Dear Family and Friends,
I'm happy to be writing you today :)
I don't have a lot of missionary experiences to share with you this week, but I
do have a very important lesson to share with you :)
So unbeknownst to all of you, I've
been under the weather a bit…more than a bit actually. I've been in a bit of a
bad mood out here. And it had gotten to the point where I was very hard to be
around.
Well this week my mission President,
who was concerned about me, gave me a nice, swift, kick in the pants. Which I
needed very much.
He spoke to me about several things,
but what sticks out the most was that he shared with me how my attitude, and
opinions truly affect not only me, but my ability to help people on my mission.
How it is impossible to be happy, if I do not look for the things to be happy
about. (A lesson my poor parents have tried to teach all my life, but perhaps
this time with a little more fire.) I'm reminded of Pollyanna, who played the
glad game :)
He shared with me a scripture in
Mathew 6:22-23:
"The light of the body is the
eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole
body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be
darkness, how great is that darkness!"
He then taught me what this scripture
meant through a story: When President was a branch presdent in the Missionary
Training Center in Brasil, he did something with his group of new missionaries,
he divided a blackboard and asked the missionaries to list all the things bad
about serving a mission in Brasil. the filled the side of the board. When he
finished, he said there was dark cloud hanging over the room, it was clear.
Then he had them fill the other side of the board with the good things about
serving a mission in Brasil, and the cloud disappeared. He then erased the left
side of the board. The curious thing being that a large proportion of the
things that were written on the left, were also written on the right.
Our eye, or how we view things will change
the way things appear to us. It will change the very nature of who we
are.
I'm very grateful for my mission
president who loves me enough to teach me such a lesson. It was a little hard
to swallow, but it's what I needed to hear. I'm changing how I see things, and
I hope none of you ever doubt if I'm happy or not, ever again :)
Have a fantastic week!
Abraço,
Elder Buchanan
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