Called to Serve in Provo: Week 12- Pray for patience, and God will listen

This week has been awesome! To start off it's snowing today. It's been snowing all night, and it going to snow all the rest of this week. The snow is awesome.

Now on a more spiritual note, I have learned so much this week, specifically about patience, submissiveness, and humility. Earlier in the week I was feeling like I wasn't progressing as fast as I could. So, I prayed for a test of my patience and humility.

Well I'm here to tell you that God answers prayers and very fast, too. God tested my patience hard-core. Before I share the experience, I've been reading a talk by Neil A Maxwell about submissiveness, and I came up with this awesome quote about patience and submissiveness.

"Patience goes right along with humility and submissiveness. When you are humble and submissive, and your patience is tested then you'll be able to suffer it long. You will realize that the test is only for your good and you will welcome it gladly into your life. From there you will learn ten times more from it. Now let's say you weren't humble or submissive. Then your patience lasts for 2 seconds as you start to question why something bad could ever happen to you. And why you should let it happen to you. Then you'll be less submitted to learning from it and more determined to fix the superficial problem while a life long lesson waits patiently yet needlessly to be found."

Anyway God tested my patience. That was New Year's Eve.

Because I'd been thinking about it beforehand I was more prepared for it, and much more able to learn from it. It's been an awesome experience. Now on to how he tested my humility. At about 10 o'clock New Year's Eve night, we got a call from a frantic ward mission leader about the next Sunday morning. The bishop had thought it was fast Sunday so he didn't schedule any speakers. When he found out it was a normal Sunday he had the great idea call on the missionaries to give talks. If any of you know me, you know that I'm really not a great on the spot speaker.

So grudgingly I excepted the call to speak. Through the night I realized I really wasn't being submissive so I change my mindset and had a willing heart. But just cause I was willing doesn't mean that I was humble. I was excited to get up on the pulpit and make everyone in the crowd weep. That didn't really happen. This was the humbling experience that God had in store for me. Let me tell you, it worked. If you were in the audience while I was speaking you probably would've cringed. That's how bad it was. But tell me a lot about self-confidence and now I'm more humble.

I little while later that Sunday I was in sort of a pity party, we were about to go into a lesson, when I remembered a fabulous talk by David A Bednar, called Character of Christ, he talks about how whenever something bad happened to Jesus Christ he would turn outward and he would help others. So it inspired me. I promised myself and God that the rest of the day, the rest of the week, rest of the year I would focus on others. My mission has been so much more fulfilling.

Annywho, that's about it folks. Any questions?

I love each and every one of you.

Love,

Elder Minson