Lessons learned on the mission

I think that today I'll talk a bit more about lessons that I've learned on my mission.  It's been a good two years. (Well, just short of two years, but who's counting?)  I've served in around seven different east coast cities, and I've seen more of and learned more about people than in the rest of my life.  If anything else, it's taught me the people that I don't want to be.  It's also taught me a bit about time.

Time is one of the most valuable resources in the world.  Once spent, it can never be refunded, returned, or exchanged for store credit.  It's gone for good. 

We have the God given gift of choice.  We can choose what to use our time on.  We could use our time to surf the internet, exchanging an hour of our life for a few cheap chuckles.  We could read a good book, and learn more about the world.  Or, we could spend a few minutes talking with God and be enlightened.

I know that if I choose to do what is right, God will bless me with success.  Life is better when we follow the example set by Jesus Christ.

What to do when life happens to you

So, a few days ago, it snowed.  I have to say, it feels really weird to see the white stuff before November even starts.  We only got about half an inch, but it really felt weird.  My friends from Utah say that this is normal.  I disagree.  (Until I was about fifteen, we never got enough over in Redmond to actually stick.  Then, in two years we got about two feet of snow.  It was a real pain, especially since I couldn't really get around on a bike.  Not unless you have something like this...)

It just goes to show that life is never predictable.  Sometimes, crap happens.  Over in NYC, all the snow downed a lot of trees, and some estimates say that it will cost around 500 grand to replant new trees.  Life is not too hot over there.  (That's why there's snow.)

Why is life so hard?  If God truly cared about us, why would he let us go through such trials?

I kind of like a talk given in General Conference a few years ago.  One of the speakers asked the audience, "Would you hurt your child, and make her cry, for something she didn't do?"  He went on to say, "Of course!  When you take a child to the doctor, and give her a flu shot, your child is hurting and crying!  Why would you do something like that?"

The answer is simple.  You know why it will help your child.

In this life, sometimes we can't see the resons for the trials and the hard times.  We are like children, crying on the doctor's table.  But as we grow up, and learn from the past, we learn more about why bad things had to happen, and say, "I'm glad God was watching out for me."

To read the entire talk, go here.

Lessons learned on the mission:

Today, I just thought I'd share some lessons that I've learned on my mission.  As missionaries, we leave everything behind for two years to go teach the Gospel.

The first one, I'd say, was prompted by what I did on Wednesday.  Wednesday morning, at five-thirty in the morning, we got a phone call from one of our members.  We had talked about maybe us running with him in the morning.  I was half hoping that he had forgotten it, since I despise running.  To quote Neal Armstrong, first man on the moon, "I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running up and down a street."  (I'm quite willing to spend a few playing soccer, though.  Interesting.)

But, sure enough, at 5:30 we get a call saying that he'd be in front of our house at 5:45, maybe 45 minutes before we normally get up.  We got dressed, put on our running shoes, and huddled back in the covers in hopes that they would still have some residual warmth.  He arrived all too quickly, and we got into his little Protege.  (Incidentally, this is exactly the same kind of car that I had back at home.)

We drove over to a little park he knew of, Greenbank Park.  It's a nice place, and all the jogging paths were lit by little streetlights.  I'm groaning, still half asleep, and really wishing that I was back in bed.  We got out of the car, and walked over to the path.  I thought it was interesting that there on the pavement, there was a little line that marked "Start / Finish."



Rocky ran too.



We got jogging, and it wasn't all that bad.  Sure, I was tired, and I was just trying to maintain my position a couple dozen yards in front of Francisco and Elder Lindsley.  I think that's the longest I've run for a long while.  The path that we were running on had little markers painted on the concrete, "1/4 mile," "1/2 mile," etc.  I had thought, when I saw that first one, to run up til the 3/4 mark and stop running there.  Somehow I missed it, and for the first time in two years, I ran a full mile non-stop.

