So
this week was good. I did indeed have a birthday. And it is interesting
having a birthday in the mission field. You know those movies where
there's like the character and they have a super hard life, and it's the
same thing day after day after day, and then one day this person has a
particularly brutal day, and they're just so busy and stressed and at the
end of the day they collapse in their bed from exhaustion only to
realize that it was their birthday and they had totally forgotten,
because they had no loved ones to remind them?
Yeah it was
nothing like that at all. I did on many occasions forget it was my
birthday. But I was reminded often by people sending me emails and then
by some people in my zone giving me ice cream and a card and then by the
presents my mom had sent me in the mail. Which, by the way, were wonderful. I was given the timeless gift of those Little Debbie
chocolate peanut wafer nutty bars, which happen to be my favorite sugary
processed snack food. They also ship very well. And if you don't
believe me, feel absolutely free to try it out. But anyway, other than
those things, I had a completely normal day of missionary work.
Once
again however, I was disappointed to wake up on my birthday and realize
that I did not in fact look and feel suddenly older.
I am starting to sense a pattern.
Turning
19 is an interesting event I've noticed however. Because unlike turning
18, you are turning the age which comes after 18, which is 19. When I
turned 18, I was a little bit intrigued because I had always imagined
actually looking like an adult as an 18 year old. I was still in high
school however, and so I realized that maybe being 18 isn't really what I
thought it would be.
19 has always been another threshold though.
Let me explain by telling a story.
Once
upon a time there was a young boy who shall remain nameless. For
convenience however I will call him "Kendall". Kendall had always wanted
to go on a mission for the Church to which he belonged. You might say
that he even hoped they would call him on a mission. Now mind you, at
this time, you had to be 19 to go on a mission. And so whenever Kendall
imagined himself on a mission, he imagined himself as a 19 year old. And
you see, Kendall's image of 19 year old him was, well, different than
what the actual 19 year old him turned out to be.
Now, I'm going to tell you something that may shock you. That little boy was me.
And so it is quite interesting to be 19 and on a mission, because it's not much like I expected it to be at all.
Well, now that I've wasted the time of you and I, I shall proceed to the actual more important things.
I had a really good week. We had some really good teaching visits with people.
I
really love being a missionary. I love seeing people grow and learn and
come to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it has been very cool for
me to grow and learn and come to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ even
more.
So there's something I have thought a
lot about. And its the idea of "losing yourself in the work." This
concept always intrigued me. Because I didn't particularly want to lose
myself. In fact I quite liked myself. I thought I had a pretty good
personality, I didn't want to lose that. Besides, I thought, aren't I
supposed to use my personality to help others? Because that's a concept
I've heard as well, that missionaries shouldn't be cookie cutter robots
that are all the same. Because missionaries are all different. We all
have different strengths. And the Lord has put us all where we are
because there are specific people that we personally can touch. So what
does it mean to "lose [myself] in the work"? Well I came to realize that
it doesn't mean lose your personality, it means lose the care of
yourself. In other words, stop thinking of yourself and start thinking
about others. Start caring about them and loving them and serving them,
just as Jesus Christ would.
So I really like that. And I know
that if we all try and do a little bit more to just be kind, and not
worry about our own problems as much and think about someone else, and
just spread happiness and love, that we really can "Light the World" a
little bit at a time.
Now, it looks like the time has come for me to say farewell for the week.
Farewell for the week!
~Elder Oswald
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