Creating a Life

"The Dream Team" as the Elders like to call us.  Photo bombing by Sister Shumway.

9-2-14

It's been a hard week. The beautiful kind of hard. It reminds me a lot of high school cross country races. They were hard, but I loved them more than almost anything. The sense of accomplishment, the sense of self-worth, and the exhilaration of taking your body and your soul and making them work together to create a race.  Creating a race,  or a creating a life, really is a work of art. The things we do and say are creations, really. We are creating our lives, just as we create a race as we run it, they are creations! We are creative beings inherently. There is something in us that needs to create, and people find so many ways of creating. We are children of God, so of course there is a deep inner desire to create within each of us. He created the world. We create our little lives here upon it. We're not always very good at creating, but we sure do try. The trick is learning to let the Master Creator take the lead, to let him guide our creation.

This week in my creation of my mission, the little 18-month story I'm currently writing, I had a little case of writer's block. I didn't know where to go, what to say, what the next chapter of my story needed to be. So I took it to God and asked for some help. As always, the help came. And, as per usual, it came when I wasn't quite looking for it, in a way I didn't expect, and in timing I didn't quite understand. Sometimes I forget that God speaks to ME. He speaks to me in my own language. I tend to hear how he speaks to others and expect him to speak like that to me.

That's something I've definitely learned this transfer. The second you say "I can't" and you give up even in the slightest, that's when Satan can get you. And he will. Because he is EXCELLENT at what he does. NEVER GIVE UP. Never give up. Satan gave up. He didn't believe that he, or we, could deal with agency. He didn't think we were strong enough to succeed. But Christ, He believed in us. He didn't KNOW that we would be able to access the atonement and overcome and become all that we can be. He didn't know that. But he believed in us to the point that he was willing to give his life, he was willing to give MORE than his life--for us.  He performed the atonement to give us the OPPORTUNITY for salvation. His performance of the atonement guarantees nothing. He only believed that you would use it and guarantee for yourself a place at the right hand of God. He believes in you that deeply. And along with that belief there is love. Love like we cannot imagine, and faith in us that we cannot comprehend. Know that. Believe that. Act on that. I can promise you that if you go forth with that belief, you will move mountains. You ARE moving mountains. I bet you didn't know that. I bet you don't realize the mountains you have already moved. We are infinite beings with infinite potential. Believe in that. And NEVER GIVE UP.

Sisters of the Clarksburg West Virginia Stake

Elder Ostler is back!  I love my mission family from Lexington.

Putting up Hay

This is how much we LOVE putting up hay!

Mission accomplished

We randomly ran into this YSA group from Washington, D.C. while eating at Black Bear.
It was so fun to eat with them and hear all their missionary stories.