19 January 2012

Hey everyone!

So yesterday we had Zone Conference with Elder Caussè of the Area Presidency! He's such a great man, so humble, yet bold! He gave a great quote, in the context of being a Missionary (or really when being a Servant ofthe Lord in any capacity) "Being bold is being humble, it is relying on the Spirit of the Lord and not on your own merits". It's so true! How often are we scared to follow the prompting of the Spirit to say or do something that might seem like it would make someone uncomfortable? I do it all the time, but when we're doing that, we're saying tht our knowledge and judgment on what is the right thing to do or say is better than the Lord's, and that is NOT being humble! IT's the opposite! When we are truely humble, we will be bold, because we are not following our own thoughts, intents and beliefs, but that of an infinite, omniscient being that knows far better than us what needs to happen.

He also talked about a story of a man who bought a beautful pearl. Wanting to put it on show, he had a beautiful box made, very expensive, in order to make it more visibile. He stood back and watched people come in to admire it. He was disappointet after a few minutes, when he realised he had made the box so beautiful, that the people were admiring the box, and not the thing of true value inside it: The pearl. How often do we do this as well? We want the way we speak to be so great when we speak of the Gospel, that we distract the people we're speaking to away from the Gospel to how we speak. Or we focus on things like, who is the best teacher, or servant, when really it's the Gospel which is the pearl. We praise our prophets, but aren't they simply the boxes in which God puts His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to show us? I can think of a dozen things that we, that I, do in which we put the box in front of the pearl. Let us all work harder to give pearls, and not wooden boxes to people!

I love you all!

Anziano Nelson.