Patience through Tribulation

The title of my blog today is something that I have been really getting a crash course in learning. I have never had much patience, and I must say I have had a really good life so it was silly to be as impatient as I was. But as the Lord does He has a few tests for us through our journey we call life. With all of my health problems I have been dealing with lately it has caused me to begin to wonder, Why? What have I done wrong? What is deferent now that I get these "blessings"... I feel bad for wondering these things but I am still human. During this time I still have been able to see miracles, I have talked about a few in past weeks, but the ones that I wish to talk about today are some of what I have learned during these.


  Yesterday, we were spending time with some of the other missionaries serving around us and we were talking about what is going on with me. We had our scriptures around and so one of them opened and read me a scripture. This is what he read me, it comes from the Book of Mormon, the book of Alma chapter 34 verses 38-41;  38That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.

 39Yea, and I also exhort you, my brethren, that ye be watchful unto prayer continually, that ye may not be led away by the temptations of the devil, that he may not overpower you, that ye may not become his subjects at the last day; for behold, he rewardeth you no good thing.

 40And now my beloved brethren, I would exhort you to have patience, and that ye bear with all manner of afflictions; that ye do not revile against those who do cast you out because of your exceeding poverty, lest ye become sinners like unto them;

 41But that ye have patience, and bear with those afflictions, with a firm hope that ye shall one day rest from all your afflictions.

  That was a perfect scripture for me because it was telling me to humble myself and not to be mad at god but to learn something from the lesson He was teaching. Then this missionary went on to share this scripture too. This comes from the New Testament, this is when Paul is out preaching and he is going through some hard times and has to encourage the men he was with. Paul says in Romans chapter 5 verses 2-8; 2By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

 3And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

 4And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. 6For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

 7For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

  With those two spots telling me the same thing I began to realize hey its not that bad. As the Romans scriptures points out it is helping me develop that much needed patience and people to help us along the way. I have heard when life gets to hard to stand, kneel. That’s where the real strength comes. When we humble ourselves before God and seek His help. God loves us. Lets not forget that.

Pride

I found out this morning that we, Elder Goff and I will be speaking in church tomorrow. My topic is pride... I always get a kick out of how the topics we are assigned apply so well to things we are struggling with. Pride can be a very bad thing, and its something that very few people do not have so its one of those things that all of us could work a little harder to be a little better at.
 
  There was a wonderful talk given in our Church's last Octobers General Conference. General Conference is a semiannual meeting that is broadcast all over the world for members of our church everywhere to watch. It is where many of the leaders of our church get up and address some of the topics they feel impressed to speak on to help the people of the world, because as wonderful as the scriptures are there is something about modern day revelation that applies so well to us today, and I think the fact that is modern is what makes it easier. Anyways at this most recent conference there was an amazing talk given by a man named President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, he is the second counselor of our church presidency, on Pride and the Priesthood. He spoke on how pride can take so many different forms. It is a gateway sin, it leads to many other sins that can begin to lead to our down fall. This is because, it can lead us to build ourselves us up so much that we begin to tear others down and cause them to compare themselves to others instead of them looking at their own special talents that our loving Father in Heaven has given to them. It causes people to act strangely, such as during a sporting event when things become too competitive and feelings get hurt.

   As we read through the scriptures our Savior, Jesus Christ the one who set the perfect example, warned so often about pride. Such as, the young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. The boy is told to keep the commandments and to sell all that he had. The boy runs off because he had many possessions and didn't want to leave them. Then the comparison is made that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. This doesn't mean if you are rich are doomed, it is saying that we must be willing to give of ourselves, to be humble and recognize that all the gifts we have are from above. To listen to others ask others for help and not only to rely on our own strength. The last one is one that I personally struggle with the most, is asking others for help. I know it is because I am often too prideful to ask for help from others, I don't want them to see my weaknesses, but the truth of the matter is we ALL have weaknesses. We have things we cannot do by ourselves and things that we must give up so the Lord can help us. This was very clear to me when I was served a very large portion of humble pie is what I have heard it called, when you think you are doing good so the Lord blesses us with something to "help us out". Now that I am still in the recovery process, I am beginning to see where I should have forgotten myself sooner and asked for help. The Lord doesn't want to punish or hurt us He just wants us to learn the proper lessons in this life, so lets watch and listen for those clues so we don't have to eat as much humble pie, because the Lord can and will humble us. This is my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Blogs

