" A young father was literally sinking. He, his two children, and his
father-in-law had gone for a walk around a lake. When the children
grew hot and tired, the two men decided to put the children on their
backs and swim the short distance across the lake.
It seemed easy--until the moment when the father began to feel
pulled down, everything becoming so heavy. Water pushed him to the
bottom of the lake, and a frantic feeling came over him. How was he
going to keep afloat--and do so with his precious young daughter on
his back?
His voice disappeared in the distance as he called out; his
father-in-law was too far away to answer a desperate plea for help. He
felt alone and helpless.
Can you imagine feeling as alone as he felt, unable to reach
anything to hold on to and struggling in a desperate situation for
your life and your child? Unfortunately, all of us experience some
degree of this feeling when we are in situations where we desperately
need to find help in order to survive and to save those we love.
Near panic, he realized that his water-saturated shoes were
weighing him down. While working to stay afloat, he began to attempt
to get his heavy shoes off his feet. But it was as if they were held
on with suction. The laces were swollen with water, cinching the grip
even tighter.
In what may have been his last moment of desperation, he managed to
pry the shoes from his feet, and at last the shoes released their
hold, quickly falling to the bottom of the lake. Free from the heavy
weight that had been dragging him down, he immediately propelled
himself and his daughter upward. He could now swim forward, moving
toward safety on the other side of the lake." (Mary Durham. General
conference. Saturday morning session)
When we watched General conference this talk really jumped out to me.
This story hit me pretty hard. I don't know why but this story just
really stuck out to me. I realized two things: 1 Life can drown us.
2 If we are drowning we have to drop what's weighing us down. We are
not meant to suffer in this life, we are not to be in pain, we are
meant to be tested and have experiences. Trials are meant to
strengthen us and to teach us important lessons. However, sometimes I
think we might have unnecessary trials due to our mistakes,mistakes of
others, or perhaps we overwhelm ourselves. If we make a mistake, we
must repent. There isn't anything else to it. Repent and move forward.
Easier said than done, but if we hold on to guilt, remorse, or (hold a
grudge) decided to not forgive ourselves or maybe a person who wronged
us, our shoes are going to drown us. We will become like the father in
the story and be dragged down. How do we drop that weight? How do we
get our shoes loose? Anger, guilt, depression can easily hold us
tightly, and it seems as though we cannot loose the shoes.
2 Nephi 1:
13 O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the
sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound,
which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are
carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling
parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent
grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go
the way of all the earth.
We have to wake up. Arise, and loose our shoes, so we don't drown. But
I feel like we sometimes can't with our own power. Unlike the father
in the story we aren't alone, we won't call out in desperation and not
be heard. We have a savior who already experienced the drowning, maybe
for our sake he did drown. But because he experienced that, he knows
how to help us. I remember I joked with one of my companions that I
felt like I was drowning in stress with everything we had to do. And
she smiled and said "well guess what, your lifeguard walks on water."
So when the storms of life hit you hard remember Jesus Christ will
calm the seas and walk out on the water to bring you to shore.
This week we had a companion exchange that wore me out so bad. So
usually we go to the training sister leaders area and do an exchange
for 24 hours then you come back. Well we went there at about 6 o'clock
and went out and about. And then the next day we went out with our
stls until 5ish and then all together we came back and they spent the
night at our apartment and then we went to ztm the next morning.
Probably the longest companion exchange I've ever had. It spanned 3
days. I don't know about some people ,but it took a lot out of me.
Anyways, the first night of the exchange I went with Zhou (pronounced
jo) shimai, she's Chinese and like superwoman I swear. She's fluent in
Chinese, Japanese, and English. She went to highschool in Japan and
then college in America, man she's just awesome. She's younger than me
mission age wise, but she's older than me age wise. She's 22. Super
cool and she was baptized like 2ish years ago. She overall amazing.
