as well. We have to have a Christ like love for others and if we do have love for them it shows our Heavenly Father we love him. Such as it says in mosiah 2:17 "when you are in the service of your fellow beings he are only in the service of your God", we can serve others with our Christ like love that we

attain as a gift from our Heavenly Father.  

    But my understanding is still coming on charity, but to be honest my example of charity is my sister Savannah. She has charity that I never understood and everyone knows it. Some day I want to have that understanding that my little sister has had since birth. The work is hard our here but it is good,

     I can see why this is the hardest mission. I think people are just too focused on the materialistic things of this world and it shows how the adversary works and how strong his hold is on the hearts of these

people.

    I love you all! And hope to hear back from you. I'm sorry my emails are not as long, but I hope they are meaningful

 

Longest pier in the world

 

 

Elder Massey

  

Week 14

Family,

I'll keep this email short and sweet, mostly because I cant remember that far back; But i will tell you some of the good parts. We were following up on some potential investigators named Kevin, Elder O'hare was making fun of me because I couldn't remember his name and kept on calling him David. Anyways he invited us in and we taught him about the book of mormon and prophets, then his mother in law who wasn't paying attention started tuning in. She turned off the tv and joined in, she started asking question that we answered. We expected to be there 15 minutes tops dropping off a book of mormon and making an appointment. but we ended up spending an hour or so teaching the restoration to their family, when elder o'hare was quoting the first vision she closed her eyes and just felt the spirit. did i mention this is a huge Jamaican family. they invited us back and we caught ourselves about 3 or 4 investigators with this family. Moving on in the highlights we had thanksgiving dinner at a members home in Grays during exchanges (no I didn't take pictures, sorry) but it was a lot of food and i made a few new friends in that family. Then we had stake conference were I was spiritually enlightened by my mission president and his wife, i felt like grandma taking notes from all the other speakers. We invited a less active to it and she came, and by invite I mean elder o'hare spiritually rebuked her for going less active and she brought another one of her less active friends with her and they met up with their old church friends. Anyways it was a fun week of just lifting people up closer to our heavenly father, elder o'hare has taught me quite a lot on how to be more enthusiastic and happy which I obviously had to work on, but i love the mission and am trying to reprogram my brain to strive towards one goal which is BAPTISM! We were supposed to have 3 baptisms this transfer between the two of us but it just wasn't their time but I'm learning to accept the lords time table. sorry for the short letter and hope to write a longer one next time. 

Elder Massey

 

 

  

Week 13

     I'm going to lay it all on the table this week, If you were to ask me if I put in my 100% in this week I could not in good conscience tell you I did. The beginning of this week started off just as hard as it did the last week, we planned all these member present lessons and saw a lot of sacrifice from members to come and miracles to get them there but it all came down to agency of the investigator wither or not to let us in their home while we all stood on their door step gladly waiting for them to let us in. 

     These repeated disappointments and seemly unthoughtful uses of agency of canceling appointments that we traveled  hours to get to and seemingly wasted the Lords time lead me to become discouraged. This discouragement bled into my missionary work that was reflected in our weekly numbers, as we reported to our district leader an experienced elder from Uganda, he gave us a righteous rebuking.He basically said we let him down, the Assistants to the President, and our Mission President down.                       This humbled me to the core and made me self assess and took my issues to the scriptures this morning. 

     I was reading in Alma 48-50 where it talks about captain Moroni and his preparations and conflicts with the Lamanites. The spirit answered one of my life long questions that I have had prodding at my mind. My question was about Moroni's "perfect understanding" referenced in Alma 48:11. I wondered how any mortal can have anything truly perfect, because everyone one on this earth excluding Christ is by definition imperfect. But to further explain how I found my answer, in these chapters on how Moroni prepares his people against the Lamanites is a reflection of how he prepares himself against the temptations of the advisory. 

     My epiphany was that his "perfect knowledge" was a perfect knowledge of himself on his own doubts and weaknesses and how the adversary would attack those weaknesses, along how he knew that "through Christ (his) weaknesses can be made strong"-either 12:6. He had a "perfect understanding" on how he can improve not only himself through Christ but his people that he swore to protect. 

