Prepare for Tomorrow

July 28, 2013


The Stake President, President Petrollini, gave a great talk in Sacrament Meeting in Terni.  He read 3 Nephi 17: 1-3:

        Behold, now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he looked round about again on the multitude, and he said unto them:  Behold my time is at hand.

        I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the father to speak unto you at this time.        

        Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again.

Sometimes it's hard to understand everything, especially when we aren't prepared.  Christ promised the Nephites if they were prepared he would come unto them again tomorrow--and the next day and the day after that, and the day after that, and forever--but they had to be prepared to receive him.

In this time of "hastening", we are seeing miracles everyday because people are prepared to receive the gospel.  They know something is missing in their lives.  A simple conversation or act of kindness from a missionary opens the doors to eternal happiness.  The members in the Italy Rome Mission are beginning to get the vision as well.  It's amazing what members and missionaries working together can accomplish.  

When both missionaries and members are prepared to share the gospel, and nonmembers are prepared to receive it, great things will happen.  Right now we have a very young mission, but one year from now we will have a missionary force to equal nothing that has been seen before.  It's an exciting time to be a missionary.  I'm grateful to be part of it.

Lost

July 28, 2013

We rely heavily on our Tom, Tom navigational unit.  If we just trusted ourselves to get where we need to be, we'd never make it.  Even with the Tom, Tom, we find ourselves lost quite often.  We don't understand what she is saying or we realize too late that we should have taken the turn we just missed.  We usually wind up where we need to be, but even when we leave early, we're often late.  Even today we were late for church.  We couldn't get the Tom, Tom to recognize our location and even when we got that issue resolved, she wouldn't speak to us.  Finally Michael said "I hate the silent treatment."  I suggested we pull over to the side of the road and recheck everything and reset the voice.  Ecco!  It worked perfectly.  She started giving us verbal directions and we were able to drive the rest of the way without incident.  Unfortunately, when she said we had reached our destination, we couldn't find the church.  It was around the corner and about a block away.  We called the missionaries and they were right there to rescue us.

It was a really good feeling to finally reach our destination.

Life is a lot like using a Tom, Tom.  We often lose our way.  It takes someone with a bigger picture to help us find the way.  Even with guidance, sometimes we lose our way and we have to stop and re-examine where we are and where we are headed.  We have to ask for help and then be willing to follow directions.  Even when we think we have done everything we need to, there's still one more thing we have to do.  The scriptures tell us "Blessed is he that endureth to the end."  It's wise counsel that we should always remember.

Tom, Tom

The GPS system we use in the mission is called Tom, Tom.  It sometimes leads us astray, but mostly it gets us from point A to point B.  Even with it's imperfections we are grateful to have it.

We have a cute sister serving in Rome who was born with some missing chromosones.  She is very petite and has the mentality of a 10 or 11 year old.  She is a testimony that the Savior loves all his children.  She often wanders off and needs to take a nap after lunch each day, but her spirit is oversized.  Whenever she is near, everyone is happy to be around her and everyone feels love.  She always has a hug for me (and everyone else) and I feel love for her.  She currently has a companion who wants to work with the disabled one day.  They are perfect together.  The Senior Companion sets goals for her and has taught her that she can actually make phone calls to the Mission Office and request help with something.  She would never do that until recently.  She helps teach discussions.  Remarkably, she and her companion are always teaching and baptizing.  Even investigators feel of this young sisters spirit.  Saturday night they had a baptism and our sweet sister gave a talk on baptism.  She did a great job.  It was so impressive to see her do it.  Her giant spirit permeated the entire chapel.  After the baptism was over, I told her what a good job she had done on her talk.  She said "I know!"  She's just like the rest of us and knows when what she does is right and feels good about it.

The elders in the mission office refer to her as "Tom, Tom" because she knows every bus route in Rome and what is the best bus to use to get from point A to point B.