Let Him Ask of God

Google, just about anyone who has used the Internet has used Google. Whenever I needed information, I would google it; almost instantly, thousands of pages appear each with their relative relevance to my actual search. With such an easy way to get information, Google has become a vital part in the life of many.

The Blessings of Mothers

In the Book of Mormon, we learn of a group of young men who courageously go off to war to help defend their family. These stripling warriors, as they have become known by, fought valiantly despite their inexperience for until this time they had never fought; they were willing to go to battle risking their own lives because they cared about their father's than their own lives. How did these youthful soldiers gain these attributes including their exceedingly great faith? As the scriptures put it "they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them". These warriors even stated "we do not doubt our mothers knew it." (Alma 56:47-48) It was their mothers who had instilled in them the attributes and faith that made them noble warriors.

Another Testament of Jesus Christ

I have been on my mission for close to two years now, during which time I go around talking with people about Jesus Christ. Something that I have noticed on my mission is many people hear many things about what we believe, some of which is true, and some is not. Something that many people don't fully understand is the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Because of the confusion around this book many people are hesitant to read it. I am sure many people wonder why members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints use more scripture than just the Bible, so why do we have it?

Counsel with the Lord

I was once asked by a friend, a couple months back, if I would go to the same college as him; at this time I have already attended a year at UCLA, so repeatedly I told him that I was going to UCLA. This went on for a time until one day he asked me if I would pray about it. My immediate thought and response was "no", why should I pray about it? I attended school already, enjoyed it and wanted to go back to UCLA. Almost immediately after I responded, he wanted to know why I wouldn't. As I thought, I realized that my only reason why I did not want to pray about it was because I had my mind set on going back to UCLA. In my desire to go to UCLA, I did not want to pray in case God would tell me differently.

The Restoration

While on my mission, a strange thing happened; Twinkies, along with all other Hostess products, went off the market. When the news came that Hostess was going out of Business because of a strike, many people flocked to the stores, Twinkies were being sold for high prices online as people prepared for a life without Twinkies. The time came, and Twinkies vanished from the stores, and soon many other companies started making their own version of the Twinkie. I never was a fan of Twinkies, but it was unexpected news, the snack that could survive a nuclear war could not survive the life span of a business. As I was shopping one day, something caught my eye, and I rushed over, and in joy, I bought a box of Twinkies. The snack that was once lost was restored.

Commandments For Our Protection

In my lifetime, my family has had many cats: Chester Tiger, Marvin K. Moonie, and Boingo just to name a few; in fact, our family almost always had at least one pet cat. What happened to all of these cats? In most cases coyotes happened. Our cats were allowed free access to the outside whenever they wanted, so long as there was someone to let them out, and so many were out during the night. These cats then fell victim to the many coyotes wandering the city at night, one of them, Dog, even fell victim twice. With all these lost cats my father was hesitant to get our two current cats, Cow and Skimbleshanks. We agreed on something new with these cats, when the night comes, the cats come in. Cats being Nocturnal animals and loving the outdoor protest almost every night, begging to go back out, but out of love and for their safety, we keep them in knowing that coyotes lay beyond the threshold of our door.

Atoning Blood of Jesus Christ

I hate needles; When I was younger, and it was time for me to get a shot, I would breakdown.Why I have such a fear of being stabbed by a needle? I don't know, but it has stuck with me. While at college, many of my friends were participating in a blood drive, something I had never done before because I never got the courage to allow a complete stranger to stick a needle in me and take something vital to my body. I decided though, that it was going to be different this time; I was going to give blood. Still apprehensive about it, I convinced one of my roommates to do it with me. We got down to the center and of course some of my friends were there also for the blood drive. My roommate backed down from giving blood, but for me, I could not, my friends wouldn't let me. As I sat there filling out the donor sheet, fear grew within me as I got ever so closer to actually giving blood. A finger prick and later, and I was in the chair; The needle now drawing blood from me. Moments later, I was released and given free range on all the juice and snacks I could eat.

