Don't ever give up

When I was serving my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints I heard a talk by one of the leaders of the church, David A. Bednar. His talk focused mainly on missionary work of course but there was a part of it that stuck out to me and has been with me ever since. "You can do this" are the words that continue to echo through my mind. Elder Bednar made this statement in conjunction with expressing his desires to talk with and spend a little bit of time with each and every missionary. He stated that if he had the ability to so do that he would pull every single one of them close and tell them "You can do this." I think that we can all do this. We weren't sent here, from wherever you believe that we originate from whether it be bacteria or aliens, to fail. We've proven it time and time again that there is something greater within each and every one of us. For me, I believe this "greater" identity or ability or whatever it is that you want to call it, a divine heritage. For me, this something greater that gives us the ability to achieve success even when it seems the very jaws of hell gape open after us is the power of the Almighty as He supports His children in their righteous endeavors. "You can do this", I can do this, we can all do this.

Faith in Every Footstep

This past week was absolutely killer. Trying to balance a full-time job, it's not quite full-time but rather close, with school and then family commitments just about left me groping for my sanity. Coupled with all of that are a lot of other difficulties; finances, grades, strengthening relationships, work commitments, you get the picture. Through all of this there were so many times when I would stop to ask myself, in the few seconds of "free" time that I managed to steal every day, "why is any of this happening?" I began to find myself doubting in large measure a lot of the blessings that God promises through scriptures and other means of revelation because they certainly didn't seem to be happening in my life no matter how hard I tried to be obedient to commandments and what not. Above all, things seemed to become more difficult the harder I tried to do well in all of my commitments, those spiritual as well as secular. It came to a point where I was considering making major changes in my life to cut some things out so that I could handle the things that were being dished out to me.

To make a long story short I was trying really hard not to mope around but rather look for answers when, as if by divine intervention itself, I found myself reading from the Book of Mormon in Ether Ch. 12. For those of you unfamiliar with this specific book or chapter, just understand that it's main subject is that of faith, specifically, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a verse in the chapter that reads "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." Reading this simple passage just stopped me dead in the water and suddenly so many things started to make sense. All of those blessings and other things that I felt had been promised to me but that I had been cheated out of due to a lack of manifestation in my life suddenly seemed so very much more realistic. I simply just wasn't, or even wanting to for that matter, endeavoring to endure these trials with faith, trusting in God that He would deliver me and keep His words and etc. The chapter continues with talking about miracles, and how they are also only manifest AFTER the trial of our faith, how God cannot perform any miracle without there FIRST being faith manifested.

Moral of the story? don't give up on God because He doesn't operate according to your time schedule, just keep on keeping on and trust that He is watching over you. We might not understand why things happen the way they do but if we trust Him and try our best to keep His commandments and do the simple things that are asked of us then we can be assured that everything will be alright in the end.

Just Another Day

I'm going to endeavor to keep this post relatively short as not a lot of awesome things happened this week, in fact it was kind of a rough week. Currently I'm attending college full time as well as working about 30 hours a week. This week just about killed me due to a large multitude of exams and projects being due. It's really during times like these that I wonder "why am I doing this to myself"? It seems like it would all be so easy to give up sometimes and just get out, to go live a life of irresponsibility in my parents house for the rest of forever. But then I always remember my motivation and I think that is the key part. One of my favorite quotes of all time is "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", which really has nothing to do with this blog post but the other more pertinent quote that I also love says "Where there is no vision the people perish". To me this really means nothing more than that as we keep our motives in view, as we are able to maintain the vision that got us started in the first place that come what may we will be able to continue on in the face of great adversity.

Losing Ground

I've heard it said that when it comes to life that if you're not progressing that you're regressing. I guess when we consider things like memory, physical fitness, developed skills like musicianship for example, and other things that if we're not constantly seeking improvement and practicing that those skills do get rustier and rustier until the day when they've just about abandoned us completely. I'm bringing this up really for just one reason, and that's to simply illustrate my subject for this blog post; that of the importance of keeping oneself dedicated to performing the small and simple daily things that, for some reason beyond me, seem to contribute to the day in a larger than life proportion. This week has been especially taxing for me as I've worked more hours this week not only in school but also in my job at the Utah Food Bank.

Trying to keep even just these two important parts of my life balanced is, in and of itself, a miracle to be had indeed. Those things on top of family life, my emotional and mental sanity from so much work, trying to fulfill religious commitments, and a social life to top it all off just make things seem a little impossible at times. It's during days and weeks and months like this where I definitely start to slip in the small and simple things that I know I should be doing but just for one reason or another don't actually do. I've come to notice that when I let this foundation slip away from me, due to negligence on my part, that things almost instantaneously begin to crumble away as well. The next thing I know, I'm sitting in a dark corner sucking my thumb while in the fetal position and wishing that everything would just go away for a bit.... OK, that's not really how it all goes down but you get the idea.

I think that as an essential part of all of our journeys through life that we need not only to develop a foundation, some sort of uplifting and strengthening routine through which we can renew ourselves spiritually and mentally and physically, and learn how to and spend the effort and time maintaining it that we will find greater happiness and success in life. My goal is to help others, primarily through providing hunger relief and also through the ability to become educated and trained so that not just "symptoms" are treated but so that the underlying problem, poverty in general, can be overcome. I can't even begin to imagine how I'm going to accomplish all of that or how to get there in the first place, hence the reason for this blog, but how much more lost would I be every day if I had to start from ground-0 again because I didn't have a foundation? The sheer thought of it is almost too much for me to handle so I'm not going to endeavor to give you a mental image.

Foundation, foundation, foundation. If it's not getting better, it's getting worse.