Borders / Monsoons / Empathy

Hello all! Today is my last day in Central Ward. Yes, it's a bittersweet moment: bitter, of course, because I will be leaving the many wonderful people I've met here, but sweet as well because, starting tomorrow, I will be teaching in Spanish! I'm going to Nogales! It's a border town; on the American side it's a little bigger than Logan and is a primary entry point for Mexican goods imported to the US, while on the Mexican side it's about as big as the city of Tucson. I've been there once before and wrote about it previously. It's very mountainous, green (comparatively), and gets more rain than here. Speaking of rain: the last few weeks the summer monsoons have been raging and there has been a whole lot of rain! I've been in the recent practice of not posting many photos, so I thought today I might as well compensate accordingly with some content. Attached are: * My companion and I on the city streetcar! We get to talk to a lot more people when traveling by bus versus the bikes. * A cool mural we saw on Historic 4th Avenue! * The end of the world commencing! There was a massive haboob (dust storm) before one of the monsoons. * My companion and I soaked in the rain! We took a walk in the flooded streets. * The Rillito River and I! The river only flows immediately after a rainstorm. It was super cool to get to go walk down by it. * Video: My companion took video of us walking around in the street (we stopped by CVS) during one of the worst storms. Either way, as of tomorrow I will no longer be your local friendly university/downtown missionary, but if you do see one in your neighborhood, please be friendly to them! They might need a water bottle, especially if it's super hot outside like it is here. (Actually, the temperature is now a consistent upper 90s, lower 100s most weeks. I've heard it will increase again next month.) Despite this: I'm super excited to (re)learn Spanish and meet some great people down in Nogales! My new companion, Elder West, is of unusual height and is the only other missionary reassigned from the Spain Barcelona mission currently in the Tucson mission. The fact that they put us together seems promising. This week we had a closing zone testimony meeting for all of the missionaries in North/Central Tucson, and as part of my thoughts I mentioned the connection between charity (agape, pronounced "ah-gah-pay:" godly love) and empathy. Charity is at the core of Christ's Gospel (message), as expressed by Christ in the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 22: "37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. "38 This is the first and great commandment. "39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. "40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." The Greek word used for "love" in these two commandments is "agapeseis." (There are several words we can translate as love from the Greek, but in this instance Jesus is commanding his disciples to have agape.) The word translated as "charity" in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, which was originally used in the same sense as agape, is "agape" (also "agapen") in the Greek. Agape refers to the love that we are to have for God, and for our fellow people: the love that God has for us. Empathy -- I'm not familiar with the Greek equivalent if there is one -- is not a word that appears in the Bible. According to the dictionary I have available, an app called WordWeb, it is defined as "Understanding and entering into another's feelings." This does include being able to pick up on others' feelings, as the term is used in the incredible TV franchise Star Trek, but it also includes being able to "enter into" one's feelings: to be able to truly feel the feelings of another as though they are one's own. This is the sense in which I seek to use empathy today. Godly love, agape, charity requires that we go outside ourselves and integrate the needs of others into our own. I remember hearing in high school the argument that true altruism (from the same dictionary as before: "the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others") is impossible because seemingly unselfish behavior must always be motivated by some personal gain, even if that personal gain is a reward for the gain of another. I find that argument to be moot: true charity, true altruism, comes about when we bring the needs of others into our own sphere of concern and therefore broaden our concern beyond ourselves. In a sense, this is making other's needs and gains our own, but such is the nature of true unselfishness. Truly feeling what they feel is an essential part of this connection. Christ has the ultimate empathy for us. From the Book of Alma in the Book of Mormon, chapter 7: "11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. "12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities." Again, from the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, chapter 53, with reference to the prophesied Messiah (Christ): "3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. "4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. "5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." Christ having suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the subsequent events what we have felt, and having gone below us all, has perfect empathy for us, knowing all that we feel, having experienced all that we feel. As such, one Christ-like attribute that we may strive to develop is our empathy for our fellow people: because that empathy we have is essential to the charity that we have, and it is essential as we work to help others along their own individual paths in life. So, let us have empathy for one another, and let us strive to deepen our love, our agape, for one another as well! "Let all your things be done with charity [agape]." (1 Corinthians 16:14) I hope you all have a wonderful week. Enjoy the attached content. May God bless you! Elder Brannon Arizona Tucson Mission Spain Barcelona Mission