Week: Super good. We stayed busy and all that jazz. Went on exchanges twice this week, which was a lot of fun. I'm going to send you guys a song that Elder Sarceno from Bolivar performed for me at the end of our day. It's pretty beautiful.
We had a few less-actives and some investigators at church, which is always pretty sweet. Still waiting on the interviews for our Fundamentalist friends, keep your fingers crossed!
Everything below this paragraph is soapbox stuff that has little to do with my daily happening. It's like the Small Plates of Elder Drake or something. If you're not interested in all of the wonderful epiphanies I have, you can skip to the bottom and look at the funny picture or listen to Elder Sarceno or something.
I had a neat experience the other night. We were here at the church on the computers because Elder Allred needed to watch a thingy so he can get his tiwi card so he can drive. I was poking around mormon.org and watched Lindsay Sterling's "I'm a Mormon" video, and it inspired me. Cheesy? Maybe, but hear me out, okay?
I think every missionary goes through different stages of being a missionary. "Gung-ho Greenie," "Self-righteous Senior Companion," are a few that come to mind. However, I think every missionary gets to the point where they have to decide to either be mediocre for the rest of their mission or really give it all they've got and put it all on the table. I think people that aren't missionaries have to make this decision eventually too.
So back to Lindsay Sterling. Go watch that video. Here, I'll even give you a link to her video. She's this 20 something year old girl, who's been through crap like each of us have been, and now she's doing something that she loves and changing lives, I think that's cool. Really cool. Cool enough to talk about anyway. I even wrote it down last night. That's how cool I think it is.
God gives each of us gifts. Some of us he gives more, some of us he gives less, but each of us has at least one. That's a fact. Each of us is also given weaknesses. Some of us have more, some of us have less. Opposition in all things, right? Well along with all of that, I think we're all given dreams. Or desires if you want a less cheesy way of putting it. We each have righteous desires that just are, they're just there and they always have been.
When I was two or three, my parents had an old Toyota Corolla or something. I don't remember much about it, besides that it was red and that it was a stickshift. In fact, I'm not even sure it was red. What I do remember though, was that the coolest and most fun thing to do in the whole world was to sit in it and play with the gearshift. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably would have told you a mailman, a garbage man, a chauffeur, or something else that got to drive a big cool car around all day. That's how I wanted to spend my life. Driving a car. I was three! That was God-given and I think God wants me to use that.
Along with those righteous desires, comes those unrighteous desires. Opposition in all things again. Sometimes we get the two confused and that causes problems. I'll use me as another example.
My mom tells this story about me when I was around the same age, maybe a little older. We were at a movie rental store and I grabbed a video off the shelf and brought it to my mom telling her that was what I wanted to watch. On the cover were cars and half-naked women. I didn't know any better haha. I just knew I wanted to watch it! God gives us all weaknesses.
So like I said, the tricky part is to be able to tell the difference between those Righteous desires and the weaknesses. "Do I really want to get up early and exercise or do I want to sleep in?" Those righteous desires always seem harder to accomplish. Entropy. That's a subject for another soapbox though.
Anyway, I think each of us has something to which we can say, "I've always wanted to do that!" Dreams, right? What do the movies and the songs and the books tell us? "Chase your dreams! Be who you are! Let it go, let it go! Don't hold it back anymore!" All that stuff. Well they're almost right. I came up with a formula last night.
Here's what you do if you want to achieve those dreams.
1) Put God First. He knows you, He knows what you want, He knows who He wants you to be and what you need to do to get there.
2) Identify Righteous Passions. I don't think this one is that hard. Find out what makes you tick and go do it!
3) Identify and Fortify Against Weakness. Do your best to overcome the crap that drags you down away from the first two parts of my patented formula for success and let the Lord do the rest.
Tired of my soapbox? Well too bad, I'm not done yet. One more story, okay?
I think President Uchtdorf is one of the best examples of putting my formula into practice. Quick! What's his number one passion? I bet you said flying, or airplanes or something, didn't you? Well I think you're wrong. It's okay, I guessed wrong too as I was writing this. Then I realized that his number one passion is probably serving the Lord, but his number two passion is flying.
Now, if he had put flying as his number one passion, I'll bet he still could've done most of the things he's done. I'll bet he still could've achieved all that flying success and flown 747s all around the world and stuff. In fact, I'll bet he'd probably be poking around Germany in his Piper Cub and stuff having a grand old time. But instead he put God first, and look at how much he gained from that! Not only did he get to do all that stuff, but now he's one of the most beloved apostles who influences millions of people for the better every day. And on top of that, because of his service to the Lord, he's gotten to sit in the cockpit of Air Force One, go on a ride-along with the Blue Angels, and tell millions of people about flying every six months if he wants to. How sweet is that? Has he had hard times? I'm sure. Has he been put through the ringer? I'm positive. But isn't the reward worth it? And the best part is that the reward isn't just for this life, but for the next life too, because he probably discovered my patented formula before I did. He just didn't patent it like I did.
Here's the TL;DR. Go serve God, do what He wants you to do, then take those dreams of yours and go make 'em happen.
Have you always wanted to be a paramedic? Go do it.
Want a puppy? Go get one
Want to learn how to play the guitar? Skydive? Scuba? Go to China? Live off the land for a few years? Go do it already! You have my permission?
Are you tired of being mediocre? Well me too! Stop being sad and go be awesome.
Scripture time? Yep. Here.
I thought of two dreamers from the scriptures last night. Joseph and Lehi. They dreamed a lot! Joseph's brothers thought it was stupid, so they said, "Behold, the dreamer cometh, come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit...and we will see what will become of his dreams" (Genesis 37:19-20)
Do you know what happened to Joseph and his dreams? Well he became "like a father unto Pharoah" and basically ruled Egypt and stuff. His dreams came true.
So when the world tries to throw you into pits cause your dreams are awesomer than theirs, you stand up like Lehi did and say, "I know that I am a visionary man; for if I had not seen the things of God in a vision I should not have known the goodness of God, but had tarried at Jerusalem and had perished with my brethren. But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice." (1 Nephi 5:4-5)
I'm going to try it. Are you? I'm going to go be a race car driver or something. But only after I do everything God wants me to. And you know, when you do everything God wants you to first, everything else seems to fall in place.
(TL;DR)
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one"
"And when you dream, dream big,
As big as the ocean blue,
'Cause when you dream, it might come true
When you dream, dream big."
(Other cheesy song lyrics here)
Love y'alls,
Elder Christopher Drake
No comments:
Post a Comment