Revelation on Temple Square

I had a really great week, but I'm having a hard time remembering what happened. We have a new mission president now: President Gillette with his wife Sister Gillette. They are really great people and they will be different from President and Sister Holmes, but also great. I look forward to getting to know them better. We all have interviews with President this week and most of my interview was spent asking about how things work in the mission. It made me realize that he knew almost nothing about the workings of Temple Square before he came here. There are a lot of things to learn, and he'll learn it all pretty quickly.

Today is our Zone Activity. Zone Activities take a lot of time out of your p-day, but I'm looking forward to it. We're watching a movie and eating pizza. It should be good.

We talked with one of our investigators this week--Will. His parents aren't supportive of him learning about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he still wants to learn. He told us that it is more important to him to follow God than it is to please his family. He definitely has some incredible faith. He wouldn't have said that if he didn't already have a strong relationship with God, and he probably has his parents to thank for that. I hope that the missionaries can contact him soon.

One of the best parts of this week was our Zone Companionship Study. Sister Mendivelso and I organized a "Temple Square Experience" for the sisters in the zone because it is so important to love the place where you serve your mission. We took them to the temple model and talked about the foundation of the temple. They started with a sandstone foundation and later had to take it all out and replace it with granite because the sandstone cracked. We related that to the atonement because now it doesn't matter that the foundation used to be sandstone, all that matters now is that the foundation is granite--much stronger and durable than sandstone. It is the same with us, it doesn't matter who we were before or what we have done, all that matters is who we are now.

Then we went to the handcart monument and talked about the vision of the handcart pioneers. They saw the temple where they could make covenants with God and where their families could be united for eternity. They saw the Tabernacle where they could listen to a prophet of God. They saw the Assembly hall where they could worship with their families on Sundays. We asked the sisters to think about what their vision is of their mission. Where do they want to end up. 

We went to the Tabernacle and we sang "Come, Come, ye Saints". It sounded beautiful in that building. We talked about the Restoration and how it wouldn't have been possible if there wasn't someone who wanted to follow Jesus Christ. We are all part of the Restoration because we have that same desire. I had never thought of myself as being a part of the Restoration, but here I am!

The last place we went was to the Christus. Sister Mendivelso and I felt that the sisters in the zone were being too tough on themselves so we read part of President Uchtdorf's talk from General Conference--Forget Me Not:

"God is also fully aware that the people you think are perfect are not.

And yet we spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others—usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does.

[...]

Dear sisters, many of you are endlessly compassionate and patient with the weaknesses of others. Please remember also to be compassionate and patient with yourself.

In the meantime, be thankful for all the small successes in your home, your family relationships, your education and livelihood, your Church participation and personal improvement. Like the forget-me-nots, these successes may seem tiny to you and they may go unnoticed by others, but God notices them and they are not small to Him."

I love that talk. It reminds me that all that really matters is our standing before God, and not our lack of success compared to others. Then we shared with the sisters the parable of the talents in Matt 25. I learned something new as we were sharing that with them. Even though the one servant had five talents and made it into ten and the other servant had only two talents and turned it into four, their master said the same thing to them in the end (Matt 25:21):

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithfulservant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make theeruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

It doesn't matter what other people's success are! All that matters is that you are striving to become better than you already are! I learned a lot that day. I'm so glad that the Spirit is so abundant here on Temple Square--it teaches me a lot.