Kindness ACT 1

I was recently moved by a talk that I read from General Conference by Henry B Eyring called "Opportunities to Do Good". The talk's main subject was being helpful and who and how it helps. I have always thought that each situation we are put in our lives whether it be having children, working, suffering, or anything else is to help us somehow understand our Heavenly Father. One of the best ways we can come to know our Father in Heaven and his love is to serve those around us. When we serve we become His hands in helping and better come to and understanding of the love He feels towards us. As I reflected on this talk I started to think of the service in my life. 

One of my favorite stories of service took place when I was a wee lad, of like 14, (way back in the day). My parents had just divorced and my father had left our family with very little furniture, it was to the point where my mom was sleeping on a futon (not fun). Not long after the initial situation, we received a knock on the door one night. When we answered we realized it was a group of the relief society ladies in our ward who kinda barged in (politely... because they're ladies) carrying furniture that they had gathered together after they had heard of our situation. That day was a remarkable day for my family and I as we felt the love of God through those ladies.

The months that followed were just as much of an adjustment as the beginning. Those faithful daughters of God continued to pull our family in and spoil us with an abundance of love. I remember I wanted to do something extra nice for my mom for her birthday. I decided I was going to paint her room and her furniture to match, to show my appreciation for all the extra effort that was needed on her part due to the circumstances. Tricky part was I wanted it to be a semi-suprise. Like I said I was young, so I don't even remember how it got set up (early Alzheimers), but the same people came to help me buy paint and  keep me from completely ruining my mother's room. They also organized a birthday party at one of their houses, which was a bonus. It turned out to be a very good birthday for my mother when she needed it the most (I remember that part).

Simple acts of kindness have the ability to impact people's lives far beyond we will ever know. Their acts of kindness have influenced me until this day, and have made me watchful for the needs of others. My call to everyone is to find a way to reach out, make sure you are in the situation to help those in need when they need it the most. Heavenly Father sent us to earth to dwell as a family, as brothers and sisters, it is our responsibility to seek out those whose heads hang helplessly low. Let us find the love of Christ as we serve those around us.

He Suffered For Me

Jesus Christ suffered the pains, afflictions and sins so that he could come to our aid and we could return to live with God again if we so chose to follow Him.<-True that.

That's a lot of sin! That's a lot of pain! That's a lot of love!<-True that.

Focusing on me (because that's what I do best), Christ suffered in the Garden so that He could help my mom put up with my stubbornness. Christ suffered in the Garden so that my mom could put up with my laziness. Christ suffered in the Garden to help my mom laugh at those times I would crash both her and my car (not at the same time... I'm not that talented). Christ suffered in the Garden so that He could help my mom have strength to stay up with me all those nights I procrastinated homework, not to bring up all the times I just needed someone to talk to.  Christ suffered in the Garden to help my mom find love for me even when I would spout off mean things to her. Christ suffered in the Garden because he knew all the patience my mom was going to need raising me. 

Christ suffered in the Garden so that my sister could make it through my mean big brother phase, all the mean things I would call her, not thinking of how much I could potentially damage her. Christ suffered in the Garden so that my sister would have the heart to forgive me and find love for me, so that we could be best of friends. Christ suffered in the Garden so that after all those years of constantly fighting with my brother,after the broken lights, broken humidifier, broken TV,  and so on he would somehow find good in me and become one of my biggest idols. Christ suffered in the Garden so that my friends would still find love for me after all the pain I put them through, most of the time because I was selfish (I can be pretty good at that). Christ suffered in the Garden to help my teachers, co-workers, employers, family, friends, enemies... all put up with me.

Christ suffered in the Garden to make up for everything I lack. Christ suffered in the Garden to help me through the loss of friends, loved ones and so on. Christ suffered in the Garden so that I can get back to my Heavenly Father. Christ suffered in the Garden so that I can wash myself of my sins and move on. Christ suffered in the Garden because I don't have what it takes to do it myself. Christ suffered in the Garden because He loved me and was worried about my salvation. So in the end Christ suffered in the Garden for me.

I'm glad that I have some knowledge of my Savior. I'm glad I can share this message with everyone. I hope everyone comes to realize just a portion of what Christ has done for them. Christ suffered in the Garden and died on the cross for us, let's LIVE our appreciation.

