WEEK 1 LANSING (WEEK 72 OF MISSION)

hey everybody! what a great week on campus! serving on campus is super different, but super fun! this week is transfer week, which basically means that for the next 4 days i will be driving a giant 15 passenger van with a trailer behind it for about 1400 miles. so.. yeah... not a lot of missionary work happening this week haha. 

 

Why are all three of them squeezed into the front seat?!?

Missionaries!?!

so we pc'd all week (personal contacted). that is where we walk around and talk to random people all day long and invite them to meet with us haha. it is basically like we are ping pong balls because we just bounce from person to person and group to group. we have a lot of fun. we set tons of return appointments and get loads of phone numbers. sad part is, not everybody follows through haha. so we were wondering how we can be more effective on campus. and we had this idea. we took a big white cardboard poster, made it look nice, and put, "what would you ask God?" in the middle of it. we walked around campus and asked students what they would ask god and had them write their questions on the board. then we told them we would hold a large group class this next week where we will answer a few of these questions each week. and it went awesome! we got some sweet responses and met loads of cool people.

here is what was so cool: we ask people all the time what the purpose of life is, and nobody wants to say i dont know, so they give a token response. but yesterday, lots of people wrote things like what is the purpose of life? why did God put me here? especially the chinese students. when we would ask if they think about their question often, they would say every day i wonder why i am here. or something like that! cool, right? so we are hoping this new idea works! 

i love James E Talmage. check out this parable of his: it is a little lengthy, but soo worth reading! please read it!

Sometimes I find myself under obligations of work requiring quiet and seclusion such as neither my comfortable office nor the cozy study at home insures. My favorite retreat is an upper room in the tower of a large building, well removed from the noise and confusion of the city streets. The room is somewhat difficult of access and relatively secure against human intrusion. Therein I have spent many peaceful and busy hours with books and pen.

I am not always without visitors, however, especially in summertime; for when I sit with windows open, flying insects occasionally find entrance and share the place with me. These self-invited guests are not unwelcome. Many a time I have laid down the pen and, forgetful of my theme, have watched with interest the activities of these winged visitants, with an afterthought that the time so spent had not been wasted, for is it not true that even a butterfly, a beetle, or a bee may be a bearer of lessons to the receptive student?

A wild bee from the neighboring hills once flew into the room, and at intervals during an hour or more I caught the pleasing hum of its flight. The little creature realized that it was a prisoner, yet all its efforts to find the exit through the partly opened casement failed. When ready to close up the room and leave, I threw the window wide and tried at first to guide and then to drive the bee to liberty and safety, knowing well that if left in the room it would die as other insects there entrapped had perished in the dry atmosphere of the enclosure. The more I tried to drive it out, the more determinedly did it oppose and resist my efforts. Its erstwhile peaceful hum developed into an angry roar; its darting flight became hostile and threatening.

Then it caught me off my guard and stung my hand—the hand that would have guided it to freedom. At last it alighted on a pendant attached to the ceiling, beyond my reach of help or injury. The sharp pain of its unkind sting aroused in me rather pity than anger. I knew the inevitable penalty of its mistaken opposition and defiance, and I had to leave the creature to its fate. Three days later I returned to the room and found the dried, lifeless body of the bee on the writing table. It had paid for its stubbornness with its life.

To the bee’s shortsightedness and selfish misunderstanding I was a foe, a persistent persecutor, a mortal enemy bent on its destruction; while in truth I was its friend, offering it ransom of the life it had put in forfeit through its own error, striving to redeem it, in spite of itself, from the prison house of death and restore it to the outer air of liberty.

Are we so much wiser than the bee that no analogy lies between its unwise course and our lives? We are prone to contend, sometimes with vehemence and anger, against the adversity which after all may be the manifestation of superior wisdom and loving care, directed against our temporary comfort for our permanent blessing. In the tribulations and sufferings of mortality there is a divine ministry which only the godless soul can wholly fail to discern. To many the loss of wealth has been a boon, a providential means of leading or driving them from the confines of selfish indulgence to the sunshine and the open, where boundless opportunity waits on effort. Disappointment, sorrow, and affliction may be the expression of an all-wise Father’s kindness.

Consider the lesson of the unwise bee!

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:5–6).

what a lesson for us all! i hope you enjoyed that thought from Elder Talmage.

I love you all! wish me luck!