April 10, 2017

Last week I briefly touched on personal revelation and recognizing it, now I want to talk about it a little bit more.

A quote from Elder Bednar goes something along these lines, "When we talk to God it is called prayer, when he talks to us it is called revelation." I like this. It reminds me of emailing your boss a weekly report, even though you may not get a clear and direct response from him, he still reads it. If we ask a question, there's guidance needed, or he wants us to change something, he will email you back instructing you what to do. We don't always need clear-as-day step by step instructions because we should be trusted, but He won't let us fall away without guidance. Also, in the same way your boss would give you instructions for you and those you're over, God is only going to give you revelation for you and those you're accountable for, such as your children, or if your a Bishop, the ward, etc...

We know the importance of revelation/promptings, but the hard part is discerning between our own thoughts and promptings. 

Moroni 7:13 says:

"But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God."

Even if it's only your thoughts, if it's good, just do it. When Elder Bednar was a missionary he gave one of the twelve (don't remember who exactly) a ride to the train station where he'd then go to east Germany. He felt it would be nice to give him some dinner money so he did, a pretty generous amount. Years later, Bednar learned that after he'd dropped them off and the train departed, they were stopped by soldiers in West Germany who were looking for passports, his wife's passport was an extended one which didn't fly with them. Long story short, after some tussle, the apostle just gave him her passport with the generous dinner money. The soldier came back and said they're good to go, handed them their passport, no money inside. After arriving to their destination they learned that if she wasn't allowed through, they would've taken her off the train, separated them, and it would've ended ugly. Bednar didn't know it was a prompting that would save her life, he just acted on a thought that enticed to do good.

I feel like often we think that since God is this awesome, all-knowing, almighty person, that revelation from him needs to have an impact, like something that hits us like a brick and goes way beyond our level of thoughts and ideas so revelation is easily discernable from ideas that pop into our heads. But here's the thing, the heavens and earth were created with existing matter and the lights from existing light, we know this from Abraham 4. So why is it so unreasonable for God to organize your thoughts into ideas? It's not, in fact to me it seems like the most reasonable way considering God follows patterns. So revelation can very well and most likely usually does come in the form of a simple idea. And if it's good, act on it! In this last conference, Ronald a. Rasband quoted Joseph Smith, saying, "If you follow the first impression, you'll be right 9 times out of 10." 

Tuesday:

I wanted to try the promise in Mark 11:24 "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." About a week ago my electric shaver started dying and there was no charger to be found I probably left it in roswell. Since I needed it and no one else had chargers that would fit mine and I didn't want to go out and buy a whole new thing just for a charger, I prayed for one. A couple days later I asked Elder Bastos from another ward if he'd seen any chargers in his apartment that I could try, he said there'd been one since he got there that he found but didn't throw away. He said I could give it a try. Perfect match. And this was his last day here too. The Lord provides! ALSO!! There's a 70% chance of tornadoes tomorrow!! I'm so flippin stoked!! I'm also so upset that I can't track it, but it's suppose to be gnarly! Everyone keeps talking about it! We'll see how it goes.

Wednesday:

So the storm I was talking get about yesterday...it just rained hard all day with thunder. Not even lightning or wind, we got jypsed. But a separate storm rolled through that worked up at midnight, it was consistent lightning at least once every other second for 45 minutes. Most was in the clouds but towards the end they started popping out. I'll send pictures in a separate email. Also, remember how I said last week that they're taking one of the cars out of our car share? Well the other Elders decided they're just gonna take the car even though they're in the city, have sidewalks, have almost half as big of an area with two sets of missionaries to cover it, have the church building, and a million more members to give them rides. So now we waste 20-25 hrs weekly riding bikes. Not sure how that all worked out but I feel not so good about it. Oh and I found out that the car they took from us, they gave to Elders in Roswell, they've been on bike since the beginning of time and have city, members, sidewalks, lights, people to street contact, etc...The frustrating part is that I was just there biking my way around for six months and now I'm here and they take the car...I can expect to bike about 180-200 miles every single normal week

Sunday:

This is funny...Tonight we met a guy. He was one of those guys. I almost didn't write about him because I can't even attempt to write down all that happened and my thoughts. He's one of those people who thinks they're super smart but contradict themselves and have no other citations outside of Google. He was cross faded, too. He starts talking about leaving the body when you dream and other weird stuff about going into another realm and how everything has already happened in parallel universe-type things (I think) and I thought it was fun so I cooperated and would get him hyped because he's black and black people are fun to hype up. I'd say things like, "oh and that's why when you dream sometimes it happens in real life!" He'd then flip out and come over and be like, "You got me man! You feel me!" I think at one point we were even in psychic-spiritual link that he shares with his guardian angel so that was cool. He asked if I had "the dream" followed a couple seconds later by, "Ahhh Ya man you already told me it all!" He said religion was created to control "us" slaves (who couldn't even read the Bible in the first place) and that we, being black, we're connected by Hebrew ancestry. English is a curse put upon us too apparently... I have no clue man. That's not even the half of it all, it was good stuff.

We also dropped another half of our teaching pool so now we're down to about three people, one of which doesn't understand what we teach and doesn't wanna be baptized but has been coming to church for a while and that's why we don't drop him. Another has been coming for over a year and we don't really 'teach' him since he's a dry Mormon pretty much. And the other's mom won't let him come to church, but we still go over to solidify his testimony for when he leaves for college, then he can come to church and be baptized likes he's been wanting to for the past year. So it's been rough. We don't even have potentials after three weeks of nothing but hitting the pavement