The Paycheck Of Humility

Many people in today's world view humility as a sign of weakness, timidity and fear. As I started to ponder on that statement I couldn't help but think about the Savior's life. Jesus Christ led the most courageous life, not any one of us would ever have the strength and will power to do what He did. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of humility, while showing the most courage, strength and enduring will power. His life was so successful and everlasting because He knew where His strength lied, He knew who knew best, He relied on His Father's will and everything He had been blessed with to fulfill His calling.

Reflecting on my life and the times I was more humble and the times where I was more prideful than humble, I asked myself how it paid off. As I've pondered on this battle of pride and humility, I have recognized one of my greatest blessings from humility.

In my life I have realized that when I am prideful I find myself aggravated. I find myself comparing myself to others. I find myself full of contention. When I am prideful I find myself saying, "Well why did they get that job position, I am better than them, I've worked harder then them, I'm more qualified than them." These thoughts too often escalate to a negative attitude and a person who not too many people desire to be around.

When I am prideful I find myself focusing on negative thoughts and I have come to realize that at those times I am so full of hate that I stop applying as much effort and talents to the situation I am currently in. Why try, no one recognizes anyway. At times I even find myself trying to belittle them and put forth all my effort in showing I'm better than them, which in end, I end up belittling myself. but at least I've proved my point. Right?

On the other hand, again in my life, when I am the more humble I find myself patiently waiting and having faith that when Heavenly Father feels necessary to put me where he sees best, that it will benefit me the most. I find myself exhorting my greater efforts to the position I am currently in, instead of using effort toward envious feelings. I am less stressed, more happy and am better able to fulfill my duties. I also can focus on learning from those above me and applying beneficial techniques. Then when the time comes, when I am needed, I am thankful, I feel qualified and I rely, once again, on the Lord to magnify my talents and abilities. Also, people who I am in stewardship over are more attentive and respect me more because I am focused on serving them and magnifying my specific duties.

I am positive there are many other ways humility pays off. Test it out and see how it improves your life to be humble compared to prideful. I know that just like the Savior our life will be of more impact and it will in turn lead us to greater happiness.

A Simple Testimony for a Remarkable Sacrifice

Reflecting on Easter, and all that it means, I was trying to think of something I could do that would pay gratitude to our Savior and be somewhat personal. After thinking on the topic I decided that a simple personal testimony of Jesus Christ and all that I am grateful for in my life might suffice for what I wish to accomplish. I hope that through this you may feel of my personal witness that I know that Jesus Christ lives and is the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

I haven't had a Heavenly visitation of angels or of Christ himself, I haven't traveled and walked the roads the Savior walked during His earthly ministry, I haven't seen the amazing visions that the prophets and apostles have seen, but I don't feel I need any of that to know the man who lived, suffered, and died for me. I don't need to see the risen Christ in order for me to believe that through him I have the opportunity and privilege to be forgiven of my sins. I don't feel I need to meet him because I have felt his divine love for me, I have felt hope and peace when I had so much of my past weighing me down, I have felt the burden of sin along with the sweet feeling of being made clean in the eyes of my maker. I feel that I have felt the Savior's touch when I have repented of my trespasses with my fellow man and my God. I am Grateful for all that Christ did and continues to do for me, for someone who didn't live during his ministry, someone who will never do for Him what he desires to do for me, someone who doesn't have the slightest clue, in comparison, of all that He did for all mankind, even those that did and would continue to mock and scorn Him.

I love all that Easter represents, the fact that because of Christ's Resurrection I have the great blessing of rising and living beyond this life, along with the blessing and opportunity to dwell with my Father in Heaven after this life. I wish to spend my life showing my gratitude toward all that went into the Plan of Salvation and the sacrifices that were made that I may experience happiness and eternal life.

I am also grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who never loses hope in all his children here on earth. I am grateful for the Restoration of Christ's Church on the earth, I am thankful for the Book of Mormon and all the revealed truth that sacred set of scriptures brought with it. I know that we indeed are benefited abundantly from the prophet and apostles that have been called and chosen as worthy representatives and mouthpieces for God in this dispensation. I know that the message that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints carries and wishes to share is true and can bless the lives of all that wish to know so. This is just a small portion of my Testimony of the Savior. I hope that all will increase their testimony this Easter time, and give an added measure of devotion to sharing what they know and believe about Christ. I bear my witness in Christ's name, Amen.

