Jacksonville, FL
Assistants
Hah! Puns.
I love my mission! This week we had stake conference, we played volleyball with 20 people a side, I went down to St. Augustine, we set a baptism date with Michael for the weekend of the 24th (#mightymiraclemay!), and I learned a lot of lessons.
Lesson #1) Do. Not. Stop. Ever!
“Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;
Beginners are many, but enders are few.
Honor, power, place and praise
Will always come to the one who stays.
“Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;
Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too;
For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile
Will come life’s victories after a while.”
~Author Unknown (Quoted by Thomas S. Monson)
That's how you change. Elder Munns of the 70 did a training with the mission leadership counsel where he talked about change in nature being more (way more) important than a change in results or in behavior.
"We have known great sorrow, but we have seen the power of the Savior turn our most devastating defeats into glorious spiritual victories. We who once lived with daily depression, anxiety, fear, and debilitating anger now experience joy and peace. We have witnessed miracles in our own lives and in the lives of others." ~The Addiction Recovery Program
That's the miracle that matters! This is mighty miracle may. Miracles happen all the time! Which is why lesson #2 is: Marvel at the Miracles.
"But let us beware. Our ability to marvel is fragile. Over the long term, such things as casual commandment keeping, apathy, or even weariness may set in and make us insensitive to even the most remarkable signs and miracles of the gospel.
"The Book of Mormon describes a period, very similar to our own, that preceded the coming of the Messiah to the Americas. Suddenly the signs of His birth appeared in the heavens. The people were so stricken with astonishment that they humbled themselves, and nearly all were converted. However, only a short four years later, “the people began to forget those signs and wonders which they had heard, and began to be less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven, … and began to disbelieve all which they had heard and seen.”
"My brothers and sisters, is the gospel still wonderful to you? Can you yet see, hear, feel, and marvel? Or have your spiritual sensors gone into standby mode?
"As we follow Jesus Christ, God bears witness to us “with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will.” ~Bishop Causse
Lesson #3 is how to have a miracle. The answer is... Be confident! Confident in Him.
"Whenever the adversary cannot persuade imperfect yet striving Saints such as you to abandon your belief in a personal and loving God, he employs a vicious campaign to put as much distance as possible between you and God. The adversary knows that faith in Christ--the kind of faith that produces a steady stream of tender mercies and even mighty miracles--goes hand in hand with a personal confidence that you are striving to choose the right. For that reason he will seek access to your heart to tell you lies--lies that Heavenly Father is disappointed in you, that the Atonement is beyond your reach, that there is no point in even trying, that everyone else is better than you, that you are unworthy, and a thousand variations of that same evil theme.
"As long as you allow these voices to chisel away at your soul, you can’t approach the throne of God with real confidence. Whatever you do, whatever you pray for, whatever hopes for a miracle you may have, there will always be just enough self-doubt chipping away at your faith--not only your faith in God but also your confidence in yourself. Living the gospel in this manner is no fun, nor is it very healthy. Above all, it is completely unnecessary! The decision to change is yours--and yours alone." ~Elder Klebingat
All we have to do is change, and we can have awesome miracles.
"No matter how high your hopes, I’m here to tell you they can be even higher. You can accomplish more in this life than you know. With the Lord at your side, you can experience miracles." Russell T. Osguthorpe (CES Devotional)
Lesson #4 is more about who we have to be, and not what we have to do, to have a miracle. We need to be selfless:
"The man who lives by himself and for himself is apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps.” (Charles Henry Parkhurst, quoted in The International Dictionary of Thoughts, Chicago: J. G. Ferguson, 1969, p. 659.)
We need to be peaceful:
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
We need to do the things that enable us to have real, lasting happiness:
The Prophet Joseph Smith counseled: “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.”
We need to be free. From sin, from despair, and from addiction:
And then, thrillingly, Lincoln said: “I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.” (Ibid., p. 285–86; italics added.)
We need to love ourselves:
“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself.”
We need to be honest:
“Sin,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, “has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.”
But most of all, we need to love. Pierre de Chardin wrote, “The day will come when after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and on that day for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.”
Does that seem like a lot? It can intimidate me sometimes. That's why lesson #4 is "Begin with the End in Mind"
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
The end of the Church is captured by one of my heroes:
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however hard and long the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival." ~Winston Churchill
And also by a story told by Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone about the son of a king who understood who he was and how he should act. King Louis XVI of France had been taken from his throne and put in prison. His young son, the prince, was taken by those who had captured the king. Because the young prince was to be the next king, they wanted to destroy him morally. They knew that if they did, he would never be able to become the king of France.
These people took the prince to a faraway city, where they tempted the boy with every filthy thing they could find. They tried to get him to eat foods which would quickly make him lose control of himself. They used terrible language around him all the time. They tempted him with evil women. They exposed him to dishonor and distrust. He was surrounded constantly by everything that could make a person lose his moral values. For over six months he was given this treatment. But not once did the boy give in to temptation. Finally, after doing everything they could think of, they asked why he did not do these things. He replied, “I cannot do what you ask, for I was born to be a king” (adapted from “The King’s Son,” New Era, Nov. 1975, 35).
The message we bring is, "You were born to be a king, a queen, a child of our God. You were born for something greater, something higher. You are known, you are loved, there is a gift awaiting you."
Hope you have heard it. Hope you know it. Forgive the lack of stories. Elder Munns came yesterday and he taught about consecration. What a beautiful commandment. What a perfect covenant.
Hope I'm different! we try to change, so that we can love more perfectly. One of our investigators objected to the "Mormon" concept of the eternal destiny of mankind. We believe we can, in the celestial kingdom, become perfect, that we can become all-knowing, that we can become creators, that we can become all-loving. He insisted that this detracts from the status of, and our relationship with, our Heavenly Father. We explained that the object of our refinement, improvement, and sanctification, is to be able to appreciate, and therefore to love, and to imitate, and therefore more meaningfully and perfectly to worship, our God.
The better we get, the higher we climb, the cleaner we are, the more we change, the more we worship and we love. Isn't that perfect?
I love you.
~Elder Jorgensen