What is Success? - Week 37

Hey everyone, another week goes by and the time seems to be going faster than it ever has. Anziano Cameron and myself had a pretty good week, and met some great people.

We went and visited a family this week of a recent convert that asked us to visit his family. We brought our branch president who ended up being a huge help. We expected the mother, Assunta, to be the one asking all the questions, but when we started explaining the fundamental beliefs of our church it was the 13 year old daughter, Francesca, that started throwing questions at us left and right. It really took us by surprise too because she was throwing out intellectual questions I did not think I would even have to respond to in the lesson. Our branch president really helped us out by volunteering to go into a good explanation about her questions, and it really helped us create a good beginning to the lessons that we will be teaching them.

Also, we met a great new friend named Darlington. He is from Nigeria, and really enjoys talking about the life of Christ. We spent a couple of hours with him just talking about the beliefs we had in common, and he got really excited. He hasn't found a good church to go to so we invited him to church on Sunday and he happily accepted.

Things are really going fast, as we are seeing Elder Bednar on Monday. We have been trying to spiritually prepare ourselves to have a good meeting with him. It made me think about how people measure success and what it truly means to be "successful". In the dictionary success is, achieving something you have been trying to do. In many ways that makes us successful and failures every day. We all compare ourselves to what we think we need to be every day. We tell ourselves, I need to be the star player on the Los Angeles Angels, or I am a failure. And in dictionary definition if we don't make it we fail. It makes me think about how God measures success. I truly believe that God doesn’t measure success by what you achieve, but by what you become trying to succeed. All of us grow in ways that we don’t see when trying to achieve that ultimate goal we set. We fail to notice our talents we learned on the way, or the small things we accomplished during the attempt. It all applies in missionary work as well. We get all caught up in how many people we baptize or what title of leadership we receive. But it isn’t about that. Sure it is important to strive to be the best, but our success should be focused on being the best we are, not the best others think we have to be.

I know that the gospel allows all of us to see our true talents and gifts, and that each of us are a successful child of God. I love this gospel and love sharing it with others. Have a great week everyone!