When All Is Lost?

After the recent crisis in Japan with the earthquake and tsunami it seems to have everyone looking at the news with similar thoughts of how sad the tragedy was and how massive and quick it came, also how much it is still affecting us today with food threats from nuclear waste and so forth. One thing that I know was being noticed was how calm the people in japan were being and how organized and polite the stores were to customers and the same with the people waiting for food and shelter. This type of devastation brings up conversations of the other disasters "waiting" to happen and the question of if that type of disaster took place in America how the people would react.

While thinking about this, I thought about what kind of things get us through the trying times in our lives. Some might listen to music as a way of coping with trials while others may spend their time working on cars, hunting, eating, going for drives, exercising of some sort, shopping, or many other activities. These activities are ways that we deal with stress, anger, heartache, depression, and other ways we may feel when life takes us for a turn. But what happens when life takes us for a nose dive? What happens if all our material items aren't available at our fingertips, when food is short, when we have no home, when family and friends are taken, what do we do when all that we know is taken from us? How do we make it through that type of trial?

I suppose that we could ask the survivors what they do or did to keep their hearts high in such despair. I suppose that we may never have to find out what it takes to get through such a trial, but the question always arises, "Would I be prepared?"
Something that comes to mind when tragedy like this happens is that, the one thing no one will be able to take from us is our Faith and relationship with God. Faith is one thing that fire, tornado, famine, earthquake, or any earthly disaster can take from us. Thus, if we focus our attention on building our Faith (don't worry its easy, prayer, scripture study, church, simple stuff like that), the more possibility we will have in making it through any trial in life whether it be a week where your car is in the shop (and you don't have a spare), or a tsunami that wipes out everything that you have.

My hope is that we would take more time and effort in building our testimony in our Savior Jesus Christ, and ultimately learn to trust and rely on him and the power of the atonement to get us through trials we face in our lives.

Reaching Our Quintessential Potential

One of the things that I struggled with throughout my teenage years, or my "young adult-hood" (I guess that's what some would call it... probably arguable by others) was figuring out who I was. This quest went way deeper with questions of what my strengths/weaknesses are, what kind of activities or hobbies I liked/was good at and what I wanted with my life overall. It still is a question that I have, I guess everyone always has those questions, maybe that's what life is for. Anyway, before my mission and being reactivated in the church I still didn't know. Well, maybe I thought I knew but then when the missionaries came over and I started to rededicate myself to the gospel it seemed like everything I "knew" was being questioned.
So I started to follow down this new but somewhat familiar path, which in turn ended up with me being on a mission. I wanted to come on a mission so that I could tell people that life is better with the knowledge/faith I have of Jesus Christ through the restored Gospel and its teachings. In my attempts to do this I find a great deal of people who are in the similar shoes as I was in, trying to find themselves in attempts to try different life styles. I remember when I was in middle and high school I was always trying to find out what "genre" of people I molded with the best. One year it was preppy people then maybe the next it was more of your trouble maker kids, my clothing style always changed along with music, language, attitude, desire, thoughts, and mostly the way I acted. It has led me to think about how much my life would be different if I would have continued to follow the Savior throughout my childhood.
I feel that my life now has direction with who I want to be and where I want to take my life. I find myself realizing strengths and weaknesses and knowing my limits on life. Its not like it just hit me one day but looking back at the last 2 years of my life has been a remarkable experience. I'm not saying that people wouldn't be able to find who they are if they didn't have the gospel, they probably won't reach the happiest point they can obtain in this life, I know I wouldn't have known as much and wouldn't have been as comfortable with who I am otherwise.

As I was reflecting recently I was thinking about how much different my life is now compared to then. I tried to think of what attributed to the peace and comfort that I have in my life. I'm still the same sarcastic person that people usually end up misunderstanding my humor but my life somehow seems to fit and make sense. As I was reflecting I thought about Christ and His life. From before the beginning of the world Christ has always tried to glorify and serve God. Our salvation depends on Christ and what he did from the beginning up to what he continues to do now, but I find it interesting that Christ all throughout his life just wanted to do His Father's will. He would never take credit for himself and just wanted people to obey God and live life in a way that leads them back to Him. Through this, Christ truly reached his full potential on earth, He was purely sinless and one of the most well know people still today, not to mention the most important person... thousands of years later.
Lawrence E. Corbridge expressess my desired point clearly when he said, "The United States Army says 'Be all that you can be.' But neither the Army nor you know all that you can be. The Lord says: 'Let me make of you all that you can be.' As measured by men's standards Army Rangers are impressive, but when compared with what the Lord can make of you, compared to the realization of your divine potential they truly are nothing. The realization of your amazing, astounding, and true potential happens only in the hands of the Lord." I know that it's only through the power of our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ that we can become all we can be, and I pray that we may follow in our Savior's footsteps to attain that full satisfaction in this life as well as in the life to come.