 My companion tells me that running is more mental than physical.  (In that case, I'll just get cut by thinking about running.)  I didn't believe it until I saw that marker there. 

In life, we can do whatever we want.  We're able to grow up and be whatever we want.  The choices that we make will determine who we become, and ultimately whether we are happy or not.  In the words of Lehi, a prophet living about 600 BC,

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. ~2 Nephi 2:27

We can be happy, I know, only through Jesus Christ.  He is the source of all that is good, and can help us in more ways that we can imagine. 


Now for lesson two learned in the mission:

It's not a good idea to microwave a hard-boiled egg.

My Life, Gaming, and the Gospel: Sneak Attack!

Time played a rather rude trick on me a few days back.  As missionaries, we each pay $400 a month into a missionary slush fund to diffuse the cost a bit.  It goes towards rent, electricity, gas, and all that fun stuff.  Less expesive missions need less, while more expensive missions need more.  In this mission, we get all of the housing taken care of, and we get $130 per month to spend on food.  Since we go grocery shopping every monday, and since October has five mondays, this means that this month we have slightly less pocket money than usual.  I was sitting at my desk, looking at the calendar and the amount of cash that I had left, working on my budget.  I flipped up the calendar to the month of November, to see how many weeks were in November, when I stopped short.  The six week period we're in, at the end of which I return home to Washington, ends half-way through November.  I just sat there and thought a bit: in three weeks in this month, and three weeks next month, I'd be sitting at home.

So what do I do now?

It kind of felt like something out of Dungeons and Dragons.  There's this whole class called the Rogue.  They're schtick is that they sneak up on something and stab it.  It does more damage than usual, and is a real pain.  (Since I like to play big guys with big swords, I'm usually the target.)

Sometimes, we have something similar in life.  We're just going about, doing our job, helping others, when something comes out of nowhere and smacks us.  Why does this happen to us?  Is God punishing us?

Of course not.  To say that bad things only happen to bad people is also to say that good things only happen to good people.  God is not punishing you.  He loves you, and wants you to be happy.  Sometimes bad things just happen. 

However, God has a plan.  It is so wide in scope that we really can't take it all in.  He has his eyes placed on Eternal Life.  These eighty-or-so years that we have are just a drop of water in the Pacific Ocean compared to that.  While it seems everything to us, God knows what is truly important. 

I know that as we trust in Christ and repent, and are baptized and receive the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end, we will have the eternal life that God wants so badly to give us.  If we move forward even in the tough times, we'll have eternal life.

And now, the definition of a sneak attack:

Migra Migra Migra!

So, I am a Spanish missionary.  I like it.  The people are usually very friendly, and if you make them laugh they'll talk to you for hours.  Plus, they feed you.  Oh, boy, do they feed you.  Empanadas, enchiladas, tacos, tortas, carne asada, mole, sope, and a number of american dishes as well.  Love the people.

I often talk to people about life.  Where are they from, how long have they been here in the United States, what's their favorite food, how's their family.  I often ask them why they're here?  By that, I mean to say, "Why did they come to the United States?"  I mean, why go to all the trouble of traveling to the border, paying over five thousand dollars to a person called a Coyote in order to cross safely, get here in a country that speaks a language radically different from their own, and then go through all the struggles of getting a job, apartment, and raising children with neither social security card, US identification, credit history, or usually a GED?  Life is not easy for a hispanic immigrant.  Why bother?

Usually, the answer is to get a better life.  It's not fun, it's very difficult, and you have to constantly be on the outlook for la Migra.  But, there's work here in the United States, and there's relatively little in Mexico.  (I'm not going to argue about politics.  They're here, that's all I care about.)  They need jobs to take care of their families there, to build themselves a nice house there, to do all manner of good things.  They understood the risks, and decided that the potential gain was much greater.

