#2 is serving in Winter Park, Florida. This is only his second area. His first area was Belleview, Florida. He had a hard time adjusting to the big city, after being in a very rural area.
Here is some of what he has to say:
"There have been times on my mission that I have felt completely alone. While those times are really hard, I'm grateful for them. I've been able to learn what prayer really means, and how to pray with real sincerity in those times. A quote I have always remembered is 'The key to knowing God is to struggle'. I've learned that is very true. Heavenly Father knows that we need to struggle in order to grow strong, and self reliant (aka Heavenly reliant). I guess strong timber does not grow with ease."
"I feel I have a front row seat to the greatest miracle of all, Christ's Atonement changing lives."
"Something I have been learning a lot about this week is humility and meekness, Its been a tough week, I never should have prayed for help developing those attributes! JK, I think that it is a blessing to go through humbling experiences that help us to become more Christ-like. I read a talk by Elder Ulisses Soares from the October 2013 conference called "Be Meek and Lowly of Heart". It really touched me and gave me a strong desire to change. You know better than anyone that my pride gets in the way a lot, and this time I have on my mission is probably the best opportunity I will ever have to change so that's something that I've been working on. I study about it all the time and I also pray for it. I find when I do those things, its on my mind and then when I start acting prideful or self-righteous I'm able to catch myself better, I still struggle, but I will improve day by day. I just need to work hard and be patient with myself, I won't magically become humble overnight, I wish it was that easy, but its really not. As I've been thinking about this it so happens that I read Alma 60 and 61 this morning. Those chapters are when Moroni totally rips on Pahoran for being a terrible person and was very bold and very powerful in the language he used. Pahoran's reaction to me is inspiring, he didn't get angry or get offended, he saw that Moroni was only wanting to protect his people and fight for the right. Pahoran respected and even complimented him on that. Pahoran didn't get angry or fling back and Moroni a letter chewing him out for getting angry at him, he was meek and humble, he was more concerned about the problem than he was about who was more right."
"Something I have been thinking about a lot this week is about small and simple things. I read Alma 37 this week and I've been thinking about all the great blessings and promises that Alma gives to his son Helaman, just for reading the scriptures! It seems like such a small thing so it is really easy to put off or not do. But there are so many blessings that come from scripture study that we really need. I love reading the scriptures, just like Dad said on his e-mail. They are great for me."
"I've learned to accept help on my mission, its not bad to let other people help and I've learned that. I love to serve other people, but we also must allow others to serve us."
"One last thought. I've found great blessings from doing service for Elder D___ everyday, I think he is still dealing with a lot of stress and stuff because he is new and things at home that are worrying him. The other day I cleaned his bike, he was in the other room and didn't know, and I didn't tell him. He didn't say anything about it, so I'm 99.9% sure he did not notice. At first I was kind of sad he didn't notice, but then I felt the spirit really strongly confirming to me that I had done the right thing and that Heavenly Father knows what I did, and that,s enough. I really like doing service when people don't know that I did it, I think the spirit is strongest when Heavenly Father is the only one that knows what we did. There are scriptures that talk about "your father who seeth in secret shall reward you openly" or something like that. It is definitely true."
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