Learning to Obey

It seems that as the world changes, people become more and more opinionated about the Gospel. One of the subjects I've heard of the most is the topic of the commandments. Many people argue that in order to know if something is bad they have to experience it first hand, thus defeating the purpose of the specific instruction God has given us pertaining to ways of living. While I agree with the fact that you learn a great deal from your past mistakes and the ways you deal with trials on your own, there is still a great importance and safety in obeying the commandments and I would add you can learn just as much if not more from obeying than disobeying, and might I add, its from a much safer distance.
When we choose to disobey a commandment we often think that we will be stronger from learning why it's "bad" first hand. However, often times we fail to realize some of the dangers this can lead us to. One of the high risks we run by not obeying a commandment is falling into the trap of addictions, jail time, loss of trust from family and friends and much more. Sometimes we fall so far into the temptation of saying, "Not living that commandment won't affect me that much." Then before we realize it we are too far from thinking that we can change our lives, we think we are in a place where we can't repent from our sins, sometimes we fall to a point where we lose hope of changing and just think our destiny is to continue to fall. We never know how much the result of disobedience will affect us in the end.
Obedience to the commandments can lead us to watch and learn from the mistakes of others around us. Also, one of the greatest benefits of obeying the commandments God has set forth, is that if there is any blessing, whether it be spiritual or temporal, your obedience opens the channel to receive those blessings. It also allows us the assurance that we are doing what our Heavenly Father has asked us to do. If we are obedient we are blessed.

God knows the results of not obeying all the commandments he has given us. Some may seem small and not so important and others obvious and easy to follow. However, that should not lead us to judge and decide to follow some commandments versus others, the commandments given are in affect for all of us.

When I think of God the easiest way for me to come close to imagining him is of having the characteristics of our parents, plus the ones that they lack. I know when I was younger my mom would "choose her battles" with me and decide what rules she wanted to enforce with added importance and what things she was going to let me learn on my own. I often feel that God has this similar characteristic, I'm sure there are plenty of other things in the world that he would not like to see us doing but he has chosen certain "battles" he was standing firm in. This, to me, shows an added emphasis on the commandments that God has chosen to ask us to follow and also the emphasis on the danger we will fall into when not heeding to his words.

One opinion given is that the commandments tie us down and don't let us live to our fullest ability or learn all that we can from this life. Others would disagree and say that the commandments help us live and learn all that we can from this life. The best way I've heard it said was in the analogy of a kite, if you looked at the world from the kites perspective you would think it would be accusing the string attached of holding it down and not letting it fly to its fullest potential. It would almost be saying, "Let go so I can fly high! You're limiting my ability, I know if you let go I can go higher!" But we know from our "expert kite flying skills", that if you were to let go of the string the kite would spin out of control and soon crash to the ground. That is somewhat similar to the commandments, we think that they are limiting our choices in life but when we live them and then decide to take them away we see that life is better suited with some string holding us up. Because commandments are divine instruction from God, and he wants us only to succeed, if we obey them he has promised us the blessing of reaching past our potential than if we had tried to live by our own rules.

When it comes down to the bottom line we don't know how much our life will be affected from disobedience but we do know that if we follow what we are told we have an added assurance that God is watching over us and is proud with the choices we are making, allowing him to bless us to our fullest. Donald L. Hallstrom has said, "I have always found that when we do the little things correctly, the Lord gives us the strength to accomplish big things... You might not always understand the reasons for some rules or commandments, but if you will follow them even in the little things you will have more strength to do big things... And you will have the great blessing of knowing that you are on the Lord's side and that He is on yours". I know that there is importance in following the commandments and I wish that someday we could follow with the exactness and gain all the support and blessings in store for us.