Awake My Soul

"O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me...My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions... He hath filled me with his love... He hath confounded mine enemies... Behold, he hath heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge... And by day have I waxed bold in mighty prayer before him; yea, my voice have I sent up on high... O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions? And why should I yield to sin...? Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.... O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness...O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever!"    -Nephi  (2 Nephi 4 17-34)

Often over the past few months I have thought of this scripture and applied it to my own life. Why do I do the things that I know will not make me happy? Why is it hard to do what the Lord has asked of me? I feel like I can relate with Nephi when he talks about all the great things that the Lord has done for him. All the things that Nephi has learned from the Lord. But despite this, I still am not perfect.

I like towards the end however, where despite his faults, Nephi looks forward with faith and a desire to be better. This is what the Lord wants from us and is asking us to do. Leave behind the things that we have done wrong. Learn from them and trust in the Lord! Jesus Christ lives, and he is our redeemer! I know he is there for us. Herein lies true happiness!

Walking on Water

Most of us have heard the story told in Mattew 14: 25-31. It begins with the Apostles in a boat on a stormy sea, "And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"

This story shows us how we need to trust in the Lord. We are all in the boat of our beliefs sailing on the stormy waters of the world. The world we sail on can be scary at times, and we feel that we are safest in our "boat". At some point in our journey through life, Christ will come to us. We may not recognize him at first, just as the Apostles didn't. In order for us to know for sure that it is him, he will ask us to take a step of faith and come to him. We have to allow him to change our ideas.

As long as we trust in the Lord, and press forward, we will be kept safe. If we take our eyes off Christ and stop trusting him, if we look at what the world says should happen (sink in the water), we will begin to sink.

Sometimes in our journey to follow Christ, we don't see why following a commandment will help us. We think that we need something else. If we trust in the Lord with everything. If we put him and his commandments first, we will be fine. We will walk on the water and be happy and safe! I know this is true from my own experiences. I can see it every day of my life.

Be of Good Cheer

Being on a mission in Montana means the you are going to be cold. This past month to month and a half temperatures have been low (somewhere between -30 and 10 degrees). The snowstorms have come one right after another. It sometimes seemed like winter will never end. The past week has been very interesting. Early in the week things got to be pretty warm, and for the first time in a long time, I thought the winter might actually end sometime. Then yesterday it got really warm (32 degrees) and that got us really excited. After that first day of warmth it got much colder that night, and this morning we got another 6 inches of snow.

Sometimes life is the same way. We are burdened with something that may seem like it will be there forever. Then when we catch a glimpse of what things could be, and it goes away it is easy to get discouraged. The message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ however tells us to "be of good cheer!" Despite how cold things are now, spring will come and the warmth will be back. No matter how badly off we feel we are, if we keep our focus on Christ, things will get better!

The Assist

 I love to play basketball, and I love to score points. Sometimes however, you have to pass up a good opportunity for someone else to have a better opportunity. When this happens, and you pass the ball to someone who scores, it is called an assist. The principle of this is that you sacrifice something good (your shot), for something better (the higher chance to get points for your team).

We talked about sacrifice this past Sunday in class. At first I came in with the impression that sacrifice is something that is hard to do, but must be done because the Lord commands it. By the end of the class my perspective had changed. I want to focus mostly on attending church.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks said, "We have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families." There are many good things that we could be doing on Sundays. Spending time with families, helping provide for our families, etc... But our Heavenly Father has told us that the best thing we could be doing is to keep the Sabbath Day holy, and attend church. It may be a sacrifice to give up some things that are helping us, but if we do sacrifice, we will gain a much greater blessing.

I now know that while sacrifices seem hard, they really aren't. If we can have the faith and trust in the Lord, we personally may not get the points, but we assist the Lord (the best shooter on our team) and he can make the basket for us. Because we sacrifice we and our families come out on top. I now know that the chance to sacrifice is a blessing, not a burden.

Parable of the Sower

Today in my scripture study I was reading about the Parable of the Sower in Mark chapter 4. Christ tells about a a sower who spreads seeds across the ground. Some of the seeds go off to the side and birds come and eat them. Some of the seeds landed on hard ground, and immediately started growing, but then because they had no roots they withered and died when the sun came. Some of the seeds were surrounded by weeds and were choked off. Some of the seeds however, found good ground, grew strong, and brought forth fruit.

It was really interesting to me, and so I tried to figure out what it meant. I had a few ideas, but as a read on I found the true meaning. People sow the word of Christ. Sometimes as soon as people hear Christ's gospel, Satan comes and immediately takes it from them and it does not enter into their hearts. Sometimes the gospel enters into people's hearts, they receive it with gladness, but they don't strengthen their roots. When the trials and hardships come, they aren't stalwart and are offended. Some of the people are "choked off" by the riches and lusts of the world. Then there are the people who receive Christ's gospel and endure to the end.

At first I related this to missionary work. There are going to be the people who don't want to hear and who don't accept it, but then there are the people who embrace it with their whole hearts. To watch that seed of faith grow and blossom in people is an amazing experience. Missionaries aren't the only ones who have the opportunity to see this. We can all share the gospel with our friends. But we can't be discouraged when one of the seeds we sow doesn't land in the right place. If we keep sowing seeds we will be able to find those who are prepared to nurture it and allow it to bless their life!

Then I applied it to myself. What type of ground am I? I think sometimes I am good ground, but other times I harden a little. Or maybe I allow some weeds to come in and harm the word of Christ inside of me. It was a great experience to look within and find the things that keep me from being fertile ground. There are some great things to learn from this parable and I hope we will all take a look at the ways we can be better sowers and receivers!