Today I wanted to write about what I think of this whole blogging thing... When we were first heard about the facebook idea, I didn't know what to think. I knew are TONS of people on facebook and lots of people use these blogs, so I knew they must be good so I thought I should give it a try. I must say that even though I haven't had very many chances to teach people on line, I have enjoyed writing about my experiences and sharing them with all that read this. Growing up I was never much of a writer, or even a talker for that matter.. I liked to keep to myself, there were times that I would be real talkative but not often. My mission has changed that! My mission has become one of the most important things that I have personaly done, it means the world to me! The amount I have learned and grown in these 19 months I have been out here I didn't know it was possible to learn and grow this much! But I am living proof the Lord can help us with all of our weaknesses. I have learned to develop such a greater trust in Him and a love for all of Gods children. I hope these blogs are helping someone out there and if not they have helped me a lot to be able to express and share my thoughts. If there are any topics out there that anyone would like me to share my personal testimony or how a point of the Gospel has helped me in my life and I would love to write about it to help someone out there. Thank you all for your love support and prayers they really do help and they mean a lot to me. God Bless!

Miracles

The topic of Miracles has been on my mind a lot lately. Is God still a God of miracles?! I must say YES!!! Look around and just look at the hand of God everywhere. I recently finished the Book of Mormon and there was a scripture that reminded me of this very topic. That is found in the Book of Mormon, in the book of Mormon chapter 9 verses 15-19. It reads:

  15 And now, O all ye that have imagined up unto yourselves a god who can do no miracles, I would ask of you, have all these things passed, of which I have spoken? Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.

  16 Behold, are not the things that God hath wrought marvelous in our eyes? Yea, and who can comprehend the marvelous works of God?

  17 Who shall say that it was not a miracle that by his word the heaven and the earth should be; and by the power of his word man was created of the dust of the earth; and by the power of his word have miracles been wrought? 

 18 And who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hands of the apostles.

  19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

  Here it tells us that He isn't going to change. God will always be God and Jesus Christ will always be Jesus Christ. That means that They are waiting for us to wake up and believe. Waiting for us to trust in Them and develop some faith, to go out and help or makes things happen. They will guide direct and protect the cause if its for whats right. I know that God wants to help us. He has helped me recently and throughout my whole life and I know He has helped each of you. Miracles aren't always what we expect them to be. They come in large and small packages but they do come so we must watch and be ready for them give thanks and don't stop believing because God will always believe in us.
                                  Hope everyone has a good happy safe Thanksgiving!!

Strength from Above

What I am grateful for today is how much help the Lord has given me through these last couple of weeks. I am feeling so much better now in such a short amount of time. This week I went to church and was able to sit through the whole meeting with no trouble. Afterwards, we were able to go out and even see a few people. During my down time, I started to re read the New Testament. I have really loved going back and reading it in greater portions than I have before. This time, I have been trying to read it as if I were there in person, listening to the words Jesus had for the people He was speaking to. I  have been trying to hear the joy in His voice as He would help and teach others.Also, to try and understand the pain He must of felt as He saw the people in their disbelief.  The great faith that Christ had in these people, the great hope He had in all of them was truly beyond what we can comprehend. As I read, I caught a glimpse of how many people He healed without them even being in His presence. He fed thousands of people and all He asked in return was to follow Him and  to keep His commandments. What an amazing man, He served His whole life, helped thousands of people, and eventually gave His life for all so that all mankind could be saved. I hope that as I keep reading, that I maybe be able to understand that Jesus Christ has that same faith in me, and for everyone else in the world. Let us all try a little harder to gain faith and to thank the heavens for the strength to do all the things the Lord would have us do. 

Today I am Grateful to be out of the Hospital

Today I must say I am grateful to be out of the hospital! The hospital is a great place to be taken care of, but I am very grateful to get out and get some fresh air!! I didn't know when I was going to get out of the hospital so yesterday when the nurse told me I could leave I got really excited! So now I get to sit at home (where I have learned to call home for now, I'm not actually in California) where I can at least get to look out of different windows and get to get away from the people who are going through much worse things than what I am going through. This was my first experience staying over night in the hospital and I'm not sure if there is any other place other than a small town like Worland that I would like to spend in a hospital because there were so many nice people that came to visit me! Now that I am out of the hospital I am so excited to get back out and share the gospel. I know that I need to rest for a while but just getting out of the hospital brings me that hope that I am in fact getting better and I will be good as new very soon!! As I reflect on the person I used to be, I wasn't lazy but I did enjoy a day off every now and then. Now that I am on a mission I am able to realize that my boss now has a very tight deadline so I need to get back up and running to help His children find that piece of the truth they didn't know they were searching for. I know that the Lord loves each and everyone of us and that He will help us fulfill our righteous actions.

