All posts for the month September, 2009

Lessons from a home ward

I had the wonderful chance to stand in the circle as my brother blessed his 6 week-old son in Sacrament Meeting. It was a good weekend because it was filled with family and memories. My brother and his family live about twenty minutes away, and it was completely away from the BYU/Student scene.  It was really refreshing to be in a family ward once again.  The only chances I get of that are at Christmas time when I go home. I had a chance to sit in Sacrament with a 2 year old nephew crawling all over me, and babies in surround sound, and members older than thirty with their own families, and senior citizens in many levels of comatose… it was great!  I was humbled though at the various lessons that caught on my mind unexpectedly.  Going to a home ward you realize again how marriage, family and obedience apply to life.. and not only a future life after being a student.

I wrote down some of the things I learned in that Sacrament Meeting to share with y’all.  I hope they teach you as they taught me:

  • I have lived up to my mission call as a missionary. I was blessed with a wonderful affirmation once again that I had done the Lord’s work, that He is happy with it, and that am living righteously to the lessons and expectations that He gave me from that work.  It’s very nice to know.
  • Babies hate to be held by four men with a loud voice nearby. So little 6-week-old Ethan started to cry during the blessing, so we were rocking him, but he cried more.. so we finally kinda sat him up.. and now he just cried louder and was a foot closer to the mic! It was funny. Good memory.
  • You will never regret going on a mission as a senior couple. The speakers were a senior couple who had literally just gotten back two days before from serving in the Palmyra, NY Mission. It was awesome to hear them speak of the wonderful times they had, even though the grandpa said he had never been one to talk much. They spoke highly of the need for senior couples and joked about how you don’t need to worry about tracting because senior couples don’t do that. It was refreshing to hear them too.
  • I need to study Preach My Gospel more. The couple quoted a few times from PMG and I felt guilty not knowing those statements were in there. I used to be able to give you a guess within a few pages of any passage in PMG. And the things they shared were really good for me to hear, so I know I need to study it more.
  • I want the conversion story of the Miyashita’s, my Mission President and his wife. This was just a personal realization I had as they spoke of a man’s conversion. My Mission President has a great faith filled conversion story that I have never even heard all the way through. With my mission reunion coming up on Friday I thought it would be great if we could get a copy of that. It would be something I would love to read over and over again.

    Baby Ethan

    Baby Ethan

2 Comments
by Adam on September 28, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in christ, College life, Faith, Gospel Study, mission, obedience, Religion
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Posted by Adam on September 28, 2009

https://collegeadam.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/lessons-from-a-home-ward/

My Dream

I had a dream last night.  I was with a group of people, and we were all beginners together. There were certain other people that were called on to become something more. They were given a responsibility that was really respected and demanding. Those people could fly. We were all expected to learn how to fly in the coming weeks and months. Some would never believe they could learn. I knew the trick, though. I knew that if you just believed then it would work. So I jumped in the air, and even as I came back down and the others thought I had failed I knew I just had to expect I would start to fly. And I did. I would hover and it would seem like I was about to lose it and fall back down, but I didn’t doubt, and I would extend my arms and soar through the air!

There came a time where I was expected to do it. I had to show that I could while everyone else was still learning the trick. I looked up at a low cloud and decided to reach for that. So I jumped, and though I thought it might not work, I decided to believe it would, because there was no chance of it working unless I chose to believe it would. And as I hit the peak of my jump, started coming down with everyone disappointed, I stopped mid-air and started to hover upwards. I extended my arms and flew right up to the cloud! I was about to reach it with my hands when I lost focus on what I was doing and instead thought about what I was achieving. Just as I was going to touch the cloud I stopped and returned to the ground. Everyone was incredibly impressed with my achievement, as I was too.  They invited me to the honor of joining the few who became something more… to fly for everyone.

Ether 12:6, 10-12, “[…] 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 […] Behold it was by faith that they of old were called after the holy order of God. Wherefore, by faith was the law of Moses given. But in the gift of his Son hath God prepared a more excellent way: and it is by faith that it hath been fulfilled. For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith.”

 

Kent

"Flying Child" by Quint Buchholz

6 Comments
by Adam on September 23, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in Faith, Religion, The Inconvenient Study
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Posted by Adam on September 23, 2009

https://collegeadam.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/my-dream/

OBEDIENCE!!

