Not All Who Wonder...

There is a phrase in Portuguese that I love.  Seguir na frente.  Literally, it means to “follow in the front.” But to Brazilians, the actual meaning is to move on, keep going, or push ahead in spite of difficulty. I’ve always thought that was a fascinating way to explain endurance - following in the front. It's sort of like acknowledging that while circumstances are not always in our control, this doesn’t limit our ability to be leaders of our own lives. In our quest for growth, we might feel like we are always following or chasing after something in the future - whether a different circumstance or a better version of ourselves. For me, that can be deeply discouraging. I felt like that a lot on my mission. I just wanted to quit the chase. My companions would often hear me vocalize a half-joking desire to “run away.” What I meant, of course, was that I wanted to quit serving a mission. If not that, I wanted to stop facing trials in the process.  My mission...

A bolsa velha significava tudo para mim. Eu o tive comprado alguns meses antes de partir para minha missão. Normalmente, não sou muito apegado a coisas, mas a bolsa foi uma símbola de sobrevivência para mim. Nos primeiros meses da minha missão, enquanto servia em Dakota do Sul (nas EUA), muitas sistres falaram sobre quantas bolsas elas já tinham que comprar porque as alças se rompiam. Por alguma razão, sempre afirmei que a minha bolsa não iria quebrar. Não sei porque eu sentia assim, mas acho que queria que minha bolsa durasse 18 meses da mesma maneira que eu precisava de ficar na minha missão.  A primeira parte da minha missão foi muito difícil. Passei por experiências que incluíam a perda de uma avó, depressão severa, várias visitas ao hospital, doenças físicas e uma companheira que quase morreu. Depois de sete meses na missão, fui enviado ao Brasil, onde as coisas continuaram sendo difíceis para mim.  Mas apesar de tudo, minha bolsa permaneceu intacta. A cor ma...

“Why would I leave the God I love to come to a place like this?” I was always nervous to the teach the Plan of Salvation to investigators on the mission. I felt like there was something about it I was missing. There seemed to be too much information mashed together that I was never going to be able to explain simply, rationally, or even truthfully. I wasn’t even sure how to begin telling someone without a Christian background about the significance of Eve and Adam eating a piece of fruit. So, my investigator’s question burned a little whole in my conscious. Not only was I unsure how to answer his question, I felt like it somehow summarized everything going on in my head – my own questions and concerns. His life hadn’t been easy. Milton not only struggled with addiction, his wife had left him and took their child. From what I gleaned from his mother, it didn’t seem like any other religion or method they had tried before was able to him break his extreme alcoholism. And he was...

The look on her face nearly broke my heart. Probably because I felt like I understood her. On one couch was a sister missionary overwhelmed with expectations she now believed were unfulfilled. In a moment of stress, she had vocalized suicidal thoughts to her trainer. The mission had decided to send her home with an official escort. She didn’t have a choice. Even if she didn’t mean what she said. On the opposite couch was me. A sister who hadn’t vocalized those thoughts, but they had come and gone in a similar vein. But keeping them to myself, I was allowed to stay. The difference between us, however, seemed infinitesimal.      Living in the same area as the Mission President, my companion and I volunteered to take the sister out for her last few days in the field. I felt like she needed to talk, and I wanted to let her. After we worked for much of the day, we went home and I asked her questions and let her tell me everything. That’s when I learned that her r...

Quando eu era mais jovem, o meu pai sempre afirmava que deveríamos levar tudo o que um membro do Quórum dos Setenta dissesse "com um grão de sal" –  quero dizer, a gente deve ouvir os seus discoursos cautelosamente, com orac ã o e um pouco de ceticismo .  Apliquei isso com muita liberdade em minha vida (talvez demais). Eu lembro um momento específico da minha missão. Um membro dos Setenta veio a visitar. Ele queria celebrar a idéia do batismo, realizando uma espécie de festa batismal no quintal do Presidente da Estaca - um bilionário que construiu sua casa mais ou menos para modelar o Templo da Guatemala. Nas semanas seguintes, todos os missionários foram incentivados a convidar (e a forçar, se for possível) seus pesquisadores a serem batizados na data muito específica escolhida pelo membro do Setenta e o Presidente da Estaca, para que pudéssemos convidar muitas pessoas frequentar o evento - o que me pareceu um “espetáculo de batismos.” Se eu estivesse escrevendo um ar...

“Hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light that ye should hold up – that which ye have seen me do.” I’ve never thought much about why. Honestly, prior to serving a mission, I never thought much about the  what  either. What was going on inside my mind. Terms like anxiety, depression, mental illness, obsessive compulsive disorder and the like felt like taboo topics growing up. Those people have problems. Get yourself together. Choose to be happy. Let go of stuff that bothers you. Get over it. And learn to control your thoughts. Not bad advice. Frankly, it’s good advice to actively take control of your mind and body and walk the path of emotional, physical, and spiritual stability and health. Until you realize that, for some people, they just can’t. One of my first times recognizing a panic attack remains critically imprinted on my memory. Waking up in a cold sweat. An impending sense of doom. My heart racing. The feeling that ...

While I was growing up, my Dad always asserted that we should take everything a member of the Quorum of the Seventy said “with a grain of salt.” I have applied that perhaps too liberally in my life. I particularly remember one moment from my mission. A member of the Seventy came to visit and decided that he wanted to celebrate the idea of baptism by having a sort of celebratory baptismal party in the backyard of the Stake President - a billionaire who had built his home to model the Guatemala Temple.  For the next few weeks, all the missionaries were encouraged to push their investigators to be baptized on the very specific date chosen by the Seventy and Stake President so that we could invite tons of people to what sounded to me like a “spectacle of baptisms.” If I had been writing a newspaper article, that’s what I would have entitled it.   However, I personally believed that pressuring my investigators to do anything involving covenants was a terrible idea....