Today I am grateful for modern health care

Well, I am grateful for modern health care, because this last week I have had my appendix taken out. This all started on Monday morning around 4 am. I woke up with a very uncomfortable pain in what I guessed to be my appendix. That day I did my best to act like it didn't really hurt, so I could keep doing my regular thing, missionary work. This worked out for the rest of Monday, but Tuesday morning around 3 am I knew that it didn't go away yet... because I was awake and the pain was very strong. I often wish that I was so hard headed but it runs in pretty deep, so its hard to just give in and go to the doctor. Lucky for me is my body took over and about 1 pm I decided to go to the doctor and get checked out. I got here and everyone was so friendly. Its amazing how you tell someone you are experiencing pain and they start talking very gently and ask what they can do to help you. So they did their doctor thing, running tests and trying to find out what was wrong. They figured out that it really was my appendix that was giving me trouble. They told me that it was going to need to come out, yippee I thought!! NOT!! But in I went and here I am still alive and very glad that I did come to the doctor. I am soo glad that doctors know what they are doing and that they care for the people they look after and do all they can to help me. Now I am on the road to recovery thanks to people that know what they are doing and wonderful advances in technology. I love to be feeling again! Thank all of you for all of your prayers that go out not only for me but also all of my fellow missionaries. The Lord loves all of His children soo much an and I love all of you! Have a wonderful day, and if you aren't feeling well, you should probably go to the doctor, they know what they are doing and they will help you.

What I am grateful for Today...

  Well, what is on my mind today is how grateful I am to be on a mission. Hopefully this is not a topic that I have already covered. I would go check my other blogs to see if I have but I don't know how and this is what I am grateful for so it will have to work. As Elders, or men, we go out on our missions for 24 for months, 2 years. The Sisters, women, serve for 18 months. I have been out on my mission for over 18 months now and so the sisters that came out with us are home now. That is so weird, it feels to me like we left to come on our mission a few short weeks ago, not 18 months ago. Well, no matter how weird it is to think that we really have been out for that long doesn't make it any less of a reality. Thanks to this chance to do on line proselyting we can talk with the sisters that we came out with and see how they are doing. They say it is so weird to actually be home, to be with family and get to go back to regular life. The thought of that weirds me out just thinking about it.
  Another reason is because I know that the Lord takes good care of the missionaries. He may not protect us from all harm or bad things but He will give us the strength we need to make it through the hard times we face. The other day I mentioned how grateful I was that I was feeling good. Well sometimes good things don't last as long as we would like to but the Lord knows what He is doing. Thats why I am grateful to be here. I know that no matter how hard things get, He will always be there to pick me up. True I did know this before my mission, but my faith and understanding is so much greater now than it was before I left on my mission. As nice as it would be to always have the good times roll. I can see how the Lord is blessing me in so many other aspects of life. Such as people to teach, my wonderful family, my amazing loved ones who offer so much support, all of you that read this show that you are willing to support me in any way that you can. At this time I wish to give my thanks to all of you, and encourage you like it says in the book of Timothy chapter 6: 12 to "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses." As you begin to do this in your lives the Lord will watch over and protect you.

Well Today I have a few things I am thankful for...

  The main thing I am thankful today is I feel good!! This is the first time in months that I can honestly say I feel good!! I know that this is not by my own doing, but by the wonderful loving hand of God. Every week as I read my emails or letters from my parents they say they are praying for me and I know that there are many others out there doing the same thing. I am so grateful for all of them and I am also grateful for the great faith in which they show. Answers to prayer come because of a few factors, one of course being the Lords will. Another by the faith of the children of men.
  This morning I was reading from one of my favorite books in the Book of Mormon, and that is the book of Ether. The book of Ether is an interesting book... It talks about some of the greatest examples of faith, and also the entire destruction of a civilization. The part of the book that I will focus today is the part about the faith. I know I have already wrote about faith once, but its one of those topics that the scriptures talk about a lot, and I have always heard liken the scripture to you so I will copy its pattern here. Ether 12:6 says; And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
  We must hope for those thing which are not seen. These will help our faith to grow. If you are a downer all the time and someone is hoping for something better and you shoot them down or shoot yourself down, how are you going to grow or increase faith? In my situation, I know prayers are answered, I have seen them answered a number of times, but this time I was being tried harder than I thought I was going to. Now that I feel good today it brings me soo much joy and I am very grateful that I did have to wait, because now my joy is greater than it would have been if I would have only suffered for a few days. Now it also helps my faith to grow because once again I was able to see the hand of God work in my life!! We all must continue to hope for better things to happen. If everyone gave up hope, what a sad world this would become. Don't loose faith brothers and sisters keep hoping for the best and trust in the Lord, you won't be disappointed.

