Josh Mission Email May 4 2026: Car Accident

It was probably the most mild fender bender of all time. It wasn’t even the worst car accident a missionary got into that day, there was another one (no injuries too!) where some mustang flying down the highway hit the side of some missionaries’ car. Anyways we were yielding in a merge lane, a car passed us, and we started to merge in. We are fully accelerating normally at this point when BAM! we get pushed forward. The car who had been waiting behind us just got a little excited and stepped on it a bit too hard. We did all the info exchanging, it was super easy no big deal. Shoutout the mission office, they take care of just about everything so all we had to do was information, pictures, and a little report. We had a member dinner after and it was pretty weird how life just went on.
We now have three dents on our trunk that we named 一，二，and 三。The trunk doesn’t like to close anymore either, but that’s all the inconveniences we’ve really had. Pretty good car accident when your biggest problem is that dinner got a little cold 👍.

Now, for last week’s long awaited story. I hope the suspense didn’t kill you guys during the three day wait😬. While I was on exchanges with Elder Wilde we knocked on the door of someone he had met a little while back, and his brother answered. He said he had a feeling that it was us, and he was down to come to church on Sunday. We chatted with him some more, found out that he is in the Army, and is stationed in Virginia. He said after being in the Army for a little while, out of nowhere he got orders that he would be reassigned to the unit at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. He said his unit is trained for combat, but their day to day tasks are almost all ceremonial. He’s in Arlington a lot, but whenever military members are needed for something ceremonial, it’s HIS UNIT that usually gets called up to DC. That means he’s met and shaken hands with President Obama, President Trump, and “just about every other allied foreign leader. Well a lot of them anyways”. I HAD to get a picture with a handshake, and now I’m just a couple degrees of separation from a whole ton of world leaders. Not quite as tough as my picture with Brother Ferry in the MTC (he did political work for a while), but it did move me one degree closer to a president.

I’m running out of time because we’re going to have a zone barbeque today, but you know who you are NO degrees of separation away from? GOD.
Helaman 5:30
“And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul”.
His voice isn’t always clear to us, but when we make the effort to listen we will find it. He’s always there no matter what. He is always trying to bridge the gap between us and Heaven, and He will magnify our efforts as we come closer to Him. We can never become separated from His love.

I love you guys!
Elder Banks