Charity, Ruby, turning point, serving a future god, love her with everything, tiny glimpse

My newest design--planner on the go!

31 January 2016
Tainan

It's officially February--the month of love!

Charity
So, I've been thinking about charity this week. When creating my own vision, goals and plans for this week, one thing listed under my vision is I want to love God with my heart, might, mind, and strength. 

Ruby
We've been meeting with Ruby a lot lately.  We'll just stop by her house frequently throughout the week. So we've been trying to work really closely with her and help her progress. It's hard because she's pretty skeptical. She knows the gospel is good and understands that it helps other people. But she just doesn't want to accept it herself yet. She feels like she's a strong enough individual on her own and that she doesn't need to rely on anything else right now in her life. 

Took a member proselytizing this week with us and it was super fun!

We have pretty intense, spiritual lessons with her and it's pretty draining. Usually they talk about in Preach My Gospel about how to make our investigators trust us. But for me, I kind of focus on working on the opposite-- trusting my investigators. Things that are most personal to me or my experiences I'm not just willing to share with anyone.

She was really a good sport to bike around in the rain with us

Ruby is someone I've probably been the most open with my entire mission. So it hurts when I feel like I'm giving her everything I have and I'm offering her everything I can and she's just not taking it. 

But I'm grateful for this experience which helps me better understand charity. 

Turning point

And it's neat to recognize progress within myself; I realized this morning that maybe I'm at a turning point. 

This week it's taken me longer than usual to fall asleep, maybe 10 or 15 minutes some nights which I realize is probably nothing compared to some people, but it's a long time for me! 

I've been up usually thinking about Ruby and just replaying the lessons in my head and thinking about how she must have been feeling. I woke up this morning and remembered my dream about her, and remembered that she was also the last thing on my mind as I was falling asleep, and thought it was weird she's been on my mind so much. As I was thinking to myself "Why am I still thinking about this? It's weird I'm thinking about her so much, before I might have been thinking about something concerning myself more" I remembered it's February 1st-- the day registration for BYU opens and the day my brother is going to go online to help sign up for my classes for summer term which starts in June. 

It was only then that it occurred to me that I had totally forgot about it the entire week--that something that's going to determine my life when I get home soon hadn't even crossed my mind. It made me think of the famous scripture, Mosiah 2:17 that I had been pondering earlier this week in a way I had never thought of it before. Usually we interpret this scripture as it makes God happy when we serve people around us because they are His children, pretty simple. 

Serving a future god

But lately I had been thinking of it in a more literal sense, that because of the gospel we know that we can become like God one day, so when I try to serve someone around me, I am literally serving a future God. I think this is why it makes me so sad when Ruby doesn't fully accept the gospel, because I view her with this kind of perspective, but she doesn't see it at all. 

Love her with everything

Which then brings me back to my vision for my mission--to love God with all my heart, might, mind and strength, in other words with all of me, with everything that I have. And then with the same interpretation, if I look at those around me with their potential as becoming gods, I then also need to love them with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. 

I can honestly say that I've loved Ruby the best I could. I would be content telling the Savior if I ever had an interview with Him that I tried my hardest and that I really did love her with everything I had. 

Tiny glimpse

That's what charity means to me, and I was grateful for the teeny tiny glimpse I was given into how Christ must feel towards us and how terribly disappointing it must be for Him when we don't accept Him or when we don't love those around us, even after He has loved us so completely and perfectly.

I think charity is a lot of things, and it is all-encompassing. An excellent definition is found in Moroni 7, so I wrote down all the things that it lists and then compared it to all the "Christlike attributes" found in Preach My Gospel. Charity really is everything. We are nothing without it. It is our foundation if we want to make progress developing other attributes.

Love you!
Sister Sinclaire Hancock

Scriptures:
Mosiah 2:17  "Behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom: that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

Mosiah 28:3 "Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish...."

2 Nephi 26:30 "Wherefore, the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love.  And except they should have charity they were nothing."

Matthew 22:37-40: "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang al the law and the prophets."

Our latest discovery--Thai food!  Green curry, papaya salad, satay chicken