In the same way, all of us here on this earth have taken a decision.  Though we don't remember it, we all made a choice to come to this earth.  Back before the beginning of time, we lived with God.  He is, and has always been, our loving Heavenly Father.  He wants what's best for us.  Although he has a glorified, perfect, immortal body, back then we didn't; instead, we were spirits.  We had arrived to a point where we could no longer progress.

So, Heavenly Father called us all to a grand council to discuss the issue.  He told us of his plan; we could go to a place he had prepared for us, called Earth.  There, we would take physical bodies, and be able to choose.  A  part of being able to choose is that some of us would probably not make it back; we'd make bad choices, and disqualify ourselves from having all that God wants to give us.

As part of this plan, Jesus Christ was chosen to be the Savior.  He would make it possible for all of us to come back to God.  It would require faith and repentance on our part, and perfect obedience, pain and suffering on His,  but if we were to fulfill the conditions we could become clean through his Atonement.

We were all tremendously excited.  But then, Lucifer stood up and proposed a different plan.  Instead of having free choice, and perhaps falling, he suggested that we would all be escorted through this existence, and be forced to do what was right.  Nobody would fall away, and for all this he suggested that maybe he should get the credit, and be God for a while.

Amazing as it is, a third of heaven followed Satan, as he came to be called.  They will never receive the chances that we have, and never have bodies.  However, we are here because this life is something good.  We can learn.  It's not easy.  We understood the risks, and we decided that the potential gain was much greater than any risk.

(For a child's version of this history, with accompanying scriptures, see The Old Testament Children's Storybook)

Hurricane Irene aftermath

Well, we survived Hurricane Irene.  Salisbury, the area that I just left, got hammered by Irene, but we were almost untouched.  We had a bit of rain, but nothing to really be afraid of.  I'm almost disappointed.

I understand that there were 24 deaths during the hurricane, most of them involving being out in the hurricane.  There was one who died because he was trying to surf during a hurricane. 

I don't understand this.  People know tht it's a hurricane, that it's a big hurricane, that it will most likely cause a lot of damage.  When I think this, the first thing that comes to mind is not surfing.  It's potential death.

So often, people try to play around with serious things.  Teens often get their start on drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes because of curiosity.  Pornography claims its share of people playing around.  Others start to rob or break other laws because of the rush it gives them, the feeling of power that they have.

Just like the people who died because of playing with Mother Nature, many people die because they're playing with Satan.  The teenager starts on drugs, saying that later on he'll quit.  Later on comes and goes, and he cannot. 

Let me give you some very simple advice.  Don't play with Satan.  He doesn't want you to be happy.  He promises you happiness in very attractive packages, but on tearing open the gift wrap you're left with only pleasure, a cheap imitation whose afterscent reeks of quick choices, shortcuts that lead nowhere.

The road to heaven is not easy.  It wasn't easy for Him.  It will not be easy for us.

Life, Movies, and the Gospel: Frodo Baggins

Next in a series of articles about the Lord of the Rings, we have the main protagonist, Frodo Baggins.



 As an adopted son of Bilbo Baggins, he inherits the Ring found by Bilbo many years before.  Some time later, Gandalf returns to tell Frodo that this ring, apparently of no consequence, is actually the One Ring, needed by Sauron to take over the world.  Fleeing the Shire with his friends, Merry, Pippin, and Sam, he is soon caught up in a quest to take the One Ring to Mordor, and throw it in Mount Doom to be destroyed. 

(If you've not seen the movie nor read the books, this is a highly condensed synopsis.)

Joining him in this quest are Gimli the dwarf, Legolas the elf, Merry, Pippin, and Sam, Boromir, Aragorn, and of course, Gandalf.  They are the Fellowship of the Ring, a group of allies dedicated to this task.  Frodo is the Ringbearer, the one who must bear the burden of the Ring from that point on.

As in life, Frodo is surrounded by friends, and is constantly in danger.  If we see the Ring as sin, something introduced by the evil one, then Frodo's quest is to bear sin until he can destroy it.  It's not quite a perfect match, but I think it's a good one.  Just like Frodo, we all have sins.  We all need to be rid of it, to be clean.  We can't do it by ourself; we need some help.  We all need, in a figurative sense, to go to Mount Doom, to suffer, to repent of our sins, and be clean. 