Today I am Grateful for...

 Today what has been on my mind most is the wonderful members that take the time and the effort to feed us. On our missions we live on a pretty tight budget. Here in this mission we live on 135 dollars a month. This is to cover all of food, laundry, new clothes (ties), stamps for letters or whatever else it is that we need to pay for. Near the end of the month, things tend to get pretty tight. Lucky enough for us though is that there are wonderful members of the church, and even people that aren't members of our church that sign up to feed us dinners. This is such a wonderful blessing to us. It is a blessing in more ways then just us not having to buy our meal, but because then we can begin to build friendships. There are quite a few very fun memories I have from being able to spend time with members, they begin to become our home away from home and those friends that we can go talk to when things are going as good as we would like them to. I have memories from when the missionaries would come over to my house when I was young and it was always a fun time. We know that it can be burdensome to have two extra mouths to feed, but I know we as missionaries are always so grateful to be invited into peoples home. So that is my entry for today, is how truly grateful I am for all of the wonderful support of all those that take the time to feed us and even talk to us.  I know the Lord will and does bless all those that take the time to help out the missionaries.

Today I am Grateful For...

 Well, today was the first time since I have been in Worland that snow has stuck on the ground. Which is what I am thankful for. The snow to some may think is a silly thankful but, I enjoy the snow. Last fall I was in Missoula and that was the longest amount of time I had ever spent in the snow. There were times when I became very tired if the snow, I fell 8 times last year, but it was a wonderful change from just the boring gray deadness that we have back home. The snow becomes a cover for the ugly dead ground, which in the spring the snow will help bring the ground the needed moisture it needs to sustain life. This reminds me a lot of what our Savior Jesus Christ does for each of us. We all get to the point in our lifes where we are beginning to die spiritually and we would love to have someone come cover up the mistakes we have made. Thats exactly what the atonement does, it covers the things we have done wrong. There is a scripture in Isaiah 1:18 that says: "... Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow...". He knows that we have all done wrong things in our life but He is willing to make all of those go away if we come to Him. True there are times when the snow gets dirty and ugly, but then when a new layer of snow comes and covers it, it become pure again. This is what can happen to us if we keep turning to the Savior and asking for forgiveness. Then when its spring time again, when you have made it through the long winter, the repentance process, and the new life begins to grow then people can begin to see how the Lord has blessed you in you life.

What I am Thankful for today is...

 Well, recently I was given a quote from a member of one of the local wards here. I have really enjoyed it, so I thought I would share that with all of you. So, I was talking about some of the not so fun things I have experienced on my mission. I know that way more people that I could even imagine have gone through FAR worse things than I have and this quote was just a nice piece of humble pie you can say.  Elder Orson F. Whitney wrote: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God” (quoted in Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [1972], 98).
  What a great quote! As we all take time to look back on hard times that we have gone through we can see lessons that we learned from those hard things. That is part of our Heavenly Fathers plan. He loves us, He loves everyone on this whole planet and He wants us to help each other. The trails that we face that cause us to wonder, "What could I possible learn from this?!" Sometimes these are answers to other peoples prayers. Not that we suffer, but that there is someone else out there that knows what they are going through. Once you have gained these experiences you could help someone going through similar troubles, you will be able to make true friendships with people who need it most. It will bring the people you help a great deal of joy and it will also bring you joy because you helped someone. So now, I challenge all of you to reflect on some of your own trials that you have experienced and think of someone you know that could use your help, be the friendly voice that you were searching for when you were struggling and help them.

