Joseph Smith and stuff‏

Dear Family and friends,

 

Another week full of rain. The sun came out for a little bit on Friday, and it felt like  a miracle on the back of my arms and neck. But it has disappeared once more under the insurpassable gray sky. That's okay, though! It really doesn't make a difference, at the end of the day, if it was rainy or not. I have a good day when I try to love God and the people around me.

 

This week I have really had to come back to the roots of my faith, and let those carry me through in everything I do. It has been a week in which I've seen just a lot of suffering, between our investigators. We are teaching a woman who had a stroke last year and can only move one half of her body, and is in terrible debt, almost to the point of being put in jail. We are teaching a Vietnamese woman with an abusive, controlling husband who forbids her to make friends and would probably be very angry if he knew she was meeting with us. We are teaching a girl who is a very open lesbian. We are teaching another girl who isn't quite as open about being attracted to women, but whom we are fairly sure has crushes on us. It breaks my heart how lonely she is, how eager to please. It breaks my heart that now we are in a complicated situation not knowing  how to love her and encourage her progression in the gospel without encouraging her attachment to us. Things are complicated.

 

Mom, you asked about if I had any thoughts about Joseph Smith, since you are preparing a lesson on him.There are a couple of things about him that help me better understand the importance of the restoration and my own personal experiences with God. Mainly it's that whatever you can say about what he "really" did or didn't experience, or about what the worth of his impact on the world has been, it seems apparent that he really believed all that he experienced to be real and true. And that seems like such a basic point... But it's so crucially important! What was missing from religion then and what is missing in religion now, in my opinion, is personal experience with God. He brought to the world an organization called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to faciliate people's own experiences with a God that he had experienced to be real, true, and good. Being on a mission has helped me to better understand why there is so much emphasis in the church on having our own personal experiences with finding truth and spirituality. Sometimes I have felt tempted to think religion is simply about learning to be a good person, and to treat others well. Of course that is an inseparable part of religion, but the more underlying reason is that there is a real God who exists and who is good. Knowing him to whatever degree we know him is what inspires and enables us to be good, to turn outwards towards the world in service and love.

 

For me, at least, I feel my problem with spirituality tends to be that I talk too much about it and do too little of it. Philosophy, science, and poetry are incredible tools for helping us think about and potentially open our hearts towards God, but onless we do that part--opening our hearts--we're never going to find him. And unless we find him, we will never be able to experience that endless source of love that colors all the interactions and details of our lives with meaning, with responsibilities, with more love.

 

Anyway, I like Joseph Smith for the simple example he set of this pattern: seeking God, experiencing him, and obeying him. It took his life in a direction I am pretty sure he never, ever anticipated, when he went to the sacred grove, or even when he came back with the Gold plates, and probably even after every subsequent revelation he received.  But what a miracle and beautiful thing, that that suggests! That there is something new, real, compelling, and important to be experienced. Something we don't know now, but that we can know if we open ourselves up to a God who will tell us.

 

Sometimes it is easy to look at missionary work as such a feeble thing. We are these young people going out all over the world trying to talk about God. Wouldn't the quicker path to converting millions of people just be taking over a country or something? The church has money for that, don't they? (Just kidding.) But I've come to see this slow, one-on-one effort of missionaries as the most beautiful thing. I don't think Heavenly Father wants more people with baptismal records. He wants more people who pray to him, more people seek to understand him through the scriptures, more people who maybe aren't sure but are willing to try and be open to the possibility that he exists and that he has something to offer them. Sometimes it is frustrating that the church reminds us over and over again of Alma's promise of experimenting with the word of God, and Moroni's promise of praying about the Book of Mormon--sometimes we hear these so often that they are dead words to us. But they are words intended to lead us to the source of life.

 

The way I personally try to do this--not that I'm super good at it, but I try--is to obey what I feel life calling me, compelling me to do, that is right. I had a professor who gave us a challenge once to pick one day to pay close attention in every moment  to what we felt was right to do, and to do it, no matter what. It totally woke me up to all these things I daily feel compelled to do--be more loving with a sibling, have more integrity with my homework, do something kind for someone--that I frequently choose to ignore because of inconvenience. This is despite my declarations that I am trying to do my best to be good. This experiment really woke me up to the fact that so often I don't even ASK myself, let alone God, what is good to do. I just live. 

But I have found that if I really do try to pay attention, I do feel compelled to do certain things. And if I grow in that, continue trying to discern and obey (it is undoubtedly such a murky path, sometimes!) I find breakthroughs of clarity and find the wisdom and ability to keep going. This process, coupled with prayer, is what I feel has really given me experiences with Heavenly Father. Sometimes when I pray I am not sure if some idea I came up with is really from God or just an idea, but I think--hey, is this a good thing to do? Then I am going to do it! And as Elder Bednar says sometimes it really is just taking one step after another through the fog, following a light you see but admittedly it is dim. But you keep going and things make more and more sense and the light is more and more tangible. And gosh, it's so hard. I hope it's not self-righteous, me writing about all of this, because I know I personally suck at it very often. But it really is true! It has turned me into a person I didn't think I could be. I've been able to love people and situations I didn't think I could love. And to try to solve problems I have just wanted to run from. And sometimes at the end of the day, the fact that you are different from how you thought you could be is just about the best thing to be able to say. haha.

 

Hmm. This isn't really what I was planning on writing about today. Oh well. Hope it was interesting and not just preachy. Next week I promise I will talk more about Taiwan.

I love you all! Don't worry about me, I am doing great!

Diana