Be Thou Humble in Thy Meekness
You may recognize part of my subject line as being from the popular Hymn, "Be Thou Humble". While the original words are, "Be thou humble in thy weakness," for my purposes today, meekness makes much more sense than weakness.
Yesterday, we participated in the Zone Blitz in the Frederick 1st ward. It was a wonderful experience, but there is one man who I wish to focus on. I don't recall him ever telling us his name, so I will call him Mike, because we met two other Mikes that night. So we saw Mike sitting on a step, preparing to light a cigar. We stopped and started talking to him, and I very quickly realized that this could turn into a Bible bash at any second. We ended up standing there for more than 30 minutes while Mike "educated" us on keeping an open mind, while simultaneously keeping one of the most closed minds I've ever encountered. He would not accept anything from us that was based off of testimony (he claimed it was all someone told us to believe), or really anything spiritual. At one point, the Spirit prompted me to just start using facts, word definitions, linguistic history (thank you to my wonderful mother and sisters who made sure I knew what words meant), and things of that nature. It slowed him down a bit, but he still denied everything that we said to him. Eventually, we knew we needed to be on our way, so we bid him goodnight and walked away. We walked a few blocks then started talking about the encounter. It would have been very easy for us to just complain about how much time he wasted and how argumentative he was, but we didn't. Elder Merkley's first comment was about how bad he felt for the man. Mike even made a comment when we spoke about how Christ suffered for all of us, that he didn't believe that Christ could atone for his sins. He believed that he had gone too far, done too much, and that made me especially sad.
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve a mission, and to meet so many different types of people. But it is sad when I come across a person who believes they have sunk too low, done too much to ever be redeemed from it, and that is simply not true. To paraphrase a quote from Jeffery R. Holland, No one has sunk below the infinite light of Christ's Atonement. No matter how far you've gone, I can promise that it is not too far, you can always turn around and start working your way back to the strait and narrow path, and Christ will be there to help you every step of the way.
In other news, I had the privilege of attending the funeral of a member of the Walkersville ward, she died my second day here. That was also an opportunity for some deep reflection. The human body is an amazing machine, but when compared to the immensity and complexity of our universe, it is a very short-lived, frail organism. But death is not the end; if I were to die today I would not cease to exist, I would not go into a state of nonexistence until the Second Coming, as many have tried to tell me while I've been out here, I would go to a place of learning and improvement, as teacher or student, I know not, but I do know that I would continue to learn, to improve, line upon line as Alma says. And there I would remain until the Second Coming of the Lamb of God where my spirit would be reunited with my body and I would receive my inheritance.
We also got our first draft of snow this week. Thursday it snowed for several hours in the morning and rained a bit in the evening. All in all, I think we got 4-5 inches of snow, and a good amount of freezing rain. The cars were grounded, but we were still provided with several opportunities to serve. We helped one lady dig out her car so we had a clear path for work the next day, as well as finding a lady stranded in the left turn lane near our house. We walked over to her and tapped on her window. She told us that she had stopped at the light, and her car randomly died. At first, we were just going to try and push her across the intersection so we weren't standing on a major highway, but then we determined that with how short the protected green is on that light, it wasn't probable to push the car uphill. Thankfully we were heading to help a family paint their stairwell, so we were already in service clothes and I had the foresight to wear my waterproof boots, which was good because it was freezing rain and we were wading through a couple of inches of freezing water. After talking to a few other drivers around us, we finally found someone who was both willing to stop, and had jumper cables (I talked to about 4 people who were driving trucks and none of them had a tow cable, we were all laughing about that). So right there on the highway, we tried to jump her car. We got it all hooked up properly and we tried to start her car. That was when I realized that it wasn't a dead battery. (Thank you Dad for teaching me both how to jumpstart a car, and what it sounds like when a battery is dead) I could hear the starter motor clicking, trying to start the car motor, but the engine wasn't even trying to turn over. Eventually she just had to call a tow truck and we had to be on our way. We gave her our number and she texted us later saying that she and her car got home safely, which was good. There are always opportunities to serve, we just have to look for them. It would have been very easy for us to just look over at the car in the left turn lane with its hazards on and just move on because we had somewhere to be. But we knew that Christ would stop and help someone in need, so we tried to do what we could, which is all Christ asks of us, to give our best effort and he will make up the rest.
