Hi everyone,
Well it sounds like everything is busier than ever back home with school and football well underway as well as the missionary work in Ghana. It is going forever strong as usual. Because our area is so big we spend a lot of time riding our bikes up one side of a hill and down the other, or we spend a lot of time in traffic on a trotro trying to get home from far across the city.
On Saturday I was trying to think of ways that we could be more affective and waste less time in transportation. I felt that we had been wasting a lot of time and that we weren’t getting as much done as we could. I was a little down because I felt like we had nothing to show for all our hard work but the only solution I could think of was a helicopter then we could just fly and land next to every appointment and not have to work about hills and traffic. Unfortunately that is a little out of our league, so we just got to stick to effective planning and ride our bikes a little faster. Ha-ha!
On Sunday I was a little down since we only had 3 investigators that came to church, so I took some time to just slow down and sit and think about some of the things that we had accomplished. The past few weeks I have been going full speed trying to get this area back on top and I really haven't slowed down enough to see the good things that we have accomplished. I was trying to feel sorry for myself but it didn’t take long to realize how blessed I have been through out my life and how blessed I have been here in Ghana. So I started to go through my planner to see how many people were supposed to come to church and to see how many people we could count on next month for baptism so we could reach our goal for September. As I was going through my planner I realized that we have 10 people who have been to church twice or more and 5 others who have been at least once. I realize that those are not for sure baptisms next month or even at all (this is Ghana anything can and will happen in Ghana) but we have been so blessed with people to teach and that are willing to come to church. I just feel that as hard as we are working that we should have double that number. So anyway after some prayer we decided to set our goal at 7 but we are going to do everything we can to get them all!
I am amazed at how you can read scriptures, talks or even sing hymns over and over again but the spirit can still teach you more, even when you think you know it all. I had this experience this week with the hymn number 27 “Praise to the Man”. I don’t know how many times I have sang that hymn, but this week when I sang it the spirit brought something different to my mind. Something that is pretty obvious but never really stood out to me till now. It’s in the forth verse first line. "Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven". I have been thinking about that line a lot this week and how true it really is.
It seems like in every scripture story there is someone who gets put in jail, or almost gets kill, or rejected by people but then the blessings always seem come. In our day Joseph sacrificed his life for what he knew to be true, and look at the blessings that we are getting because of him. For us, in most cases we don’t have to sacrifice our lives, but we can sacrifice our life for two years and serve a mission. We can sacrifice family, friends, school, work and what ever else to serve a mission. We can also sacrifice 10 percent of our earnings to pay tithing. But even though we might think we are sacrificing a lot at the time the Lord is always there with a blessing.
After I thought about this "sacrifice brings forth the blessing of heaven" I put together this little scripture chain and I would like to share it with you. So first I went to Mosiah 2:24
And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever.
Then Mosiah 2:41 And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual
In these scriptures from Mosiah 2 that the lord has given us commandments, like paying our honest tithes, and if we do this he will bless us temporally and spiritual.
Helaman 12:1
Yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him.
Then from Helaman 12:1 we can learn not only do we need to keep the commandments we need to put our trust in him. Trust that he has power to do all. Trust that he will bless you as you faithfully keep the commandments.
Doctrine and covenants 1:28
And inasmuch as they were humble they might be made strong, and blessed from on high, and receive knowledge from time to time.
From DC 1:28 we can learn that we also need to be humble, that we may be blessed from on high.
Doctrine and covenants 58:4
For after much tribulation come the blessings.
As we keep the commandments, we have trust in him, we are humble, we will still have tribulation but after much tribulation come the blessings.
Doctrine and covenants 130:20
There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—
Doctrine and covenants 82:10
I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.
I hope all of you can learn as much as I did from this little chain of scriptures. I could keep going on on but time is small. But I know these things to be true. I know that if we keep the commandments, we are humble, we trust in god, we endure tribulation He WILL bless us. He is bound when we do what he says. Sacrifice brings forth the blessing of heaven. Let us all pay our tithing and fast offerings because it is a commandment not because we want the blessing, but as we humbly do that with faith and trust in him, I know that he will bless you.
Well that’s all I got for today.
Love Brady
No comments:
Post a Comment