Stars

[The office tourist attraction mentioned before.]

HEY EVERYBODY!

I’m glad to hear so much good stuff is going on.

Is Jason going to leave behind the dreaded green badge at Intel?

I guess the rearranging of the ward boundaries was inevitable. I’m kinda bummed that President Weight and everybody won’t be in our ward anymore. It had been quite a while without a change, though. The wards here in Portugal are combining like crazy. The branches had been growing so much that whenever there were over about 100 members in a branch they were split. Amadora and Queluz joined when I was there, and now Benfica and Odivelas are supposed to be joined pretty soon.

YEAH! Accompanied lesson! I don’t know if having members help in the work helps there as much as it does here, but it is SO important! I’m so glad to hear you had a lesson at home.

Kevin is back already! Crazy. It doesn’t seem unbelievable, like it did before. I remember how weird it was for Tyson Frodsham to come back – it seemed that when people leave on missions that they are never going to come back. But after watching people go back home from here, it doesn’t seem like that farfetched of an idea.

So today, for P-Day, we cleaned up the plants and everything front of the office. By “plants” I mean five little palm bushes, a ridiculously huge palm tree, and a bunch of other bushes that had all never been pruned. [See the first photo above!] Luckily, though, Ariana had taught me how to prune bushes, and after four hours, we took care of it all. President Terry worked with us, too, which was awesome. We have a general authority coming this month for a mission tour. It was a lot of fun and great exercise.

Anyway, as for happenings during the week, it all funnels down into last night.

I knew last week when I wrote that email that I was being ridiculous about stress and everything. I knew that all the stress and frustration with everything was just completely unnecessary and wasn’t even worth my time.

I had really been going downhill until Saturday night when I got sick (something from a member, I think), and spend Sunday inside with a lot of time to think things out. I wasn’t understanding the value of things. I was looking at life and the world and just seeing a lot of futility and nothingness because of people. People seem to ruin everything. We don’t understand each other, we are offended so easily, we forget the important things, etc. I had just finished reading Helaman and 3 Nephi this last week, and all I saw was the nothingness of man (Hel 12) and how stupid it was that Christ had to be so specific about what to call the church. Then, 4 Nephi, after all that, it doesn’t take that long until everybody forgets about what really matters and it all goes to chaos again. It just seemed like people were a big waste of time.

And we arrive at last night.

So last night, I was kinda fed up with how crazy I was going, and I knew I was being ridiculous. So I went out and sat in our 8th floor kitchen window, overlooking the Benfica stadium, Monsanto, and a ton of buildings. There is no ground visible from our window – just buildings and people. I looked at them so frustrated with how bitter and impatient they are with each other and how it makes it fruitless to try to be kind and patient with them. But then I did something I hadn’t done since getting in Portugal – I looked up at the stars.

It caught me off guard. When I looked up, I couldn’t see the world anymore. The whole time here, I had been driving myself crazy trying to help people all around me. There were (and still are) tons of problems all around, waiting to be solved, and when they do get solved, people don’t stick to the solutions, and it all goes back to how it was before. Frustrating, isn't it?

I think I understand a little bit better now why Moses, Nephi, and even Christ went up mountains to commune with God. When you’re at ground level and try to look up, you still see all the people and buildings surrounding you. It’s like there’s no escape. But when you get above it all and look up, they’re not there, and you see that there is so much more than just us in this universe.

I was sitting there, and instantly after realizing I was indeed looking at the stars, I thought of Switchfoot (the song “Stars”). Since everybody else wasn’t in the kitchen, I started singing it to myself, playing the rhythm on my leg and the air guitar, trying to remember the words (I’m not very good with the words of songs). It was awesome. The music I listened to back home had this kind of effect for me. I moved onto singing “Oh! Gravity”, which basically says, “why can’t we seem to keep it together?” Then I moved onto “Meant to Live” and it all made sense.

Despite all the stupidity and frailties in the world, and all our annoying shortcomings, we were meant to live for so much more than just arguments and inability to make our dreams come true.

I knew, on paper, the Plan of Salvation, but KNOWING is a completely different thing. Knowing something can be very passing. It can come and go. But one thing I can cling to is that no matter how little I understand or how annoyed I get with the world, I know the purpose of it all is so much more than itself.

Maybe it was a little apostate to sing (and rock out to) Switchfoot to myself, but I don’t think so.

But either way, the best part is that we were meant to live for a whole lot more than just being born, struggling to learn how to live, and then dying long after the chance to really apply what you learned. For me, it’s like being a financial secretary – I don’t learn my job to do it well, I learn it well so that the person I have to teach (my “office child”) can do it well. Is that fleeting and pointless? In and of itself, yes, but it’s all meant for so much more than that. I don’t have to know nor understand the value of it all to believe there is so much more beyond the thing itself.

I had that before the mission, and that quickly faded after leaving. I got so focused on all the things around me and I was supposed to be doing and forgot how it’s all meant for so much more than just itself. The mission isn’t just to bring people into the church – there is so much more.

I think this kind of attitude accounts for the uncertainty that I was hating before. I was so annoyed with how confident people were in their own knowledge – and I couldn’t find anything to balance that out until last night, when I found that I could be confident in something I didn’t understand. Confidence has always been something I have been very reluctant to have, and even when I had it, I was reluctant to use it. I still am, to a certain extent, but I think this kind of confidence in something that overshadows all the fallacies of nature is the best I have found yet.

Moroni 7:20-22:
How is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing. For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing.

You don’t need to understand why eternal life is desirable if you know that it’s definitely better than anything the world can offer.

TIME’S UP

I LOVE YOU ALL

ELDERLOBO