It's a long and difficult process.  Luckily, we all have our friends surrounding us.  We have a lot of help from God.  We can, and if we're willing, will be rid of sin through Jesus Christ.

And now, "How it should have ended: Lord of the Rings"

(Seriously.  Why did noone think of this?)

Life, Gaming, and the Gospel: Dungeons and Dragons, part 3

Click on the links to read Part one and Part Two of a series of articles about Dungeons and Dragons.

So, I've just been thinking a bit lately about Dungeons and Dragons.  A guy has to think about something, after all, and I've had a lot of practice thinking about D&D.  (I first got started in a library near my house when I saw a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide on a shelf and figured, why not?  After all, I had seen some of my dad's old AD&D figurines, so I was kind of curious.)

Anyway.

Once I got my start, I was hooked.  What were these tables of feats, dice charts, adventures, characters, options, prestige classes, sourcebooks, weapons, character traits, flaws, monsters... Oh yes, lots of monsters...  From there, I branched out at the library.  I knew from the internet that I'd need the Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG), the Players Handbook (PHB) and the Monster Manual.  I couldn't find the PHB, so I got the Player's Handbook II.  (Yes, there's a second PHB.)  Since I couldn't find the PHB anywhere, I got really frustrated.  After all, the PHB is the only book of the main three that is absolutely indispensible; everything else revolves around it, since it explains the character rules the most clearly.

 

Imagine trying to play Monopoly without the rules.  Imagine playing any game without the rules.  It would become chaos, everyone trying to get their own way, trying to get all they can grab, and with noone really being sure when they've won or not.

It kind of sounds like today, now doesn't it?  Everyone's running around like a chicken with their head cut off, trying to scratch all the money that they can out of life.  All the times, they've lost the point of life.  Just like the point of D&D is not to get rich, in-game or out, the point of life is not to get rich but to be happy.  Certainly, having enough money to get by is healthy and good, but we just need to focus on being happy.  Christ is the best way to achieve that.  I know this to be true.

Next time you need to know what to do, try reading the scriptures. They're the instructions for life.

(A Postscript: I still don't actually own any of the PHB, MM, or DMG.  They're very hard to find in the thrift stores I shopped at.  I haven't gone on Amazon yet. Maybe when I get home from my mission.)

Why bother?

Why bother?

I mean, really?  What's the point?  Why go through all the troubles of life?  Why suffer?  Why do we work so hard to get people to do what they really don't want to do?  We get up, we go to work, we jump through all sorts of hoops, and in the end we're a day older and not a lot smarter.  We've given up twenty-four hours of our life, usually in a place that we don't want to be, doing something unpleasant for people we may or may not despise.

Why bother?  Why did we choose to come to this miserable sphere we call earth?  Why do we keep at this?

Well, why do you work?  What do you get from it?  Hopefully, you're being paid for your labors.  The pay is a good reason, right?

Why do people run marathons?  I would be miserable!  I'd be dying by mile three, and there's still eighteen miles to go!  But isn't the prize worth it?

I saw a tee-shirt in Lindenwold once.  It said, "Working for God: The pay isn't that great, but the retirement plan is out of this world!"  The statement invites a chuckle, and the best part is that it's true.

So long as we keep our eyes on the prize of eternal life, we're able to keep going.  God has many promises for us, and I know that it's worth it.  We might question God at times.  Why does bad stuff happen?  Why would he let someone die?  If instead of focusing on all the bad things, we should focus on the good, and even more on what happens afterwards.  God loves us, and he wants what's best for us.

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. ~Doctrine and Covenants 122:7

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosever believeth in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life. ~John 3:16

I know that this is true.  God loves us, and if we will focus on the prize, we will win.