Sunday Post #6

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Okay. So I've been slacking on these. I've been slacking on blogging, period. Life is busy...and it's about to get super duper crazy. More on that...later.

For as much as I haven't blogged about church related things in the past few weeks, I've actually learned a lot.

Of all the things I learned, I'm going to share two of them.

First: I've noticed a recurring theme in the gospel -- helping others. A lot of the things we do are so other people can be helped. Temple work, missions, regular ol' service projects...yeah. There's tons of it.

I think I've always had a desire to help other people, even though I've had my rather selfish moments. Recently (and by recently, I actually mean almost a year ago) my brain suddenly switched onto "you can make a difference!" mode, and suddenly my desire to help other people went into super-steroid mode and...that is how my life has gone the past 10 months.

The largest part of my "helping" people is something to the effect of, "I think that person would be happier if they had the gospel in his/her life. What can I do to help make that happen?"

I can't say any of my efforts have been successful...because there's no way of really knowing until, you know, I'm dead. Or so I've been told. I'll admit, I get pretty discouraged when I see my friends making rather sucky choices, but I still love them no matter what.

Through this strange desire I have to improve the lives of others, I realized just how important temple work is. Every time you go to the temple, you are helping just a few more people towards accepting the gospel and the gift of eternal life. Once I gained the perspective that we don't go to the temple because "we're supposed to," but "I'm changing the lives of a few people today, and hopefully helping them gain eternal salvation," it made going to the temple, for me, about a bazillion times better. Perspective and having the right mentality. It's a pretty powerful thing.

Lesson #1: If service seems hard/boring, try to look at it from a different perspective or approach it with a different mentality. It'll probably help.

The second thing I learned this week: Sometimes you learn mind blowing things, and sometimes you find them in the scriptures.

I was reading 3 Nephi 5 this week, and I came across just about the coolest verse of all time. I like to analyze things, so this is my analysis of verse 12.

"And behold, I am called Mormon, being called after the land of Mormon, the land in which Alma did establish the church among the people, yea, the first church which was established among them after their transgression."

My mind was blown straight out of the water with that verse. It's so symbolic. Check it out: I always figured it was called the "Book of Mormon" because Mormon was the one who abridged it. I'm sure that's still the reason, but knowing where Mormon's name comes from puts the name of the book into a whole different perspective. "The first church which was established among them after their transgression." sounds an awful lot like "the restoration of the gospel after years of apostasy." So the book that began the restoration of the gospel is named after a guy who was named after...a restoration of the gospel, so to speak.

There is a chance that either I'm entirely wrong, or this is completely common knowledge, and I'm just totally out of the loop, but I'm serious...my mind was blown. This is so extremely cool to me.

Lesson #2: The scriptures can blow your mind with their coolness. Also, I like to use the phrase "mind blown" as much as possible...obviously.

The third thing I learned this week: Ha! I lied. There is actually one more thing I want to talk about. Luckily, I don't have to say much. Just watch this!

It's a super cute video, huh?

Lesson #3: Don't judge others...period.

Love you all! Have a great day!

Love,
Kaela