Hey guys!
I am still catching up on a few days, but this is my week from Wednesday through Sunday.
March 21, 2012
Where does time go? Today went really well. This week looks good on paper, but it is a lot of preparation and meetings. MLT yesterday and new missionary training today. Not that meetings are bad, just a lot of logistical stuff that we are in charge of. The movement and flow of people really is quite fascinating. What helps people move from one place to the next the fastest, how people arrange themselves when there is no structure, etc…all that good stuff, pretty cool to watch and be able to influence.
Then, today at the New Missionary Training, President told us the story of how Elder Eyring extended his call to be a Mission President to him and Elder Eyring said something interesting. He said a Mission President is never called to a geography or to certain wards or stakes…in fact, where the Mission President serves is rather insignificant. The thing that determines where the Mission President will serve is the group of missionaries he will be serving with. I love that. Isn’t that neat? President B. was not called here to Los Angeles because LA needed him, he was called to Los Angeles because all of the missionaries who would serve in his 3 years as Mission President need him specifically to be here for them. He was called to work with me and all of us, not to Los Angeles. I think that goes for missionaries too.
If, for example, the C. family lived in Mexico, I probably would have gotten called to Mexico. I have a letter from them sitting in my mailbox waiting to be opened by the way…I cannot wait, their year mark is in a week!! Can you believe that!? They have almost been members for a year and that means temple!
After getting back in Traffic from NMT, we headed off to diner with two of my favorite families. Our message tonight, after a heaping plate of pretty legit enchiladas was about a doctrine that I have really come to love and understand on my mission --that of lifting where you stand and lifting where you are asked by the Lord to stand. If everyone in the Church worldwide just lifted where they were asked to stand and did their duty, we would have such a profound impact on the word. It would be a repeat of the city of Enoch, right? That doctrine has really helped me in the office, too. Maybe making sure things run smoothly and helping to steer the ship isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think missionary work, but for a ship to function, not everyone can be manning the sails and the deck. You have the galley, the crows nest, the captain's office, etc. and each one performs their role so that the whole is successful…it is all about the greater good.
March 23, 2012
What a great day. I decided that fasting is a great way to feel the Spirit. Mind blowing insight I know, but when you really enter into the spirit of the fast, then it feels like the Spirit is what you are drawing your energy from instead of your food consumption.
It feels weird to be the oldest missionary sitting in a District by about a year or so, but that is just the demographic of the mission right now. It is very young. We learned about asking better questions and using the Book of Mormon to answer questions of the soul.
Then we booked it from South Central to Santa Monica which is not a short trip to say the least and when we got there Bro. L. wasn’t. He didn’t answer his phone, he didn’t answer the door, he was not there…so we waited…and waited…and contemplated eating sketchy berries off of a bush that was right by his door…pretty much anything that could be edible with enough imagination was looking pretty good at this point and our fast was going on about 27 hours or so. Good thing we were feeding energy from the Spirit cuz it was the only thing keeping us alive haha.
So, then Bro. L arrived and what I am about to describe was probably one of the most surreal hours of my mission. We jumped into Brother L’s station wagon and started off. The longer I rode, the longer I felt like I was in some strange movie. This little short man pretty much runs the town of Santa Monica. He probably honked 10 times to people walking by that he knew and waved to them and he commentated the whole trip. We went into an alley where he had special parking privileges, went through the back door to a chainsaw shop where he jumped over the counter and started giving hugs to all the guys that work there, went into a place called Bay City Italian market where he bought us meatball subs and mac and cheese and green beans and sweet potatoes and he walked in like he owned the place, he talks to everyone in line and gets to know them and makes friends instantly with the surrounding group, then we all hop back into his car after going back through the chainsaw store and he drives, still honking and waving to a rehab center where he has us unload some canned food that he was donating.
At first the guys weren’t gonna let us back into the kitchen but then once he told them who he was they said "Oh, all right, come with us." Again, like he owned the place. After loading the stuff into their kitchen, we were back into his station wagon (still not sure if he could see over the steering wheel or not while driving) and headed back to our car where he said "See ya' Elders" and sped off. We were both pretty shocked and amazed at what had just happened…I swear we were in some sort of movie or TV show, at least that is what it felt like. Brother L. is quite the character…Oh! I forgot to mention that the entire time he is driving around and taking us to all these places he had a camera around his neck and was snapping shots of anything and everything. All it needed was a little circus music and it would have been complete.
March 24, 2012
Good day. We are constantly trying to evaluate and re-evaluate our finding efforts and I think we are on the brink of something big…I can just sense it.
