“ You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart unless you have one burning in your own.” - Harold B. Lee
This beautiful soon-to-be-missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, called to serve in the Ecuador, Quito North mission, will be speaking at church (LDS chapel on Roosevelt and Middleton) at 9am this Sunday (9/22/19) before she leaves at the very beginning of October - All are welcome!
This beautiful soon-to-be-missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, called to serve in the Ecuador, Quito North mission, will be speaking at church (LDS chapel on Roosevelt and Middleton) at 9am this Sunday (9/22/19) before she leaves at the very beginning of October - All are welcome!
I’ve had almost five months
to be nervous about this talk, and believe me, I’m nervous!
Actually there
are only two things that really terrify me, both of which I have had to face
recently. One is public speaking and the other is spiders. But if you asked me
which I’d rather face, my name would be in your program every. Single. Week. I
hate spiders. And yes, there are plenty of gigantic spiders in Ecuador.
As for spiders:
I’ve been a Boise Temple worker since I received my call, and one of my
assignments is to just stand in the celestial room. I happened to be alone for
most of that time one day and I was pondering my mission call.
I’d decided to
serve a mission about the time that the age for a sister to serve changed from
21 to 19. I hadn’t ever had any kind of specific confirming witness that that
was what Heavenly Father wanted for my life, but I had a desire to serve, so I
decided I would.
Up until that
point in the celestial room I had never felt hesitant about my decision, but
I’d recently heard it said that if you didn’t have an absolute divine assurance
that serving a mission was right for you, it would eat at you when things got
really tough.
As I sat
thinking about this, trying to recall whether or not I’d ever had such an
assurance, I decided to pray right there and plead for Heavenly Father’s
confirmation that serving a mission was exactly where he wanted me to be. So I
bowed my head, still completely alone, and talked to my Heavenly Father about
what I was feeling.
In the middle of
the celestial room, which isn’t terribly large, is a round table with a flower
arrangement on it. I kid you not, as soon as I had said Amen, I looked right at
this table, and a big wolf spider floated down from the flowers, crawled down
the table, right to the very center of the carpet, and began scurrying towards
my feet. Ew!
I stood up
out of my seat to get out of its way, and it crawled under the chair. I was
actually uncharacteristically calm. I even laughed out loud at the irony of it,
because the temple is kept so meticulously clean, the odds of this happening
are 0. I don’t kill spiders, so he might still be under there. Either way I
don’t sit in the chair on the left side of the celestial room, and neither
should you.
It seems strange,
but that was my answer, it just couldn’t be coincidence. It reminded me He knew
the things that really worried me, from spiders, to culture shock, to humidity
hair, to leaving home, ALL of it, and He will help me take care of it and I
will survive. I’m also grateful for Heavenly Father’s fantastic sense of humor.
I’m speaking
today about the fruits of the spirit. I think everyone is thinking of the same
Bible verse when you hear “fruits of the spirit” and that is Galatians 5:22
which reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no
law”. The entire chapter is a great sermon by Paul, and the last bit is
dedicated to what the Spirit is and what it is not.
There is a little
phrase my parents use on me whenever I’m really tired, really grumpy, or Miles
is really pushing my buttons, and that is: Sadie, “you’re not being your sweet
self.”
This means I’m
allowing myself to be grouchy and proud and stubborn. In short, it means that
I’m not being influenced by the Spirit like I should be. And let me tell
you, I’m much better at being proud and stubborn than I am and being loving,
peace-making, long suffering, gentle and etc.
On
occasion, the reminder “Sadie, be your sweet self” makes me even more mad, but
if I humble myself enough to go to my room and get on my knees really quick and
invite the Spirit back into my day, it works every single time.
Paul also
explains in Galatians why it’s such a battle to let ourselves be worked on by
the Spirit; it is because we are human, and the flesh tends to resist the
Spirit and its fruits.
“For the flesh
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are
contrary one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things ye would.”
There is another
scripture that perfectly describes our mortal condition and how to overcome it.
It just so happens to be my dad’s very favorite, and the topic of a talk from
Brother Searle not so long ago.
