Hey there. Another week come and gone!
This one's been a busy one for me. Lots of paperwork. Lots of Word documents. Lots of Excel spreadsheets (now the punny subject line makes sense). Lots of phone calls. It's crazy. I've never really spent much time in an office. It's weird. And completely different from what I've been doing for most of my mission. I'm really enjoying it though. Even though I'm not out the whole day knocking doors or talking to people in the streets, I'm still doing missionary work. It's neat to handle all the referrals. Whenever missionaries meet someone who lives outside of their area, they text the information to me and I forward it to whoever it belongs to. I sent a referral to the Canary Islands a few days ago. Who knew there was not just a branch there, but a whole stake! So it's fun to read everyone's stories and see the work moving forward in all parts of the world. I also get to learn how the mission works in ways most missionaries never even know. My newest project has been researching all the means of transportation in Lombardia and coming up with cost-effective ways to meet the missionaries' travel needs. We're going to be able to save the mission a lot more money and still travel the same. President keeps saying we need to "conserve the Lord's sacred funds and honor the widow's mite." I like it.
We have an investigator that's pretty close to baptism. He's been investigating the church for a month or two. They found his number in the phone because he met missionaries sometime last year. He likes the church and comes every week, but he's always been a little hesitant about actually becoming part of it. In our last lesson we brought a member with us. It was awesome. The member said exactly what our friend needed to hear in a way we never would've been able to. (Hey Mormons, go out with the missionaries. They need you.) Our friend set a baptismal date for two weeks from now and he's working to achieve it. He told us he smoked his last cigarette on Wednesday so hopefully he can keep that up.
In my study this morning I came across a few scriptures that I've come across in the past, but I've never been able to understand them. In the Bible (Luke 17) Jesus gives a small parable about how we as humans are unprofitable servants to God. In the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 2) King Benjamin expands on this by saying that no matter what we do or say, we will be unprofitable servants to God. "I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another— I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants."
With this comes the tempation to think, "Well, why care?" A lot of people think that way. However, we have to, as always, see things through God's eyes. He doesn't have to give us life. He doesn't have to allow us to serve Him. He doesn't have to give us free agency or eternal life, yet he offers all of these things to us. He is self-existing, yet his entire existence is directed toward our eternal life. So even though we are in a sense "unprofitable" to Him, we are also the most valuable things in His eyes. It's a bit of a paradox. The thing that is of most worth to God is YOU! So in answer to the question, "why care?" I respond, "because God cares!
"And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keephis commandments he doth bless you and prosper you."
TTFN- Anziano Simcox
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