     I will say I have had one accomplishment this week and it was that I improved myself through scripture study and prayer, now I need to apply those talents I attained on the mission and the talents I attained before to progress my area. 

    I will say the Lord gave me one super power which I know my mother can testify of because she was there beside me as I did it. I was not the best student in school, but my super power was that I can take what ever grade I had in that class wither it be a B- of a F- (which is possible, because I have received that grade more than once) and I was able to take that grade and some how magically turn it into an A by the end of the week. I thought I would leave that "super power" behind when I left on my mission, but I realized that that would make me an unprofitable servant.

   That super power of being able to do mountains of "unfinished" work just needs to be reprogrammed into doing mountains of "undone work". That same rushed but effective work ethic needs to be applied into the missionary work. I have not been using all the resources the lord has given me to do his fathers will. In an email I received from a friend she shared a scripture from Jacob 6 it says "O be wise; what can I say more?". I know what the lord wants me to do and I know how he wants me to do it, nowI have to be wise and just do his will. Theses things I lay before you in the name of Jesus Christ amen. 

    

Week 12

This week has been full of its own challenges but they were over come through thoughtful meaningful prayer, the companionship and guidance of the Spirit, and by the brother love of my companionship Elder O'Hare. We started off this past week with a ward Halloween party which I did dress up for in the most missionary appropriate way possible. I will say the brits need to learn how to party like the eastridge 8th ward party. I got the privilege to meet a lot of less actives and got a few dinner appointments from them and a thanksgiving dinner appointment from a less active missionary who loves Americans and just American culture. we played American football with him most of the night. Tuesday we had to cancel all of our plans which were solid potential investigators to go on splits with our Zone leaders Elder Heilesto and Skinner. Which was uneventful but got the opportunity to meet their bishop who later called my mom which was a blessing. We did evaluations were I asked openly and honestly what I could improve on, and they knowing my real intent behind it showed me the numbers they want me to hit and gave me constructive criticism over it. Which honestly overwhelmed me, they expected so much because I was trained by an AP and I know how to do all they asked, but it put a lot of responsibility and trust on my plate that I didn't know how to deal with. On top of that our golden investigators Bridget and shaw called us and told us they needed some time to prepare for a unforeseen court battle over Bridget's children with her ex husband. The adversary hits us hardest when we are on the cusp of entering the narrow gates that lead to salvation. We have not seen or heard from her since, it frustrated me so much how the adversary worked and I was frustrated that we lost 2 souls. I also felt partially responsible as if their blood was on my hands. with this all on my mind i went on another exchange the next day with our district leader after our district meeting in which i gave a training. i had my nice little training all planned out but literally hours before my training the district leader asked me to change my training, and it ruined my plans and ruined my training. i was so embarrassed and frustrated that nothing was going right despite me trying my hardest and literally putting in my best effort (i put 2 hours of effort to make my 20 minute training). Then one of the older missionaries who i could only describe as the disobedient missionary from the best two years pulled me aside and gave me a pep talk on trainings and what it meant to be a missionary. it motivated me and comforted me in a very over whelming time (his name is elder bender by the way). i went on exchanges with an mtc friend from my district and we killed it and got 2 new investigators and taught a fantastic lesson to a recent convert. Thursday I'm back in my area seemingly picking up the broken fragments of the goals and plans i had set for the area and starting from square one, in that day we worked so very hard to get new investigators and potentials to meet with again (its getting cold and we don't want to freeze tracking at night). we put a older gentleman Paul on date for baptism and he is pursing faithfully the gospel. Friday we grinded hard on getting new people in our teaching pool, we taught someone over Facebook and we were doing so well with her. We then felt prompted to invite her to be baptized over messenger( advice don't ever do that ever) which she didn't accept but only because she is so busy we were only able to schedule a 10 minute appointment on Saturday. We were able to meet her the next day and she is a lovely 18 year old girl who would benefit from the gospel. that day we got dragged into (the sisters and ourselves) being waiters of a sisters birthday party (which is not our purpose). We did it because they always gave us referrals and we got an investigator from them. But it did take about 4 hours of the Lords time away. we mingled with non members and less actives along with bishops and stake counselors , it was a lot of fun. this Sunday we froze ourselves to death knocking formers, less actives, and referrals doors. A lot was over come this week and a lot to sacred to send through email, i love you all and pray for you every day

-- 

Benji J. Massey

      

Week 11

     So this week has been spiritually uplifting and elder O'Hare and I have been growing and stretching ourselves spiritually and finding much success not because of our own efforts, but because we have humbled ourselves and asked in faith for the Spirit to be our senior companion in this companionship. 

