"Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood you said it in has left you." George R. Zalucki


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Is it a revelation? Or just me!?

I had a pretty cool missionary experience today. I always carry a blue Book of Mormon with me in my back pack and in my car. When I am waiting for a bus, or whenever I have extra time, I just grab it and start reading it. This has two purposes: 1, It helps me do more scripture study. 2. I want to give it to someone and it is a good conversation starter for that purpose! I got on the "wrong" bus today when trying to go to class. This bus took me ALL OVER! While I was sitting there, I thought "I should take out the Book and start reading. Maybe the girl next to me will want to know more." It seemed silly, since I THOUGHT I was going to be getting off momentarily. I figured it was just a thought, not revelation. But then I thought about all the great talks on receiving revelation at conference and decided it wouldn't hurt to try. I noticed that my bus driver kept reading from her book at every stop light. Every time we were stopped for one reason or another she pulled out that book and started reading. That's when the spirit spoke to me and said "she really enjoys reading and is almost done with that book. You should give her a NEW book to read." As I was getting off of the bus, I told her that I noticed how much she liked reading and that I wanted to give her MY favorite book to read. This poor, sad, crusty copy of the Book of Mormon had survived a rainstorm with me a few weeks ago and has been read a lot... I apologized for the condition of the book and told her that it was very loved! She was TOTALLY excited and asked me a little more about it. I shared a little more, then gave her a pass along card as a book mark. I missed my class (it was a VERY long bus route). But i think I caught the "right" bus according to the Lord, not the "wrong" one that I thought originally. Gotta love it!

1 comment:

Angela Bassett said...

Steff, That is such an awesome story. Thanks for sharing it. You really are my hero!

When I was 14 or 15, I had a teacher that prided himself on being a thinker. We had some enlightening discussions in his classroom. He helped me ask some great questions that led to tremendous answers that still guide me today. We agreed on many things, but were at odds on a few. One of them was religion. I had a lot of respect for this man, but it amazed me that someone who claimed to be open minded was blind to just how closed minded he was when it came to God. He was always challenging my faith. He considered my beliefs to be a sign of my weakness. His claim was that unless it could be acknowledged by the 5 senses, there was no proof that God existed. I struggled as a young person to help him understand that he was limiting his understanding to what he had personally experienced, cutting himself off from other possibilities. The best that I could do was to try and help him understand how I knew; that things of the spirit could only be understood and perceived by the spirit. Years later, I still don't have a better answer to this one fundamental question, but I face the same dilemma. This blog is dedicated to preserving stories and experiences of missionaries in the Arizona Mesa Mission both during and after their formal missions. Some stories are fun and light hearted, but others are of a spiritual nature. The blog forum is so convenient, yet the format is limiting. There is more to these words than letters on a page. To truly understand the messages requires not only an open mind, but a soft heart.

After all, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a Heaven for?- Robert Browning"

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