WOA! I can't believe that Mike and Fawn are getting married. It took me a while to remember who Fawn was but now that I think of it that would be such an awesome couple. That would really help Fawn with her situation too. I really hope that they are happy together!
My birthday was actually really great! This great family had us over for a great dinner and they even got me a cake and sang happy birthday to me. We had a real fun time. The Whites are super cool. Also my companion and roommates decided to have a little candle blowing out ceremony during personal study so that was fun. It feels really weird being 20. It's one of those ages that you never think you reach until you're there I guess.
That is really not good about Dad burning his hands. He really needs those. Really good that there won't be any permanent damage though. He's always trying new things. Dad would be proud to know that there's a Filipino Bakery and grocery right on our block and that I've converted the whole apartment to asado rolls and pandesal. Elder Yates and I are trying to work ourselves into buying balut but we've decided it's a process we're going to have to continue to work towards.
Bleh, Katelyn going on a date with Caleb. Not that I don't think he's a good kid, because he is, I'm just an over protective older brother and I think my sisters dating anyone is gross.
I haven't talked with President Bahr about it explicitly but I have been working a lot on it (his desire to do the second half of his mission Spanish speaking). Elder Yates gave me some Spanish Grammar flash cards to learn more things and I'm working with Elder Calderoni on my teaching skills in a lesson. It's really quite fun and I really like every opportunity that I get to speak and teach in Spanish. It's cool to see how the Spirit can touch hearts outside of our own immediate understanding. I am going to talk with him before the end of this transfer though and see what he says. Ultimately it's really not up to him or me but it's all in the Lord's hands and I am more than content to do what he asks.
This week was really a landmark week for me. With my birthday coming up I was really reflecting on how much I had changed and how much more I need to change over the next year so that I can do everything the Lord expects of me. I was given a talk to read from Elder Yates entitled "The 4th Missionary." It's a 30 page discourse on the kinds of missionaries who are out there and the kind of missionaries we should be. It really captures and teaches how to grow and develop something that I've found vitally important to life and to my mission: the Spirit of the Law.
For most of my mission I've been a letter-of-the-law missionary. I've kept the rules exactly and I've chosen to never come down from that standard but I feel now that I was really lacking in the, more important, spirit of that law I've striven to keep. One thing that I've really learned was a greater understanding of one of the things that Christ came here to do, which was to set up the higher law. These commands are to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, with all thy might, and with all thy soul. The second, like unto it, is to love thy neighbor as thy self. "The 4th Missionary" really helps missionaries understand what those commandments mean in great detail & intricacy. There are missionaries who go and come home because they did not have the right heart. There are missionaries who go, stay for two years but don't accomplish much by way of success in the lives of others or spiritual growth because they do not have the right heart. There are missionaries who stay for the two years, are valiantly obedient, reap wonderful fruit but do not grow, spiritually, as much as they could have because they withhold their good heart. And then there are the great missionaries who go on their mission and give their hearts wholly to God and accomplish wondrous things among God's children and let God cultivate in their own hearts something they could have never made themselves.
The central feature behind the change of heart that must occur in order to reach the full potential of your mission is essentially humility. Humility towards God, towards others and to yourself. Elder Kearon talked of the little rebellion within each of us which tells us to seek our own, to go a little shy or to do a little thing and God will beat us with a few stripes and at last we shall be saved. Our job is to stamp out that rebellion, while there are many ways to accomplish this there is one way in which we will grow from it. One way to stamp out the little seeds of our rebellion from ever taking root and growing into sin is to bury it deep, ignore the problem and the issue and forget about it. This solution is only temporary and does not give room for new seed to be planted or new love cultivated. Another path is to dig up the seed and throw it in another place. This solution, while lasting a little longer and giving place for fruit, is also only temporary. When we cast out the seed, again forgetting about it, we must see where that seed is cast: into a brother's garden. Often times we strive to put ourselves above others in our struggle for perfection and when we see others who do not strive to uphold the same straining Mosaic standard we battle to retain we belittle them or even, in our hearts, cast a burden on them and do not grow, but stay the same as we are fenced in by the law.
There is but one way. This way comes from realizing one simple, yet profound and deep doctrine. We are NOT good gardeners. We never have been and we probably won't be for some while. No matter how we toil and suffer we cannot, of ourselves, cultivate the work we desire. There is but one who can: the Lord. The answer then is obvious. We must sell the field. Sell it! Whatever the price we must stop kicking so hard against the spiritual pricks of our pride and sell our vanity, our desires (even our righteous desires), EVERYTHING that we have to the God of miracles and put our lives, our liberties, our very souls in the hands of the Father whose work this is. In short we must trust in Him.
Love is the key. Love towards all men and to the household of faith (Jesus Christ). If we capture that perfect love then we have the ability to, as Gordon B. Hinckley's father wisely stated, "Forget yourself and go to work."
This doctrine, understood, has changed my mission. I've only just read the talk a few days ago, but they've been the best few days of my life. I no longer feel unfulfilled and hopeless but I feel the redeeming and infinite love of a truly Celestial Father in accomplishing the work he's sent me to do as a servant, not as a man or a worker, a master or a gardener, but as a servant. My will now is to do the will of Him that sent me and there is greater peace in that then all the wealth this finite world could ever provide. Where there was once anger and frustration there is love. Where there was once fear and justification there is peace. Where there was once a battle to stamp out all ungodliness in an ever growing infection which could not be stopped, only hindered for a moment, now rests a long wearied soul whose joy it is to endure all things and HOPE to be able to endure all things.
I am the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. Period. I'm so filled with joy in my Savior and my King and my only joy is to do his work.
-Elder Guinto
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment