The computer is timing out. I'm talking about time. What luck.

I'm sitting here in the Newark Public library.  Finally, a decent computer.

As I waited for the computer to become available, I was just stunned by how much information we have at our fingertips.  In each bookshelf, we have at least a hundred books, each one hundreds of pages long.  In the bookshelf to my right, we have books of history, the presidency, a seperate book about the president's wives, the civil war, a book about native american tribes, another one listing TV shows from 1995 to 2007, over in the shelves even further to the right, you have two books on D&D. (I checked.  Habit.)  You have Mormonism for Dummies, you have shelf after shelf of paperback romance books, you have Terry Pratchett, and an incredible amount of information.  If you were to live here, and just start reading books, you might finish them all before you die.  Maybe.

There's just too much information here in the world for any one man to process.  That's in books alone.  Then, you have the Internet.  Even if you were to remove all redundant material...Click here for something mindblowing.

As the first little picture there says, if you were to read all of the Internet from one end to the other, it would take 57,000 years reading nonstop.

In all this, it's important to prioritize.  There are things that are downright bad, things that are good, better, and best.  We each have 80 or so years, a gift from God to use as we see fit.  If we choose, we could go to lolcats and read all about certain cats are denied cheezburgers.  We could spend any amount of time reading on forums about webcomics, gaming, books, fantasy, romance.  (I should know, that's how I spent a lot of time three years ago.  Except for the romance part.)

But that wouldn't be best. 

God has commanded us to seek wisdom from the best books.  I know that if we will spend time reading from the best books, something I've interpreted to mean the scriptures, we will have happier lives.

You can find the Scriptures with your local missionaries.  Or, since you're on a computer right now, why don't you check out the scriptures right now?

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: