Dear friends, family, loved ones, and pals,
Missionary work is hard.
But missionaries do hard things. We've done hard things in this life, we did hard things before we were born. Something our Mission President told us recently is that, "Heavenly Father is growing you to become as He is, a god, and gods are not wimps!"
Missionary work is also the most awesome, most rewarding work we can do. We show people the way back to Father, just like Elder Utchdorf was saying in his talk about the animal instinct to migrate back home. "No one else can do this"(PMG); seriously - The eternal future of the world is placed in the hands of 18-21 year olds! Talk about pressure!
But the thing is, if it's done right, missionary work actually doesn't involve any pressure at all. What did Christ tell His apostles right before sending them out on their missions? "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." If I heard that, I would've thought, "Whew! That's a relief."
I've been reading in the war chapters recently; they would make SUCH a good movie! There's this one part where it mentions that Moroni was wounded, and I just imagined the scene -
"AAAUUGH!"
"Captain!"
"Verily, continue thee to fight! I shall be alright..."
And then there was another verse that said that Moroni, Teancum, and some other generals held a war council. I grew to appreciate more the character of Teancum - in Alma 51, Moroni was off fighting in (this is my guess) the Colorado-Kansas area. He was kinda busy - but while he was doing that, sneaky Amalikiah was curving down left field in East Mexico, Alabama, and Virginia in a pattern similar to that of a man who is slaying in the board game Risk. Teancum stops the invasion in it's tracks - then, he gets a letter from Helaman saying, (this is paraphrased) "Teancum, how are things? We're up to our ears in Lamanites over here and got the message that it's about equal over there. Would you mind maintaining the Nephite lands, driving back Amalikiah's armies, and striking courage into the hearts of the Nephites in the cause of liberty? Thanks, 'preciate ya, buh-bye."
And Teancum, "'... 'Kay, no problem." He's a boss. He not only does those things, he also assassinated Amalikiah in his tent while he slept!! As I said, it would make an epic movie.
So missionary work is hard. But we should love to do hard things - just like Stanley G. Ellis yesterday afternoon.
Something very special that happened this week was this:
The woman on the right is our investigators' mom. She's been kind of closed off to us - she appreciates what we're doing for her son, but she's just not interested herself. We went to an appointment to find that her son had gone to the store. We asked, as we always do, if there was anything we could do for her, and she said, "actually, yes - do you ladies know anyone who can fix a violin? Shawn has a violin, and he broke the string when he was trying to tune it. With all the faith I had, a exclaimed, "Sure! I can fix it for you!" I didn't tell her that I didn't actually know how to fix a violin, but I was confident that Heavenly Father knew how to fix a violin, and He would show me once I saw it. And He did! I successfully stringed the violin. My companion just happened to have some experience playing the violin, so she took a little black box called the Rosin and began to rosin up the bow. As she did so, we shared Boyd K. Packer's poem. "the touch of a Master's hand." It was a powerful object lesson! And my companion was able to play a song for her. :)
Miracles, lessons, insights, and more to come next week! :)
Hermana Smurthwaite
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