     To answer some pressing questions in the beginning my flat is very nice and sort of big in a sense, hard wood floors that make it very cool in the mornings and a lot of space to do our exercises in the morning. South end on sea side is a very interesting place, you get a little of everything here. where I am is next to Essex college and we meet a lot of young people just trying to figure out life for themselves, a lot of agnostic people. 

     I am in a very old ward that has been there since the early 60's maybe even 50's, our bishop has challenged us as missionaries and as a ward to double its congregation in a year and a half which elder O'Hare and I have humbly taken and challenge ourselves every day to fulfill this vision. We found ten investigators in the first four days of our companionship and they are all doing well, I am working on a philosophy that in the first 2 weeks of the companionship we find as many people as possible in any way possible. Then we nail down the solid ones and teach them throughout the transfer and set their baptismal dates on the last Sunday of the transfer. 

     Just the other day to get as many investigators as possible I was on a full bus ride home when I was spiritually prompted to get up and talk about the book of Mormon. I talked to elder O'Hare on how he was feeling and he responded 'tired'. so I got up, went to the front of the bus and waited for everyone to get seated, it was a full house (25 people maybe) and I prostrated myself in the front of the bus and raised the book of Mormon in the air and declared "My name is elder massey and as a representative of the church of jesus Christ I bring you a message about happiness and how you can become closer to god" then the spirit took over and I taught the book of Mormon. I then said in the name of jesus Christ amen and got off the bus 3 stops too early so we had to walk a little bit.

    The president has put us together for a few basic reasons. Too many missionaries have been just introduced to the area and they were spread thin on responsible trainers to train them, so the president had to find two responsible missionaries to train one another. He trusted us enough to train one another and it has been a very spiritual growth experience. We have been blessed for success as a companionship, a few days before I came elder O'Hare received a call from a Bridget. her first words to him were 'I have been trying to find the true church and I think its yours, so please come over and talk to me about it'. 

     So elder O'Hare and I have been teaching her and her family and she has been prepared by the lord for us, she just wants to learn and follow jesus Christ. before she called us she fasted fifteen days to find the answer to her question on how to guide her family better (she just has been recently divorced and wanted to guide her children in Christ) she received her answer at the 15th day by seeing a sort of vision of Christ and called us the next day. 

     She basically teaches herself, we leave a pamphlet and she reads in while we are gone. we then come back and she says I have prayed about it and I know it to be true. I don't feel like I'm doing any work because the lord has already prepared this harvest and all I'm doing is putting her in the waters of baptism. her son is also getting baptized this November 6th so that will be two people entering into the fold of god in my second transfer. 

     I feel so happy and almost proud, but I understand that I am only an instrument in this work and the lord has carried me. all I have to do is continue to seek and obtain his word and continue in my good works to find these prepared people, which are many. Everyone told me that this place was not ready for the message but they are and it is a blessed land, I can feel great things coming along.  

     I ask everyone to pray that I stay humble and that I continue to pursue the will of the lord. every day I ask the lord in every personal prayer 'what lack I yet' and with real intent I pursue what I lack and strive to improve it, I also ask 'help my unbelief' because fear and doubt can not and will not dwell in the presence of faith which is the power that drives the lords work. I love every one of you and pray for you each night, please watch over my family like you already have been doing and help them in any aspect you can because I am no longer there to do it. i love you and miss you

-- 

Benji J. Massey

 

 

    

Week 10

     Well let's address the elephant in the room, I have been transferred to the south end area with my old MTC companion Elder Jackson O'Hare to follow up train one another ( I train him Sunday Tuesday and Thursday and he takes the rest). This hasn't been done in almost 2 years and one of the Elders they did it with was my old Zone Leader Elder Auras, so he gave me a few helpful tips and said "Nothing could have prepared you for this, and nothing I can say will. Know you will get lost, mess up, and not know what you are doing; but the Lord will help you if you rely on the spirit". 

