On my mission I've learned to see the importance of work. Before I came to Oregon I had been kind of lazy. I always did my chores at home, but it usually took a lot of prodding from my parents. I just didn't see the point in making my bed, pulling weeds, or mowing the lawn. The weeds and the grass would soon grow again and when I went to bed at night I would quickly mess up my bed sheets. I didn't like to work on things that didn't show results.
When I came out on my mission I was soon involved with a task that I thought was pointless and produced no results. This task was called tracting and involved knocking door after door on a street. I quickly came to not like tracting. Doors were often closed in our faces and people always had excuses to not talk to us.
After several weeks of knocking doors I had not seen anything come from our efforts. No one we had met was willing to let us us come in and teach them about the Restored Gospel. I was little depressed because of this.
Even after my companion had told me to keep going we still didn't see anything come from our efforts. It wasn't until several weeks later that we were walking down the street that we had a lady pull up alongside us in her car. I immediately recognized that we had knocked on her door a couple of days earlier and that she had told us that she was not interested in listening to us. The woman started talking to us and told us that she now wanted to listen and to learn more.
From that time on my companion and I were able to teach this lady. Our hours and hours of tracting had finally paid off. As I reflected on this experience later I was reminded of a scripture:
Even so faith if it hath no works, is dead, being alone.
As my companion and I had gone out each day and tracted we had faith that we would find someone to teach. It had taken a long time, but because of our persistence we had been blessed. If I had told my companion that I didn't want to tract and that we should just walked around then we wouldn't met the lady in the car and she wouldn't have stopped us on the street.
Even though the tracting had produced little success it eventually brought forth a brief, but great reward. Just like the grass of a lawn would soon grow back there would be many more hours of tracting with little success. But I grew to realize the joy of the work. The work led us to small brief successes that don't last, but are so worth the effort to get to. That's why we mow lawns, weed, make our beds or do anything. It's for the end result.
I came to realize that our Heavenly Father wants us to work. Like my parents He knows that work is important. When we work it lets us appreciate the things that He has given us. Because of He gave us everything then we would take His gifts for granted.
God makes us work so our faith means something. If we believe then it should inspire us to do something. So if we have a problems we need helps with let us put our faith in God. Let us get down and pray and then go do something to solve the problem. As we act God will help us and miracles will occur.
May we look for these miracles as we continue to work and seek for answers.
May we look for these miracles as we continue to work and seek for answers.
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