August 26, 2013

 

As of this past Wednesday, several sisters serving at the Portland Oregon Temple Visitor's Center can now tell their posterity that they talked to Elder Holland there and shook his hand. Not many can say, like Sister Priday and I can, that they were 30 minutes short of talking to Elder Holland and shaking his hand! No one was forewarned of his coming except the VC directors who kept it a secret, and he wasn't coming during our shift.  But Sister Priday and I had to grab something from there, so we came just after he left. We could  still feel a special spirit of an apostle around the visitors center after he left. It made me think that I want to be such a dedicated disciple of Jesus Christ that people feel differently when I'm there.

 

 

 

 I love the visitors center. I haven't been talking about it much because it has been closed for the past three weeks except for temple tours on Sundays. It opened up again this week though!

 

I have had a realization. I wanted to go on a mission largely because I saw in the returned sister missionaries  I knew this confidence in themselves and the Lord that I wanted to have for myself. My realization has been that I'm not automatically entitled to that kind of character by virtue of signing up to leave on a mission for 18 months. No! Missions (and discipleship in general) can be as taxing as you want them to be; it all depends on how far up the path of discipleship you are willing to go. And if you really are committed to following Jesus Christ, it will be an uphill slope.  Missionaries who don't have the spirit or have that dedication don't usually realize it! They just notice less success and less happiness on their mission. Elder Maxwell said that the higher we go on the path, the greater our capacity is to even feel joy. I thought that was neat.

 

Answer to your question: Sister Priday and I have a car and ....yours truly... is the driver. Yes, Mom, I was trying to keep this from you in an effort to protect you, but... there it is. We've gotten in 0 (zero) accidents though!

 

At the visitors center, it's an interesting kind of missionary work, because it's all about starting conversations or tours and moving people into deeper spiritual things, all the while trying to discern their needs and figure out the videos and things that would be good for them. When you're tired and you've gotten "rejected" it's natural to not want to work as hard to engage in those deeper conversations and really help them, so it's a choice to be seeking the Spirit! It's a choice to merely chit-chat with people and just show them the displays versus actively trying to help them through doing those things, though it may appear the same practice to the outside observer.  But the results are drastically different! When you talk to someone, you can rationalize, "They're a member, they look fine, they don't really need my help."  But, when you really work at the conversation, you'll eventually find out their problems (because EVERYONE has them). It has made me look at people differently. Everyone, regardless of what they look like, has problems and needs greater connection with the atonement to cope with those problems.

 

Well, I love you!! I love hearing from you. 

Sister Schmutz