Well, there are a few different subjects that have been occupying my thoughts lately, and I haven’t quite figured them out totally, but my hope is that by writing it out I will be able to gain some more insight. The topic I want to focus on and have been pondering quite a bit lately is that of how the Lord answers prayers. After reading in the scriptures and different talks by different general authorities and through actually praying, this is what I have come up with. God answers prayers in His own way and in His own time. The way in which God answers prayers is relative in relation to who it is as He answers each of us differently, and it also depends on what is being asked for. I am already well aware that prayer is not a way to ask God for things like in a wish list, rather, when prayer is offered and led by the Spirit, we know what things to pray for because it is what we are prompted to pray for. It is important to follow those promptings, because through them we can identify what God is willing to grant us. He is willing to grant a lot, but we must first ask for it and prove our desire to attain it.
However, just because we have discerned by the Spirit what He will grant and we ask for it, that does not mean that it automatically falls from heaven into our laps. Aligning our pleas with what He is willing to grant is not like a vending machine where we get it right and it spits out the prize.
Rather, prayer is a process of humility and aligning our will with God’s will. Therefore, we may discern by the Spirit and ask for something He is willing to grant, but if our will has not been changed then we are not yet ready to receive the desired blessing. We must continue to wait upon the Lord until He has seen a change in us and a difference in the motive for our desired blessing.
So, the more we pray by the Spirit, the more chance we have of receiving the desired blessing, but it is always in the Lord’s time because He is the only one who knows in which ways we are supposed to grow and mature as a result of a certain prayer and granted blessing. If He were to give us the blessing without us having changed in the way He intended to align our will more with His will, it would defeat the whole purpose of prayer and would turn it instead into a trivia game in which the prize for guessing correctly was a desired blessing.
I have been focused a lot lately on trying to receive answers to prayers on decisions of less importance as to be able to identify how God answers my prayers so that when I am faced with large decisions that affect more than just me I will have a better understanding of how my answers will come. In reality, I guess I am saying that I am trying to align my will with the will of the Father more and more through sincere prayer and waiting on the Lord to respond after I have progressed to where He wants me to progress more and more so that when the time comes for major life decisions like marriage and moves and career choices I will be that much more aligned with the will of Heavenly Father. As I align myself more and more, it will be one, easier to know what to pray for in those times of need and two, take less time to receive answers because I will have less course correction to do to better align myself with my Father’s will. Does that make sense? It does to me at least, in my mind.
So, prayer is more than communication and mere talking, it is the way we repent and align our will to that of the Father. The more we pray, the more we come to realize that there are blessings beyond our wildest dreams awaiting us if we but listen to, and follow the Spirit and then change what we want to what He wants for us, not to merely receive blessings, but to be more like Him which is the whole goal of this life, right? Become as much like Him as we can while in this mortal state so that in the day of judgment we are not left wondering which kingdom we will be assigned to? If we get good enough at prayer and our will is that of the Father, then when it comes time for judgment we will already know where we are meant to be because it is where we will desire to be because what God will is and what we want will be the same.
March, 25, 2012
Today was good...I learned a ton from church and from just our working today, Heavenly Father blessed me with a lot of insight on how to be and how to improve. Brother W. shared a terrific testimony and then we talked about it in class about limiting ourselves by setting limits for ourselves. All too often we count ourselves out before we really understand what we are capable of with regards to what ever it is we are doing, when in reality we should be trying to expand our boundaries, not merely set limitations within those boundaries...example...if I say man there is no way I could ever score a goal in soccer, then I am limiting myself to zero goals and being satisfied with it. I should say instead, man there is no way I can only score twice this game...that mentality opens my mind to the fact that, OK. One goal is easy, two is minimum, and who knows how many more than that I can get...not saying I would ever score that many goals in anything other than foosball, but that is the mentality. I really liked that.
In priesthood we talked about the talk by Elder Uchtdorf "You Matter to Him" which is really exactly what I needed to hear. I think a lot of the time I am willing to share the gospel with other people and tell them how wonderful it is and how God loves them individually and cares for them on a personal level but then I turn around and count myself with the masses. The "God loves me because He loves everybody" approach, not the "God loves me because I matter to him and am individually important" approach. So, lately I have been working on mentality/attitude shifts to not merely include myself in the group, but feel God's love on an individual level. His arms of mercy and love are extended to all yes, but only to all because it is to each of us individually. All of us individually collectively make up the all, not we are merely included with a giant group of people.
The teacher shared this great poem about discouragement too and how it is the most often used of Satan's tools. The advice was that each of us will have bad days and get down but not to let that one bad day turn into two or three because it snowballs and turns into negativity and pessimism. Great advice. One other stand out from the class was that I must have faith that God knows better than me what is supposed to happen in my life. My job is to take each and every situation and tackle it as best I can. Life is often times something we talk about like we talk about God's love of the masses. Life is lived as we live individual moments. They collectively add up to a well-lived life, so every moment counts.That is why we must enjoy the moment and not merely look forward to the next "big" event.
So yeah, that was my week...partially...
Anyway, I love you guys and am so glad that all is well. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Molinaro
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