Coasting Through Life

One of the hardest things for me on my mission is to see great people who don't care. They will give you the shirt off their backs, but they don't want to find out the truth. Maybe they never got answers so they stopped asking, or maybe they got the wrong answers. I don't know if I will ever know exactly why people don't even want to listen. Occasionally I wonder, "Am I ever like this? Am I ever afraid to ask the questions that will lead me to the truth?"

It is pretty easy to see that when you coast in a car, you start to slow down and eventually you will come to a stop. Spiritually we are the same. Often we feel like we are strong spiritually, and we decide we can ease off a little bit. We begin to coast through life, and sooner than we would like to think, we are spiritually stopped. The solution to this problem is simple, we have to accelerate to get moving again. But how do we accelerate spiritually?

We all know the feeling that we aren't getting better. We may even be reading our scriptures, going to church, and praying, but we still are not "accelerating." I want to focus on a scripture, Matthew 7:7 "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." In this scripture we find the key to move forward.

We all have questions about life. Things like, why do I feel like ... when I do ...? Why is ... so hard? What should I do in ... situation? But I think a lot of the time we put them off or forget about them. To make our study, prayer, and church attendance better, we should take these questions to the Lord and then look for the answer. I know he does answer, and we can gain that boost of faith that comes from the experience. This will allow us to be "doers of the word, and not hearers only."

Keep The Commandments

In the Book of Mormon, Mosiah 2: 24 it says, "And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?"

If we ever don't know what to do, turn to the Lord. Keep his commandments and he will bless you immediately. This is one of the greatest promises that we are given. It is also a plea given by a prophet. I also hope that we can all do the same. It isn't always easy, but it is always worth it!

Happiness - The John Tanner Story

Where does happiness come from? We can get many different answers from different sources. The world tells us that when we act on our immediate desires we gain happiness. This gives us pleasure, which can be a temporary substitute for lasting happiness. True happiness comes from following the plan that God has created for us. Who would know better than our Father what will make us happy?

The other day I watched a video about a man named John Tanner. He was a self-made wealthy man who was converted to the LDS faith in the early years of the church. The missionaries taught him, and he had a desire to be baptized. He couldn't however, because of a diseased leg that crippled him. The missionaries asked him if he had the faith to be healed. He did and the Lord healed him. He was baptized that evening.

Throughout the rest of his life he was called upon to help the church with its financial struggles. He willingly did so and over the course of his life gave 50,000 dollars to the church (we did the math and it came out to be around 2 million dollars in our money today). This cost him and his family a great deal. They had become poor and actually had to beg for food to survive. At the end of the film, he was called on a mission. Before he left he forgave the church all the debt they owed him. He then left his family to serve the Lord.

My feelings during this movie centered mostly on the great sacrifice of this man. To give all your money, and then watch your children go hungry would be a huge trial. I wondered at the great devotion and faith of this man. Then a thought hit me. Brother Tanner must have been happier during this trial of his life than at any time before. He knew the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he lived it! He accepted the Lords will for him, and did all he could to serve.

This emphasized the point that money does not bring happiness, living the gospel brings happiness. In 2 Nephi 2:27 it says, "Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." The happiness from liberty and eternal life doesn't have to be just a future blessing. As we are obedient to the commandments now, we receive the blessings now.

The choices we make determine our happiness. Let us all choose to follow the Lord, choose to feel of his love, and choose to be happy at all times and in all places. As we do so, we will more fully become the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Online Missionary Work

Why in the world are missionaries online? This question is one that is really similar to what I was thinking when we found out that we would be working on Facebook and trying to share the Gospel through the internet. Facebook is something that has always been forbidden to missionaries, along with almost every website. So you can imagine our suprise when they told us about this. I was actually so shocked that I thought maybe they were playing a prank on us or something!

After about a half hour it started to sink in, and I started to think about all the possibilities this could present. The internet might be the best tool we have right now to get information out to people. Why not use this as a way to help people understand the happiness we all recieve from the Gospel? This could be a great way to get the truth to everyone!

The internet is full of things that will dull our spiritual sensitivity. It had many things that will turn people away from the truth because they do not completely understand. Over the last six years there was a study that has shown that internet searches of the word "mormon" have gone from 80 percent negative, to being 80 percent positive in some countries. The reason for this is that positive information about the Church is being spread across the web.

This is another effort to show the good. There are so many great websites that the Church has out right now: mormon.org, lds.org, youtube.com/mormonmessages, ect... We as (full-time and member) missionaries have an obligation to the Lord to share these things with our friends. This is an easy way to "...invite others to come unto Christ..." You can read more about this at Church News .

We can all do our part and share this wonderful message. Let's get the Lord's invitation to come unto him to all the world through the internet!

Fear Not, But Hope

Sometimes in life it is easy to look at the things that are wrong, and use it as evidence that things will continue to go wrong. When this happens it becomes easy to fear the future, or the unknown. There are a lot of things that you can fear when you are on a mission. Knocking on doors and talking to people you have never met before about something that they would rather not talk about is a little scary. In studies this morning this was on my mind, and for a while I couldn't figure out how to overcome this obstacle of fear.

Elder Huntsman and I were discussing this and we were finally able to figure it out. Instead of thinking about the things that might go wrong, you can think of the things that might go right. We are taught that Faith is to "hope for things which are not seen, which are true" (Alma 32: 21). We can hope for the best and put our faith in Jesus Christ, and he will take care of us. I know this is true.