I have learned a lot on my mission and I hope I can learn even more during the next 8 months.
I love you all,
Elder Howell
Yesterday, we participated in the Zone Blitz in the Frederick 1st ward. It was a wonderful experience, but there is one man who I wish to focus on. I don't recall him ever telling us his name, so I will call him Mike, because we met two other Mikes that night. So we saw Mike sitting on a step, preparing to light a cigar. We stopped and started talking to him, and I very quickly realized that this could turn into a Bible bash at any second. We ended up standing there for more than 30 minutes while Mike "educated" us on keeping an open mind, while simultaneously keeping one of the most closed minds I've ever encountered. He would not accept anything from us that was based off of testimony (he claimed it was all someone told us to believe), or really anything spiritual. At one point, the Spirit prompted me to just start using facts, word definitions, linguistic history (thank you to my wonderful mother and sisters who made sure I knew what words meant), and things of that nature. It slowed him down a bit, but he still denied everything that we said to him. Eventually, we knew we needed to be on our way, so we bid him goodnight and walked away. We walked a few blocks then started talking about the encounter. It would have been very easy for us to just complain about how much time he wasted and how argumentative he was, but we didn't. Elder Merkley's first comment was about how bad he felt for the man. Mike even made a comment when we spoke about how Christ suffered for all of us, that he didn't believe that Christ could atone for his sins. He believed that he had gone too far, done too much, and that made me especially sad.
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve a mission, and to meet so many different types of people. But it is sad when I come across a person who believes they have sunk too low, done too much to ever be redeemed from it, and that is simply not true. To paraphrase a quote from Jeffery R. Holland, No one has sunk below the infinite light of Christ's Atonement. No matter how far you've gone, I can promise that it is not too far, you can always turn around and start working your way back to the strait and narrow path, and Christ will be there to help you every step of the way.
In other news, I had the privilege of attending the funeral of a member of the Walkersville ward, she died my second day here. That was also an opportunity for some deep reflection. The human body is an amazing machine, but when compared to the immensity and complexity of our universe, it is a very short-lived, frail organism. But death is not the end; if I were to die today I would not cease to exist, I would not go into a state of nonexistence until the Second Coming, as many have tried to tell me while I've been out here, I would go to a place of learning and improvement, as teacher or student, I know not, but I do know that I would continue to learn, to improve, line upon line as Alma says. And there I would remain until the Second Coming of the Lamb of God where my spirit would be reunited with my body and I would receive my inheritance.
We also got our first draft of snow this week. Thursday it snowed for several hours in the morning and rained a bit in the evening. All in all, I think we got 4-5 inches of snow, and a good amount of freezing rain. The cars were grounded, but we were still provided with several opportunities to serve. We helped one lady dig out her car so we had a clear path for work the next day, as well as finding a lady stranded in the left turn lane near our house. We walked over to her and tapped on her window. She told us that she had stopped at the light, and her car randomly died. At first, we were just going to try and push her across the intersection so we weren't standing on a major highway, but then we determined that with how short the protected green is on that light, it wasn't probable to push the car uphill. Thankfully we were heading to help a family paint their stairwell, so we were already in service clothes and I had the foresight to wear my waterproof boots, which was good because it was freezing rain and we were wading through a couple of inches of freezing water. After talking to a few other drivers around us, we finally found someone who was both willing to stop, and had jumper cables (I talked to about 4 people who were driving trucks and none of them had a tow cable, we were all laughing about that). So right there on the highway, we tried to jump her car. We got it all hooked up properly and we tried to start her car. That was when I realized that it wasn't a dead battery. (Thank you Dad for teaching me both how to jumpstart a car, and what it sounds like when a battery is dead) I could hear the starter motor clicking, trying to start the car motor, but the engine wasn't even trying to turn over. Eventually she just had to call a tow truck and we had to be on our way. We gave her our number and she texted us later saying that she and her car got home safely, which was good. There are always opportunities to serve, we just have to look for them. It would have been very easy for us to just look over at the car in the left turn lane with its hazards on and just move on because we had somewhere to be. But we knew that Christ would stop and help someone in need, so we tried to do what we could, which is all Christ asks of us, to give our best effort and he will make up the rest.
I have learned a lot on my mission and I hope I can learn even more during the next 8 months.
I love you all,
Elder Howell
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