Honesty

In one of my classes for high school one year, we were assigned to do a group project. As a group, we needed to make a survey, get people to take it and then look at the results. I was having difficulty finding a group, when a few friends told me that I could be a part of their group. The project was started, and soon the end of it came, and I contributed nothing to it. This teacher knew that many times in group projects there would be a few people who did the bulk of the work while some did nothing, so to make the grades represent that, she had us as individuals write down what we noticed, who was helping, who wasn't and other things along that line, so she could base individual grades off of individual effort. I knew I did nothing to help, so I wrote down how I did nothing and should get an F.

Patience: Trust in God's Timing

A couple months ago, my roommates and I were going to help someone move while it was snowing; of course this led to a snowball fight. All was going great, until a soft "dink" was heard. There war was paused until we could discover the source of the noise. To the alarm of one of my roommates, he discovered that his ring had slid off of his finger, bounced and landed in the wintery white blanket of snow. After a prayer, we began to comb the area, but to our dismay, the snow cloaked the ring from view dispite our best efforts.  As the days past, we continued our search hoping that as the snow melted the ring would appear. Days became weeks and we lost hope. The ring was gone.

Charity Is Not Easily Provoked

Many people recognize missionaries from the Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as those two men dressed in white shirts and ties. As missionaries we don't pick the person we will be with, and so sometimes we get along great, while other times it can be difficult. During one of these difficult times, I found myself getting annoyed with the smallest things, for those fimiliar with the musical "Wicked" there is a line in the song "What Is This Feeling?" that says "Every little trait however small, makes my very flesh begin to crawl...", and it got to the point that I was feeling this way, which is never good. One night I found myself praying for charity so that I could get rid of these hard feelings; the next morning God answered. I was trying to memorize a scripture a day, and could not think of a scripture to memorize, so I opened up my scriptures randomly and found some verses marked in red which began "And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not..." As I read Moroni 7:45-47 I learned what charity was.

Small and Simple Things

Recently I have been working out with one of my roommates. He knows many different lifts and
exercises. One day, he introduced us to exercising with our scarves. At first we thought it was a joke, how could a scarf provide the resistance needed to make the exercise worth anything. The instructions were very simple, hold the scarf taut and then raise it above our heads and lower it keeping the tension on the scarf and our arms straight. Then, keeping the scarf taut still, do shoulder presses with the scarf, after which came putting it behind our back and working our triceps by raising our arms behind our back. We started in still seeing this as a joke, but by the time we finished we felt the burn.

Recognizing the Spirit

I am color blind, and so the first reaction I get from people when I tell them this is for them to look for something, and then ask me what color it is. When I get it right, their next question is normally, what type of colorblindness, so I say red/green colorblind, so they look for something that is either red or green around and once again ask me what color it is. This goes on for four or five items then finally they say, your not colorblind. Another typical question I get is, How does green (or red) look to you? I then have to explain to them, that I cannot explain how it looks to me. Try it yourself, How does green look to you? Describe the color green. You cannot come up with a description besides green, just as I can normally recognize green, you too can recognize green, but yet you cannot describe how it looks to someone else. You are focused to give examples of things that are green.

The Truth Shall Set You Free.

It was the year 1492, and a man named Columbus was out at sea, his desire to find a faster route to India for trade. Until this point in time, the only known ways were sailing around the continent of Africa or tranversing Europe and Asia, but Columbus had a new idea, sail across the Alantic Ocean, an idea many must have mocked him for. "There is no way you can make it!" some must have said "you will either meet your end while facing a sea monster or sailing off the edge of earth." Many held the belief at this time that the world was flat and could be sailed off of if one voyaged to far. Columbus was eager to show his criticizers wrong by making a successful voyage to and from India.

The Formulas in the Scriptures

When I was younger, I had no idea how to solve a rubik's cube. I would grab one of the many my family had for what ever reason, and play around with it, forget what I did with it and have to turn it over to my dad to solve. I would then get it back in my possession fiddle with it some more, and once again give it to my dad to solve. To me the rubik's cube posed an impossible conundrum of connecting the colors back together. This continued until one year I got a five by five by five rubik's cube for Christmas. I decided at that point I needed to learn how to solve it or else it would stay a jumbled mess. After watching a youtube video about a dozen time I had the steps down. That video taught me that there were a few simple steps that you take to solve it. These algorithms or formulas always do as you want and always solve the cube when applied correctly.