SO.. I HAD an awesome post ready to write.. I HAD an awesome video that would have put punch into that post.. and I HAD been excited to finish it. But then I found out that one of the only downfalls I have found with having my blog on WordPress is that they don’t have free video support! Bah! And I’m not going through the trouble of getting a YouTube account just to post something on here. I’m sorry.. I’m just lazy like that. BUT! I can definitely explain the video. It was a video of something that I LOVED to do on my mission.  I had the HUMBLING opportunity to be in a leadership position on my mission.  Missionaries would report to my companion and I on how investigators, members and missionaries were doing within their jurisdiction.  It was a wonderful chance to seek the Lord’s guidance on a daily basis to lead.  One of the best parts of the responsibility was when missionaries called in about new commitments they had made with their investigators about getting baptized.  If a missionary companionship were able to make a date for when an investigator was going to be baptized then they would call us up, report it, and we were ALWAYS excited to hear about it!

The person that took the phone call would motion to the other 3 missionaries living in our apartment and we would all run over to the phone. Then once the announcement was made we would all start yelling and chanting, “BAPTISM! BAPTISM! BAPTISM!! WE GOT A BAPTISM!!” It was awesome!! We timed ourselves once and found out that we would be yelling for up to 3 minutes! We were loud enough where you could hear it across the street too! Man those were good days!!

Actually! I’ll just find the YouTube video that I just watched and post that instead!

Yay for Mormonism!

So my point that this post was going to be about is that now that we are home we need other motivations and celebrations to keep us aiming for what we want to see in this world. As a missionary, seeing someone get baptized was one of the sweetest moments because you saw someone change their life to be centered around Christ and then make a commitment with Him to continue being obedient. I think the anthem we should be cheering now (I mean now that we aren’t on missions) is OBEDIENCE! OBEDIENCE! OBEDIENCE!! This is the greatest act we can do in our lives. We ought to commit to being obedient every day. That’s when we will REALLY see the Lord’s blessings in our lives!

Pres. Henry B. Eyring:
“Hard as things seem today, they will be better in the next day if you choose to serve the Lord this day with your whole heart. Your circumstances may not be improved in all the ways which you desire. But you will have been given new strength to carry your burdens and new confidence that when your burdens become too heavy, the Lord, whom you have served, will carry what you cannot. He knows how. He prepared long ago. He suffered your infirmities and your sorrows when He was in the flesh so that He would know how to succor you.”

1 Comment
by Adam on September 20, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in College life, Faith, Gospel Study, mission, Mormon, obedience, Religion
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Posted by Adam on September 20, 2009

https://collegeadam.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/obedience/

Go COUGARS!! WOOHOO!!

Sorry kid.. we won

Sorry kid.. we won

(Blah! I’m tired of not finishing this post so I’m just going to put this draft up! I didn’t ever finish a rea spiritual thought so I just leave you with the questions I wrote randomly one day as I stared at this post. Sorry if my grammar is bad!)

What an awesome week!! I mean granted it was the first week of the semester which always is stressful, among other emotions, but with BYU making one of the biggest upsets of it’s football program then you just gotta have a good week! Man, I can’t BELIEVE that game!! 14 to 13! That one is going down in the history books! Yeah sure, our average players aren’t even close to the Sooners average players.. but it was AWESOME to watch! We all lost our voices from yelling and screaming and leading the cheers in Legends Grille! I LOVE BYU FOOTBALL!!

So how were my classes? Well I have three Poli Sci classes and then a geography class.. I guess I said that last week. Honestly… political science has some weird people in it. 🙂 But, it’ll make it for some very interesting discussions about US isolationism and territorality.

My question this week is this: What is the value of having confidence in yourself that you are a good person?

Additional questions to ponder: It seems that certain things we do bring added knowledge of the gospel (What? reading scriptures, praying). What things do we do in the gospel that bring us happiness towards the world? What are the fruits of obeying commandments? Temporal and spiritual blessings, or peace of mind and happiness? Do they both come from obedience, or is it just that what actually does bring us happiness we usually do while we obey? Is it personal choice that brings us happiness and peace, and then the spirit magnifies it, or is it the spirit blesses us with peace and happiness, or is it both? Are there scriptural evidences one way or another? Has anyone tried to define these?

P.S. despite the seriousness that it seems I put on school and dating, I really only have two major concerns right now.. they are:

  1. What I’m going to be for Halloween. (In a previous post you can see my raquet ball death from last year)
  2. What I’m going to do for the next Ward Talent Show.  (I have performed a Jimmy Eat World song with my roommates, sang the Wicked duet, “Loathing” with my best friend, also performed a rap he wrote, played Jenny from Flight of the Conchords with a roommate, and performed a take-off of Who’s on First called Who’s the Bishop?)

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

    1 Comment
    by Adam on September 10, 2009  •  Permalink
    Posted in christianity, College life, Faith, Gospel Study, obedience, The Inconvenient Study
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    Posted by Adam on September 10, 2009

    https://collegeadam.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/go-cougars-woohoo/