Transfers

So, as missionaries at times it is like we live out of suit cases because of these transfers. They come every 6 weeks with the possibility of having to move to a new area. We can be in an area anywhere from 6 weeks up to 6 or more months. They come on Friday morning of week 6 of the 6 week cycles. So on these days we continue on with our normal morning routine, which on Fridays after we study we plan for the next week. We will look over our week talk about the people we visited , talk about how the appointment went, talk about what they may be struggling with and how we can help them. Then we come up with a list of people to see the next week. This usually takes a good hour. So then we eat lunch and wait for the calls and be out of the house by 1pm. As missionaries we like to try and guess where we will go or if we will go and its a lot of fun to see if we are right or not. The way the decision is made if we leave or not is between the mission president and the Lord. The mission president puts in a lot of prayerful pondering on if we should go and where. This Friday is when we, Elder Goff and I, got the call. We found out we are both staying in Worland and we have the great chance to keep teaching the wonderful people of Worland, Wyoming. We will have the chance to keep working with the people we have tried so hard to find and spent so much time praying over and trying to help. We are both very excited for this chance we have to keep work here.

Today Iam grateful for...

 Well, what is on my mind today is the Lord's timing! So times it can be a bit frustrating waiting for answers to our prayers but other times it can be such a great blessing, because He knows A LOT more than we do! The reason this is my topic today is because of an experience form yesterday. We were on team ups and we tried someone at the very time the Lord wanted us to. So each night we plan out what we want to do the next day. So we have planners that we write all of this down in. The planner breaks down to every half hour of the day. So we try to fill the day with enough people to see where we have as little idle time as possible. This would be awesome if it as worked out that everyone we planned to see was always home when we have planned to see them but this is not the case. You come to learn really fast as a missionary that people have lives, that they don't all sit around and wait for us to stop by. So like most days as a missionary we burned through a list of 9 people, ideally 5 hours worth of people, in about 45 minutes. So then we were left to that wonderful time where we look at each other and say well, I'm out of ideas what do you want to do and the other replys I don't know what do you want to do?! Lucky yesterday the Lord gave us a wonderful idea to go to a nursing home. As soon as we walked through the doors a woman stopped us and said, we were just talking about you! Music to our ears!! So we began to talk with them and the woman working there told us how they were just talking about us and how they wished we would stop by to visit with this woman, and sure enough we showed up. Wow!! Those are such awesome moments when they happen. So we go and visit and she was telling us how she had been trying to get ahold of someone to come see her but had had no luck. Then we just come walking through the doors as an answer to her prayers. I am here to tell all of you that this woman had been praying for someone to come and visit and had been doing it for a while and those prayers were answered. Not by our good thinking but because of the help of the Lord. He wants to help all of us, so in order for him to do that we must ask Him!!! Then wait for Him to answer, because sometimes the way He answers is a knock at the door or someone walking past you. The people we were going to see at the nursing home weren't even there that day, but we were still able to help because we listened to the promptings of the spirit. The Lord may even use us as answers to others prayers. My prayer for all of you is that you will be able to have the Lord answer your prayers and that you can be answers to others prayers.

Today I am Grateful for...

 Well, today I am thankful for the chance I have to work with great missionaries who love the Lord. In the mission there are leaders that go on team ups or exchanges with some of the other missionaries. These are usually done once per transfer. So what we do is, we, the leaders, will either go  to the area that the elders cover or we will have them come to our area. When we do this we treat it like any other day but we just work with a different missionary in a different area. This is a lot of fun and a good experience because you are able to help each other. There have been times that I have seen that different missionaries can connect differently with different people. So at times this can be a great help if you don't know how to help the person you are teaching, and while on these team ups you can say something in a different way which cause people to think differently. We know this is true because no two people are the same, so people, or in this case missionaries are able to help each other because we are different. We also know that a good leader is one who can motovate others. As we look at the life of the greatest teacher and example ever, Jesus Christ, we see how he was able to lead so many people, that people flocked to Him so that He could help them. Thats what we try to do as leaders is to help other missionaries. To help members and none members alike. To help them know that they have great purpose to their lives and that Our Father in Heaven Loves them! We should all try to help those that we are to look after, or to lead by example. There are many great ways to help those around us!

The Lords Love

Well, I apologise in advance for this blog, its not very long but i promise to write another one on the same topic soon. I just want to send out a challenge to all that read this to look for the Lord's love in each of your lives. No matter how big or small the act of love is He is continually pouring out blessings all around us. Such as for us recently, on our preparation days we can go out and do activities, this week we went golfing. So as we were out at the driving range someone pointed out to us, its the first of November in Wyoming and its a 60+ degree day. There have been very few days that I can remember with weather that nice. A very small thing, but yet we could still count it as a blessing because there are very many other things that could have changed the way we felt about the day but the weather was not one of those things. I love the Lord and I Know He Loves all of us. So let us all work a little harder to focus on the good and not the bad in life.