Charity Is Not Puffed Up

Before my mission, I loved Super Smash Brothers. My friends and I would play it all the time. Once Melee came out, I became a fan of Jigglypuff, and this continued over to Brawl. Brawl added final smashes to the game, powerful moves unique to the character. Jigglypuff being a small puff ball, got the final smash puff up which causes it to swell to colossal sizes pushing away all in the way of its growth spurt. Naturally, I would, on small stages, grab a smash ball, go to the center of the stage and unleash the final smash and watch as I engulfed the stage and my opponents go flying. What does this have to do with the gospel?

The Constant Companion

A young boy awakes one day to find a fairy near him; sent from the Great Deku Tree, Navi the Fairy was to help the child and act as a constant source of aid. Throughout his adventure in Hyrule, Link was always able to rely on Navi to direct him and help warn him of danger. This fairy companion even traveled with him through time, as he sought to protect the land of Hyrule from falling completely into the grip of the evil sorcerer Ganondorf. Navi proved to be an indispensable ally for the hero of time. Just as Link had Navi, we too can have an unfailing companion.

Trial Of Your Faith

Piñatas are loved by children of all ages, and they make any party better. Who doesn't like running around blindfolded trying to whack open a paper-mache object, to be showered on by candy, or who doesn't like sprinting to the downed piñata to snatch candy by the handful? Now imagine smacking a piñata leaving a gaping hole only to discover absolutely no candy. With this as a possibility, why are piñatas so adored?

The Need For Scriptures

For many of us, a user manual is only used when a trouble comes up. We are perfectly content with the way  something is going until it spontaneously combusts, shatters, or  fails in any other possible (or impossible) way. We then turn to the user manual looking for the solution to our problem, often ignoring the maintenance section which if viewed and used before hand would have stopped the problem from arising. If used as intended, a user manual would help stop problems from forming instead of fixing when the problem becomes too severe

Feast Upon the Words of Christ

Nothing compares to a feast: food sprawled across the table, the sweet and savory aroma fills the room and as you gaze into a mountain on your plate, all that goes through your mind is soon I will be stuffed. Soon one plate becomes two and two becomes four as you return for more helpings all in the endeavor to enjoy every morsel.

A Perfect Brightness of Hope

In the "Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" a young boy in search of his kidnapped sister soon learns that more is at stake than just his sister. The world is being threatened once again by an evil thought to have been stopped long ago. On the side of this noble hero, is the ancient king who saw the destruction of his people due to the evil. Before the climatic battle, in an effort to thwart the plans of Ganon, the king wishes for hope. After the battle the King, parting ways, tells the green-clad lad "you must look forward and walk a path of hope, trusting it will sustain you when darkness comes." Though just a game, in it is taught the truth about the power of hope.

If men build

A building needs a strong foundation, if it is to withstand natural disasters, storms or whatever comes it way. So important is the foundation to a building that during the Sermon on the Mount, Christ compares those who do as he teaches unto "a wise man, which built his house upon a rock" and those who hear his teachings, but do not follow them unto "a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand". When the storms came the first house did not fall because "it was founded upon a rock" whereas the house of the foolish man crumbled (Matthew 7:24-27). Helaman 5:12  teaches that if we want the storms of life to have "no power over [us] to drag [us] down to the gulf of misery and endless wo" then we must have the "rock of our redeemer, who is Christ" as our foundation because it "is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall." (emphasis add) Christ is a sure foundation, but for this promise to be true, we need to build. To put it simply, a foundation without a building is a big rock in the ground.

Like a Fire is Burning

Imagine leaving the safety and warmth of your own home to go camping. You get out and during the dead of night it, and the freezing temperature gets to you. To stay warm you gather logs and in hopes of starting a fire. As you gather logs, you long to hear the crackling of the fire, feel the warmth of the fire and see the glow of it as you watch the flames dance. The fire now built, you enjoy the comfort it brings as you stare into the star filled sky.