     The first day of our transfer I had to travel to London twice, to let you guys know that takes almost 2 hours from where I am right now. I traveled to go get Elder O'Hare and then we went dropped my stuff off and realized that I took Elder Kalabankos phone so we had to travel back and return it; therefore wasting all day traveling and leaving just a few hours of OYMing left. The next day we had a dinner appointment with a lovely old couple the Bulls and we left our phone in their car after and were not able to pick it up until the next morning.

     So from when we left it until we got it back the district and zone leaders tried contacting us ( I think president asked them to keep a close eye on us, we talk to them at least once a day), when they couldn't get a hold of us so the zone leaders came knocking at our door at 9am Friday morning. But the thing was we weren't home, we were out using a pay phone trying to get a hold of the zone leaders. When we did they said the only way they would forgive us is if we found 3 new investigators that day, so we put our nose to the grind stone and ended up finding 4 new investigators in 6 hours. We then found 2 the next day, and 3 more the following. We have 9 new investigators in the first week of the transfer and 2 baptisms on date with many more to come.

     We have a solid investigator who is ready for baptism that I unfortunately wasn't here to begin her teaching with. Her name is Bridget and she is a strong Zimbabwe woman who searched for the true church. She called the missionaries and exclaimed " I believe your church is the true church I want to meet and be baptized" so they went along with it and left the hard work for Elder O'Hare, we had a lesson with her over the phone and I was super nervous because we were teaching the law of chastity and I did not know how to teach with our seeing someone face to face. So we made the call and her first words were " elders I found and read the law of chastity pamphlet and I want to let you know I already live that and believe that and I'm ready to live it now". So I was totally relieved and it built my testimony that the lord has prepared his people out here and put them in our path to baptism them with the prober priesthood authority.

     I had a similar experience with my companion Just yesterday, we were about to set out of our flat to meet a list of in actives. In the middle of the prayer we were both struck with the spirit to not visit them and to not even leave the flat. Every time we went to leave something over came both of us heeding us to not go, I had never felt that before and thought maybe it was prompting other than the Holy Ghost. But we sat and prayed and we were told to go somewhere else, some where close. 

     My companion was prompted to pull out a map which I did and we chose one little pin about one block from our flat. We went to visit and it was a little complex. We didn't know how to get in so we rung flat 17, the flat we were prompted to go to. We rung it once, no answer. We rung twice and no answer, we almost left but for some reason my arm just moved almost by it's own will and rung it for the third time. And of course obviously the lord provide and answer with this young man Stephen, he is a solid guy and even though he doesn't know it he is getting baptized. We caught him at the right time because that was his girl friends apartment and he was babysitting and was just about to leave to go to work. The lord works in mysterious ways and again is preparing his people. 

     We have right now 3 solid baptismal dates between elder O'Hare and myself this transfer and we are working on two more solid investigators making hopefully 5 baptisms this transfer. I know that if we have enough faith and enough trust in the Lord we will reach our goal and hopefully survive until the end of this transfer. Everyone if you made it this far to my email it shows that you love me and keep sending my pictures emails and updates on your guys lives, I pray for each one of you every night and wish you all well. I elder Massey being born of goodly parents and of the promised land live you with these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen. 

 

Week 9

     So my letters are late because of transfer’s week, and yes I have been transferred out of the lovely land of Thetford; I have made friends here that I know will be friends until the eternities. 

     I have learned so much in this transfer from elder Kalabonko, the ward members, and especially from the Lord. My first week here was probably the hardest week of my life, and I can see the Lords hand pushing me along. 

     I think the biggest thing I've learned in this area was how to be confident in myself and to put the Lords will before my own. The Lord doesn't demand perfection but commands us to strive towards it, which we have been doing since the day we were baptized as members of the church. I have become both mentally and spiritually strong in this transfer; I always knew how to work hard, but I learned how to love it and the importance of the work I'm doing. One of the families I'm sad to leave is he Leslie family; they are what I want for my family and myself.

     Phillip Leslie is the father of this family and he was very much an influence on me here, we had some very spiritual conversations were I learned so much about the plan of salvation and the gospel as a whole. We also had some deep doctrine talk of symbolism and Christ, but that's for a different email. I also had the privilege to meet Hyrum Joliffe, a 25-year-old return missionary and he would fit into our family like a glove. I had so much fun talking with him about comics, mission experiences, and life lessons in store for me. 

