Attitude of Gratitude
Iorana, Iorana, Iorana, E!!!!
of an eye. Some key highlights from this past week include pilling our entire district into one persons room to watch Johnny Lingo from a little phone, and scoring an entire bottle of Tea Tree shampoo from an elder who was leaving to Spain. These small little things brought a grand amount of joy. Oh, earlier this week me and a couple other Elders in my district found out that we were selected to be apart of the choir singing for general conference. Super exciting, but also super scary at the same time. It is like singing for Kamehameha Schools song contest except we are memorizing 5 different songs in a week and a half and are going to be performing live for over 5 million people. It'll take a miracle and a lot of prayer for us to memorize everything in time but we all know it will happen.
Devotional:
This week's devotional came from Elder Peter M. Johnson, a member of the seventy. He shared with us a really nice message about making sure you keep your target in mind and aim for your target instead of shooting your arrow and painting a bullseye where your arrow landed. He served as a mission president before becoming a member of the seventy and he related his life experience and his experience as a president with missionary work. Sometime we find ourselves loosing sight of our target, and instead of aiming for that target we shoot our arrows and "paint bulls-eyes" were those arrows land. Those bulls-eyes could look like social media likes, post viewership, or interactions on our social media accounts. Remember your purpose and keep aiming for that purpose instead of other things.
Elder Johnson also talked about being perfectly positioned. No matter where you are you are perfectly positioned and Heavenly Father has a plan for you no matter your age, if you are 9 years old or 98 years old you are exactly where you need to be. Lately a lot of missionaries have been getting reassigned because they haven't been getting their visas in time. Elder Johnson mentioned how even temporary reassignments have to get approved by the quorum of the twelve apostles, the same apostles who gave us our original assignments. So no matter where you go even if it is for a temporary reassignment Heavenly Father has a plan and needs you there at that specific time.
Attitude of Gratitude:
Heavenly Father cares more about your labor rather than the fruits of your labor. After hearing that I started spending even more time than I previously did trying to learn French and Tahitian. We usually have two, three hour language classes a day and then an hour set aside for personal study and language study and up until this point I was doing just about that. Some days I found myself doing an extra hour of language study. But this past week I found myself really praying with faith and through even more hours spent studying the language things have just started to click. From irregular verb conjugations to past, present, and future tenses everything is just starting to become so clear. It's a miracle and I know that it is happening through faith, the gift of tongues, and wanting to learn the language for the right reason and wanting to be able to communicate with people for the right reasons. We will be starting Tahitian next week and we will be learning it all from French. Is this scary? Yes! I am I excited for the challenge? Oh, more than ever!
In Moroni Chapter 10 Verse 7 it reads, "Wherefore I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God; for he worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of men, the same today and tomorrow, and forever." God in the Book of Mormon is the same God as in the bible and he will always be the same. He delivered and provided many with strength in times of old and He will still provide both you, and me with everything we need to get through our own struggles. So no matter the size of the struggles you are faced with, think to pray. Pray for guidance, pray for strength, pray for thanks, but most importantly pray with faith.
"Vents favorables et mer suivante"
"Fair winds and following seas"
Standing by,
Elder Ellis
