Monday, August 1, 2016

A very random story - Clarksville, Tennessee

Hello everyone

To be short in writing, we had an ... interesting week. It was full of lots of random weird things, the weirdest of which happened last Monday. That day, every one of our plans fell through. Members, investigators, the stake president, and even computers all failed us. It was pretty crazy how it all happened one after the other. Left with nothing else to do we began to trackt. We were initially met with very little reception. Not a single door answered until the very end of the street, where we finally had one guy open it up. He came out and began talking to us until, as we spoke, it began raining right on our heads.  It turns out that he was not interested at all. He was just being nice to let us out of the rain - a rather kind thing to do. However, we then had a super awkward conversation full of dull small talk, mostly featuring the weather.

As we sat in a moment of weird silence, I noticed something in the corner and it caught my attention. Sitting on a shelf were a couple of old rotary phones from the 70s. They each featured a Disney character holding the receiver. Thinking it would give us something interesting to talk about, I brought it up. It turns out he did not actually care about them that much or want to talk about Disney. He must have been crazy. It turned out that they were actually for sale. Without thinking, I found myself asking how much they were. I told myself I would never actually buy one; I was just curious. He had no idea what they were selling it for and went to ask his wife the price. I began to debate in my head whether it would be worth it and how much I would be willing to spend. Surely they couldn't ask more than $50 for it? I wouldn't pay that much. Maybe I could do $30? Not that these thoughts really mattered, because I wasn't going to buy it. Missionaries don't need rotary phones and it would cost money to ship it home. What would I ever use it for anyway?



I will let you work out the end of the story in your minds.

Besides that, it was a rather uneventful week.

Today I studied the Young Women's personal progress book on Individual Worth. Don't make fun of me; there is good stuff in there and we are commanded to seek learning from all the best books. I learned a lot about the love God has for each and every one of his children. He has an individual plan of happiness for each of us and a purpose for us to achieve here on earth. He sees all that we can become and loves us enough to help us get there.

Pride seems to be a counterfeit to individual worth. As we seek honor and riches and try to define ourselves by our possessions, we loose track of who we really are. Our true identity as a child of God is lost and we forget the divine purpose within ourselves. We distort our vision of our own self worth and soon begin to demean others. I can see that I have definitely been subject to this throughout my life and have caused pain to myself and others.

I have made the goal to help build up individual worth in others by pointing out their worthwhile attributes to them and recording it in my journal. I especially hope to build this in my companion. I would challenge each of you to do the same thing and see how building up others helps you find greater confidence in God and yourself.

I love you all and hope you have an amazing week

Elder Basham

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