     These two people have made a lasting positive impact on my life that I will be eternally grateful for. This land is sacred to me because this is the place where I became a missionary. 

I have been transferred to South End. I will be doing my follow up training with Elder O'Hare, my MTC companion. Which put into perspective that two brand new missionaries will be training one another in area that they have all to themselves. It has only been done once before and both of them became Zone Leaders and trainers after wards so we will see what the Lord has in store for me. I will say that the England London mission is not for the light hearted, a lot of things happen that I thought I would never experience; which is again for another letter. 

     The people here are the Lords strongest and Elite is what I will say. I don't have a lot of time to write so this will have to be the end. 

Love you 

 

 

 

 

  

Week 8

     It has been a week of what it feels like a lot of achievements and a lot of failures. Starting from the beginning. Since I have come out into the field and been assigned to Thetford I feel like I have not been as well connected to the spirit as well as I could be and I was having a lot of frustrations in the day to day mission life. 

     Such as being frustrated with my companion, or frustrated with a less active families or people, frustrated with investigators and their lack of commitment and progression. Realizing that this frustration in my day-to-day life was hindering my personal spiritual progression I pondered and prayed on how I could remove this personal stumbling block of myself.

     It came to me in companionship study when my wise companion elder Kalabonko suggested that we read a particular talk from the mission guide book. Elder Gene R. Cook calls it “Purification”. In summary it explains that obviously a missionaries thought wander and stray from the singular purpose that they set out for which is to bring others unto Christ, unfortunately that disqualifies them from the many blessing of the holy ghosts presence as they proselyte and teach.

      But a way to qualify yourself of those much needed blessing you first need to find out what is hindering you from your objectives. So first you need to begin a fast that lasts 24 hours or longer to achieve a spiritual plane that you yourself are not usually on, while on this fast your write down everything that you think about that might distract you or hinder you in some way during your days. After you have written down all your distractions you pray to your Heavenly Father and offer up to "fast" from these distractions for 40 days as an offering to show your commitment to his work and to hopefully qualify yourself for blessing you might not have received. 

     So I'm doing this I allow myself to think of home for only 1.5 hours on P days and no other times. Which does not mean I love it less, I love everyone's contributions on iCloud and email and they mean worlds to me when I open them up on p day. It just means that for this splitter in time of two years, and probably the only opportunity I have to serve with such devotion and whole heart with out any other responsibility to serve my god with all I have. I have been called to serve and to leave behind all other personal matters, I know as I do this and the lord will bless me through out the eternities. 

The ward has really accepted elder Kalabonko and myself; I love each of them individually. We have begun to start taking out the young men more often in our teachings (which are few but powerful, I really am getting into the swing of things). 

     We took Daniel Wilk’s a preparing missionary to go teach with us. He has been struggling with his testimony and Bishop Leslie personally asked us to take him out to build his testimony on more than just facts we know about history and science. We had a very enjoyable time with him, and I made a grievous mistake with one of our investigators we took Daniel to. Our investigators name is Liam a well to do young chap who is 18 and has a very good job.

     We took him out to lunch and we talked for what seemed like moments and I wasted basically an entire member present appointment on talking about temporal things despite spiritual. My companion was not too happy, and I was not happy myself. The worst part was that when you do something wrong the spirit rebukes you as well. So when I got on my knees to give my daily report to my Heavenly Father the spirit rebuked me on how I could do better and basically showed me every opportunity I missed and let pass by because I was having "too much fun". 

     I promised to never have that feeling again and set out on my way, I never talked to so many people the next day. Even people who obviously went out of their way to avoid me. I could get in a few words mentioning the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ before getting blown past. The work is hard but it is rewarding at nights when you kneel before god and ask "what more could I have done?” Trust me he will give you an answer because there is always a place you can improve, and if you don't get an answer quoting my companion " you are prideful". I love each and every one of you and pray for your successes and strength through trials.

Love Elder Massey 

 

Week 7

     Driving to London 75 miles away (takes 3 hours)  American Military Base grocery shopping