For those of you who know what My Plan is, it just showed up on my online missionary portal. Does that scare me to death? Absolutely. For those of you who don't know what My Plan is, it is an online course that missionaries take in the last six weeks of their mission to prevent us from getting home and having a panic attack, moving to the Himalayas and living there as hermits for the rest of our lives.
I'm not sure it's going to work for me. :P
This week was interesting. Monday was a balmy 70 degrees, and then in the evening it poured rain on us as we were walking to our next appointment. It was pretty great. I still love the rain - I guess the Arizona blood still runs in my veins. :)
I had a pretty funny day yesterday. Since our P-day was moved, we had a normal day yesterday. I went out feeling great, which is usually a precursor to some pretty harsh rejections, and yesterday was no exception. When I sat down in the metro, I began talking with the woman next to me. After giving me a few one-word answers, she interrupted me and said, "I don't know and I really do not want to talk to you right now. Thank you." Now, usually when people aren't interested, they're a little bit kinder about it than that. So this threw me off a bit. One of the very next people I talked to gave me almost exactly the same response. It was pretty interesting, almost strange how much opposition we seemed to be encountering over the next few hours. But I kept getting this feeling that the greater the opposition was that day, the greater the miracle would be if we kept talking to people. So we did. And a few hours later, on the bus, we started talking to a young man who told me, "Yeah, I lost my faith a few years ago." And I responded, "You know, I honestly don't ask this a lot. But... do you want to have faith again?" And he said, "Yeah, I do, but I don't know how." (For the record, telling a missionary that you want faith but don't know how to get it is the spiritual equivalent of telling a golden retriever that you`re taking it for a walk through a meadow of squirrels. They get REALLY excited.) This turned into a fifteen minute conversation in which we explained to this young man where we came from, why we're here on earth, and why God allows us to struggle sometimes. My favorite feeling as a missionary is watching somebody "get it." And this young man turned to us as we explained the purpose of adversity to him and said, "I've never thought about it that way before. That makes sense." We set up another appointment for later and he hopped on his bus and pulled away. This strengthened my testimony of what I call the "sunrise principle;" the sky is always at its darkest just before the sun begins to rise.
So if your skies seem pretty dark right now, remember that the Son has already risen, and He is there to be our Light. I know He lives, and I know He loves us. I have felt His love in a very intimate and personal way, many times. And while He will not deprive us of growth and agency by taking away the burden of those dark nights, He will take us by the hand and walk the path with us, because He can see the way; He is the way. We are never alone.
En avant!
Elder Bryan McOmber
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