Anyways, we went and visited a member who had gotten in a bad accident
with another recent convert names sayuri. Sayuri is so cute. She's 20,
learning English and just a cute girl. The reason she came with us was
to help build her self confidence. We went to the hospital, as we
pulled up I thought it was a hotel. We walked in and the smell of
sanitizer and latex gloves filled the air. I got a little queasy,
because hospitals and dentist offices freak me out a little. We walked
upstairs, prayed, and walked in. This woman had gotten in a fire
accident. She was burned from her lips down her whole body. I was a
bit in shock and wanted to cry because of how much pain she looked
like she was in. She was happy to see us, and glad to here our
message. We testified of the blessings that the Lord has in store for
her. She said that she is excited for that day and excited to someday
be completely healed. We left the hospital and I was on the verge of
tears, why does he let people suffer like that? I've often thought
about why bad things happen to good people and why bad things happen
in general, but a thought came to me after that. I thought about life
as a test, because it is. If we endure the things that are extremely
hard well, in the end we will receive blessings a hundred fold. I
still don't know why bad things happen, or why people suffer ,but I do
know the lord is mindful of them and of us, we just have to trust him.
Life is like a puzzle, we've got the pieces and we are slowly putting
it together, the picture doesn't make sense because we don't have all
the pieces put together yet, but God made the picture of the puzzle
,so he knows exactly how it's going to turn out.
We left the hospital, and had about 40 minutes, but the
person we wanted to visit lived about 30 minutes away. Would it be
worth it to try and bike over there? Probably not. As we were standing
on the street light, 4 people who were for sure not Japanese people
walked by us. "Hey where are you guys from?" We happily asked. Turns
out they are from Indonesia. They actually told us that they had been
looking for a church to go to this past week. :0 what no way! So we
talked to them and gave them instructions to come to church. We talked
about baptism with them. Man they are so cool! I thought Japanese
names where hard to remember, I honestly can't remember their names at
all.
Sayuri was bummed because she didn't say anything because she was to
nervous and they didn't really speak Japanese. She was really upset
and kept beating herself down about her language skill. I hugged her
and said "guess what, when I first got here I was so scared I barely
said much for awhile, but guess what, I still helped with my small
testimony or my companion when she needed it. You helped me tonight,
you sang hymns while we were coming over here. You gave up time to try
and find people with us! You are awesome!" She was still a bit bummed,
but she said "thanks". As we were biking back I sang there is
"sunshine in my soul today" in Japanese and half butchered the words,
but she sang with me. She wants to be in the Mormon tabernacle choir
someday. The thought popped in my head to tell her "learn the hymns in
English". So I did, I promised her if she did that she would be able
to learn English. She beamed as we said good bye, and I was sad to say
goodbye to her, but her sweet spirit was so good to be around.
Sunday. So Chiihiro came to church! She even bought a skirt! Ah! It
was General conference too. She got to hear the prophet speak!
(General conference is a live broadcast that happens twice a year,
where the prophets and apostles have an opportunity to speak to all
the church members all over the world. We believe that we have a
living prophet on the earth today who leads and guides the church and
he acts as a mouthpiece for God.) we watched General conference in
Japanese with her. My brain was so tired. I actually had a weird
dejavoo? Dejavu? How do you spell that word!? Anyways I had a moment
that reminded me of when I first came to Japan last year at this time.
My first week in Japan, My first investigator that came to church came
to General conference we watched it with her then. I had no idea what
the heck was going on back then. It was cool to sit and listen and be
able to understand a lot of what was being said. However, I learned
that General conference in Japanese is ridiculously hard to understand
because it's super polite. -_- why? Even the Japanese people have a
hard time understanding it. But General conference was amazing!
Mistake of the week:
Despite being an old missionary I still make mistakes all the time. We
went to hanami, and we went with these service people , and me and my
companion were new to the group. The elders do service every week with
this store and we got to just come along. We we did introductions, and
it got to me and I said that we are friends with the elders and the
old guy sitting next to me asked "is he your boyfriend? Because they
way you introduced yourself made it seem like you are dating him." So
I guess I accidentally called the elder my boyfriend. Whoops, but for
the record I said friend the old guy said "the manner in which I said
friend had implications". -_- what does that even mean?!
Anyways love y'all!
Kochan
