"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, July 27, 2010

Welcome Home!


14 missionaries made it home today. They started checking in with president around 1:00. (We still haven't heard from a few.) Being close to his home town, we were able to surprise Elder Matsunaga. Miracles continue. We love you all and wish we could have been at each of your homes and met your families. Thank you to the Matsunaga family for their hospitality and graciousness, but especially for their son. We love him.

If you have tips for the transition back, we'd be glad if you'd share!
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"

Look who's checking in