It's been a great week! I've learned so much; from spiritual knowledge to secular knowledge. We had zone conference, which was an awesome and stressful day, but it was great to be spiritually fed there with many missionaries and our mission president. I woke up first out of my companions and it was at 4:15 in the morning. Then I drove us all up there, which was a hour and a half drive, to be there at 7 am. Then I went on exchanges with Elder Lish and the next morning we woke up at 5:45am to play tennis with some other missionaries. Yea, lets just say I was really tired last weekend.
I saw baby goats or “ kids” that were like 1 hour old and saw them trying to survive and how that worked. I learned how to garden, dig up and collect garlic. I also learned how to drive in and put up dry wall on the ceiling of a trailer, and more about farming.
So, to the spiritual stuff … Like I said last week I want to write about what we need to do to receive the eternal blessings and happiness that we want. For this analogy I'm using an "A grade" in the class.
Now, I taught this to a group of missionaries right on the spot. I didn’t plan it but it just came out this way so I'm going to change a few things up to better apply to you all.
I asked what it would take for a “student” to receive an “A” in the class. Here is a list of some things they said: Study, do the homework, pay attention, tutors, search text book, talk with the teacher, do the experiments, review old tests, complete all assignments, etc.
After this list I had them ponder on how, as missionaries, this is the type of people that have a true desire to follow Christ and to join His church. Well, to apply it to you all, how do WE do these things to get an “A” in the class I like to call "OUR LIFE ON EARTH?" It is simply by doing all of those steps that I listed before. I'd like to add to those things even deeper and suggest the “spiritual” things we can do for our class of "OUR LIFE ON EARTH." Here is what we came up with:
- Do the homework (pray, read scriptures, help our family);
- Pay Attention (Listen in church, listen to the spirit, watch and pay attention to general conference);
- See Tutors (Ask for help from leaders in the church, parents, the Holy Ghost for help and guidance)
- Look for answers in the Text Book (Use the scriptures, LDS.org, Ensign magazines)
- Extra Credit (Tithing and fast offerings, Using the Atonement ... think about that one)
- Doing the Experiments (Trials in mortality, hands-on experiments)
- Review Old Tests (Lessons from your family history of mistakes your great-great grandparents made that you can learn from, stories in the scriptures)
- Complete All Assignements: (Magnify our church calling, keep covenants, try our best).
After we came up with these and saw how important all of them are then it came to me that if we took ALL of those things and broke it down to ONE statement what would it be what? THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. If a teacher ever said in a class, "Hey guys, all that I've taught is great and is super important but if all you know and do is this one simple thing: Remember these 5 steps and the rest will come later." How much more would we all pay attention to what he said and actually do it?!
In our spiritual class of "OUR LIFE ON EARTH" our teacher, Jesus Christ told us to just follow His teaching or Gospel (which is Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost and Enduring to the End) and that if we did that and remembered it and obeyed it the best we could then we would pass the class. We would get an "A" and everthing else He taught would only be appendages to it. The Savior didn’t say it exactly that way but He has countlessly mentioned similar to this all throughout holy writ. It is essential that we do all we can to pass the class with an "A" and remember the simple foundation that has been laid out to us.
I hope you all recommit to doing better on something; either completing your assignments, listening to the tutor better or doing the homework. Or most important: listening to the teacher and taking sacrifices and steps to accomplish to goal we all have... eternal life.
Yours truly ,
Elder Justin Taylor
