Monday, April 24, 2017

Not being perfect. When missionaries give haircuts. Gratitude for my Savior.

Hey everybody! :)

So... for starters, I suppose I should apologize. I have taken like no photos these past few weeks. It's rather difficult since there's so many people around that there never really seems to be time to stop and take a photo, and we're always either talking to someone or rushing to an appointment. But... I will be better. Thank you for your reminders. ;)

We had an awesome meeting with Elder Bennett from the quorum of the Seventy this week. He basically spent the majority of the meeting helping us to understand that we should not beat up on ourselves for not being perfect (he might as well have hit me over the head with a hammer... talk about revelation). I guess the Lord has tried so many times to help me understand this point that He finally just sent one of His servants to our meeting to say it directly to me in hopes that I would finally understand it. I think it worked. At least, I'm getting better at not beating up on myself. :)

Hahaha. I guess our funny moment was this morning. My past companion, Elder Colunga, bought his own haircutting kit and so we cut each others' hair while we were companions. When he left for Cornwall, he took that with him, so both Elder Valencia and I (who are desperately in need of haircuts) asked around to other missionaries to see if anybody might have one. Lo and behold, a team randomly had two hair clippers and gave us one of them.

This seemed like the perfect solution. We planned to wake up today, go through our normal P-day morning studies, then take a nap for an hour or so and then give each other haircuts. Until... the hair clippers didn't work. It turned on, vibrated, and acted perfectly normal until you put it to your head, at which point, for some unknown reason, it did not cut any hair. So, what's the solution? Find the nearest barber shop. But guess what? Almost every barber shop in Quebec is closed on Monday. Was I gritting my teeth by this point? Perhaps. Anyways, so we proceeded to take apart both clippers we had in our apartment (we had another broken one) and see if we could exchange some parts and get them to work better. We even dripped some vegetable oil over the blades, but to no avail.

Thankfully, Canadian Tire (which is basically a combination of Sam's Club, an auto store, and Home Depot) had a nice haircutting set for not super expensive, so we solved our problems with that when we went shopping. Now we just have to see if Elder Valencia can cut hair when we get back to our apartment. XD

So yeah, that was our morning.

I think that today I just want to share my gratitude for the Savior.

I am grateful for Him. He has changed my world and continues to do so. As I learn more about Him, I come to recognize on a greater and greater scale just how wonderfully real He is. Jesus Christ is not a fairytale. He is not a bedtime story. He is our older Brother, and we have known Him since before this life, when we heard about Heavenly Father's plan for all of us, which revolves so much around Christ. I am grateful that He accepted voluntarily His role from the Father as our Savior. I am grateful He was willing to follow the same path as us, through the temptation and sickness and pain of mortality, so that He could show us how we should walk that path correctly. I am grateful that He was and is always exactly obedient, despite the cunning craftiness with which men and devils strove to misguide Him.

Most of all, I am grateful for His Atonement. I am grateful for His courage in Gethsemane, when He chose to submit to the Father's will and take upon Himself our pain and anguish, so often self-inflicted by sin, so that He could know perfectly how to come to our aid in those moments of error and strife. I am grateful for His selflessness at Golgotha, when the final requests from His lips were for the forgiveness of those who had crucified Him and for the support of His beloved mother. I am so eternally grateful that those moments were not the end, that His Atonement did not finish with loss of life but with victory over death as He rose from the tomb and took His place as the successful Savior and Redeemer of all mankind. He quite literally defeated the worst that the devil could throw at Him or any of us, and because of His life, death and Resurrection, if we will let Him, He will stand strong beside us as we face our own storms.

I am grateful for my older Brother. He has changed me.

En avant!

Elder Bryan McOmber

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