It's been a tougher week. As I say that, it reminds me of that one
book that you always used to read to us about how that one boy had a
“terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.” As he continues to
experience mishaps from getting plain white shoes to having lima beans
for dinner to getting soap in his eyes, he deems it as the worst day of
his life and that he was moving to Australia. Only to realize at the end
of the story that bad days happen to everyone every once in a while,
even in Australia. Well I'm here to testify that even in the promised
land of the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission, bad weeks still happen in
Erie. And that's not even to say that it was really that bad; it was
just a little slower than the past weeks I've been here. Appointments
fell through, which really was nothing new.
We were able to get some new investigators though. During an
afternoon of reluctant persistence, we tracted into a really solid
potential named Thomas who remembers missionaries playing basketball
with him as a kid. Their examples always left a good impression with him
and through these years he cherished the charity of those young men. He
insisted that we come back when his wife would be home so we could
teach them both. We were also finally able to get in contact with the
first potentials we tracted into my first week in Erie. The Burney
family had had much experience with missionaries in the past and so they
already were willing to let us in and listen. They claim, as they told
the previous missionaries years before, that they would “never become
Mormons,” that there was just some doctrinal differences that they could
not accept. Yet despite this proclamation, they've been keeping
commitments, they've read most if not all the Book of Mormon, and they
have solid, golden questions that lead us perfectly into the Plan of
Salvation. Slowly, their walls are coming down so that the Spirit can
testify of the truths we're speaking.
It was interesting because as we taught the Burneys and read with
them 1 Nephi chapter 1, thoughts and ideas I had never considered about
the chapter popped into my head from an unknown origin. I must have read
that chapter a hundred times throughout my mission and it was strange
that I was just beginning to make sense of why God would word the first
chapter of a book of Holy Scripture the way he did. The Holy Ghost is
cool like that. As I was drafted into teaching Gospel Principles class
yesterday (again) we discussed the nature of the Spirit and how although
he testifies of the truthfulness of all things, the revelation is
personally tailored to how we will recognize it for the benefit of our
lives. Heavenly Father loves us and wants us to know truth so it makes
sense that we would receive that inspiration that way. One of the
members in the class made the best comment of how the Holy Ghost's
subtle way of communicating is necessary in learning and retaining
truth. He suggested that although revelation can come as something huge
and miraculous like the appearance of an angel, that visitation would
never convert us. He said that if an angel were to appear right now and
tell him that it was no longer kosher to love thy neighbor, he would
disregard that manifestation because he inherently knew it wasn't true
by the line upon line teaching method of the Holy Ghost. As much as we
seek and desire a huge “sign” for an answer to our prayers, it is
perhaps the stillness and smallness of the Holy Ghost's promptings that
instil them as legitimate inspiration. For people who insist that they
don't know what the Holy Ghost feels like, they need only understand
that his method is not in the wind or the fire or the lightning strike,
but it is more like the enlightening of a sunrise, something so
comfortable and familiar that if we are not paying attention to it, we
may miss it altogether.
Elder Low