Mosiah 3:19
reads, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of
Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the
Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the
atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek,
humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord
seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Modern day
prophets have further explained how the fruits of the spirit are seen in us.
President Ezra Taft Benson said, “The Holy Ghost causes our feelings to be more
tender. We feel more charitable and compassionate with each other. We are more
calm in our relationships. We have a greater capacity to love each other.
People want to be around us because our very countenances radiate the influence
of the Spirit. We are more godly in our character. As a result, we become
increasingly more sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost and thus able
to comprehend spiritual things more clearly.”
I know that when
you hear that, there are some, maybe several, faces that come immediately to
mind. These are the people we admire, and want to be more like. I know for me
several of those faces are among the congregation today, and I’m so grateful
for their love and example.
However,
there is one who is perfect at it, and that is our Savior
Jesus Christ. The inevitable result of being filled with the Spirit, and
consequently its fruits, is that we become more like Him, and isn’t that who
we’d all like to be like?
The question that
remains then is how do we do it? I’m a goal-setting type of girl, and I love
lists and check boxes, checkpoints, and measurable, tangible progress. I wanted
to come up with some ideas for myself that could help me a day at a time
experience the fruits of the Spirit and as a result, become more Christlike. If
there’s anything I’ve ever learned, its that Heavenly Father can and will help
me meet my goals when I include Him in the planning.
I’m crazy about
country music. The other day Lainey said, “Sadie, can you listen to country
music on your mission? Nope. How are you going to function?”
I play it all day
long every day in my house, so much so that I constantly catch people in my
family singing my favorites if it ever isn’t on. However, I’ve found that while
I love listening to it for hours on end, I can’t listen to the Spirit at the
same time. It keeps me so busy dancing and singing and feeling fired up to get
stuff done, that I’m too busy to feel still or think about what I can do for
those around me. It’s a small example, and of course if you come by my house,
you’ll probably find that I still have to turn it down every once in awhile to
come get the door -like my dad’s always asking me to- but I’m trying to
find time to turn it off and be still and in tune with the Spirit.
In pondering
other ways I can reap the fruits of the Spirit, I’ve noticed, of course, in my
time as a temple worker is that I am consistently and entirely my “sweetest
self” when I am in the Lord’s house, and that isn’t a coincidence.
I love the quote,
“The way you feel in the temple is the way to want to feel in your every-day
life.” It comes back to the strong Spirit that’s there, it is why in the temple
it’s so easy to say hello and smile widely at every person you see, it feels
like your heart is bursting with love for everybody, even the people you’ve
never seen before.
Of course, in our
everyday lives we can’t quite recreate the reverent, beautiful, and perfectly
peaceful surroundings of the temple, (trust me I know, I’m the oldest of six)
but we can facilitate the feelings of love, charity, and compassion that we
feel in such abundance in the Lord’s House.
For me, maybe
that looks like smiling at the people in the aisles of Wal*Mart even if they
look at me a little funny (or Hobby Lobby, you’re probably more likely to find
me there). It might look like offering to put away someone’s shopping cart, or
writing an “I’m thinking of you” note, or reading Lainey two books instead of
one. Maybe visiting someone who is lonely, or playing toys with kids instead of
doing something “productive”.
They are
tiny little services, but you know that feeling you get when you’ve done
something Christ would do, that’s the fruits of the Spirit, and instead of
waiting for the Spirit to fill me only when I can make it to the temple, or
when I’m at Church or when I feel like it, I can make it my own personal goal
to fill my life with those warm fuzzy type of feelings 24/7.
It’s one of
the many reasons I’m so looking forward to being a missionary, its an 18 month
dedication to trying to feel the Spirit ALL of the time.
There are such
wonderful blessings associated with our ability to be in tune with the Spirit.
Hopefully this motivates you—like it does me—to try harder to be filled with
the Holy Ghost, so that we can each put off the natural man a little more
often, that we might become more like Jesus Christ, one day at a time.
Bear Testimony. __________________________________________________________________________
