Soggy Leaves, Soaked Missionaries

Week 34   Oct 28, 2014   5:19 pm EDT     Soggy Leaves, Soaked Missionaries

So we have lots of autumn leaves falling, but they don't make for very fun piles to jump in because true to the Northwest standard - they are all very much wet.

Exhibit A:

​(also, Sister Lomu is wearing the WaTac fashion statement of choice, the notorious safety belt.)

We have lots of rain lately, which will continue according to everyone here who loves talking about how dreary it gets; they all have some strange fascination with making this place sound worse than it is.

Walking all day in lots of said rain makes for quite wet and cold missionaries, which means we warm up on occasion in the International District and score some top notch Vietnamese food.

Life in Lincoln is good, we are teaching quite a few kids these days, which is fun and totally out of my usual element. Parkland didn't have many children/youth for us to teach, so we are loving it here. It is also so great to have ward activities for them to go to and make all sorts of great friends (hellllllo, Trunk or Treat!)

Speaking of Halloween, our Friday will be spent cooped up inside the church building in an extended Zone meeting - apparently us missionaries knocking on doors for hours is only acceptable every other day of the year. We might even get to see some of the Trunk or Treat-ers parade around the church building. 

I've been doing some thinking about what it truly means to be someone's friend. And like I tell those that I teach, scriptures (and modern day prophets and apostles) have the answers.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

And from Elder Marvin J. Ashton:

"We are something less than a real friend if we leave a person the same way we find him...Acts of a friend should result in self-improvement, better attitudes, self-reliance, comfort, consolation, self-respect, and better welfare. Certainly the word friend is misused if it is identified with a person who contributes to our delinquency, misery, and heartaches. When we make a man feel he is wanted, his whole attitude changes...It takes courage to be a real friend. Some of us endanger the valued classification of friend because of our unwillingness to be one under all circumstances. Fear can deprive us of friendship...A friend is a person who will suggest and render the best for us regardless of the immediate consequences."

 A true friend is not someone who keeps you from falling down or experiencing pain or difficult things, but is willing to experience those rough things with you if that is what will make you better. "For if they fall" the two of them will learn and grow together. Real friendship and real relationships always cost something of ourselves.

Our best Friend is able to help us through and out of all our challenges. He knows what will truly make us better, because He has fallen in those same places before us. If we are His friends, He will not leave us the same way He found us.

Just some food for thought, as always.

Happy Halloween, friends!

(send me pictures of the costumes, eh?)

Love,

Elizabeth