Hard Times and Hope

 

Me holding a kid.

March 20, 2017

This has been a very up and down week for me.  I have had some struggles this week, and the week that proceeded it, that really brought me quite down. The work in the area got really disrupted, and we were unable to meet with basically anybody this week. Many of our goals were just dashed this week. And honestly, I felt abandoned.

But fortunately, I learned from this experience. I learned that God never abandons us. He’ll stay with us through the good and the bad.

I also learned—surprisingly—humility.  I didn’t expect to learn this kind of lesson from this but I did. During many parts of the past two weeks I was angry; angry that the disruption never seemed to end, angry that nothing was happening, and angry for other reasons which I won’t state.  But God ended up showing me that getting angry wasn’t going to help. In fact, being angry only made me feel worse. God showed me that by letting go of things that were not in my control and focusing on what I needed to do and could do, life becomes much easier and much happier.

I also learned to stop focusing on the negative.  It is so easy to just go on and on with negatives: negatives about the area, negatives about living conditions, negatives about ourselves. Yet God taught me that drowning ourselves in misery is, unsurprisingly, not the way to happiness.  (It turns out to be the way to misery).  In other words, be patient, and try to find the good things along the long slog ahead, because there are always good things. Do the everyday little things: say your prayers, read your scriptures, and be prepared to take the sacrament, it really makes all the difference.

And I also learned that things will always get better. At the end of this past week, real miracles happened that really helped pick me up. We found a new person to teach who knows next to nothing about Mormons (which is difficult here in Utah.)  So, we are super excited to work with her.  Things started to fall back in place.

Here is to hoping! And Guess what? Somebody fed us Spanakopita!!!

Regards from Elder Alex Brown