March 6- March 15

As I hit the 2 year anniversary of the beginning of my mission this week, I came up with a brilliant idea for my blog posts for the next 18 months. :)

Relive it every week. So here we go!

Lessons I learned from March 6, 2013 - March 15, 2013

As I read through my journal and notes from those days, the things that stood out to me were these:

• As you lose yourself in the work, the Lord will take care of everything. Questions that can trap you are these- Am I inspired? Did I do it right? Do they like me? All of these take the focus and put it back on you. Instead focus on what you can do to help them "what can I do to help them?"
• Trust God, it will all work out
• It's ok to make mistakes- no one expects you to be perfect right now.
• Like a house that is being added on to, there is some breaking down that has to occur before the building up

http://www.skywriting.net/inspirational/poems/the_lad_with_the_lunch.html

Now to expand a bit more. God will not ever tell you that you are inadequate. He takes what we have and He uses it for His purposes. What we have is always enough as long as it is our best. John 6:9 "There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?" As the story continues, Christ takes the loaves and fishes, blesses them and feds five thousand men, plus women and children and there were left overs! At times we may look at the crowd and say "what are my five loaves gonna do?" And the Lord says "My child, what you have is enough. Trust me." And wham-o. He fulfills His purposes with your meager offering. Your best offering. 

When life gives you lemons, you start to make your lemonade, and then God says "wait! I need you to make orange juice" Your brain then says "uh right. Like that's gonna happen...ok. We'll try making orange juice." You then find somewhere in the depths of your refrigerator a few oranges. A man walks up to you and reads your sign that says "Lemonade 5 cents" and promptly asks you for orange juice. You are prepared because you followed the Lord's prompting. (this may seem a little hard to follow...) But, basically, the Lord knows all of His children personally and will use each of us to help each other in the ways that He needs us to. He knows and will use the resources that we have to help, we just have to be prepared to change our ways to follow His even when it seems odd. 

Hey, but you may make the mistake and didn't make the orange juice. That's ok. No one is perfect. There is time to grow and become better. Maybe the next time you will make orange juice when the Lord asks. If not, just hit the reset button and promise to do better. Don't get down on yourself for the mistakes you make. Let them make you want to become stronger and better. 

That being said, sometimes we slip up quite horribly. Old habits die hard. Breaking down the walls of the house so you can add onto it, or changing your lemonade recipe to be an orange juice one, or .... whatever it may be will take time to perfect. Change doesn't happen over night and that's fine and dandy. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others. Change takes time. As long as we are doing our best, we are in the right. We are in the line of our duty. We will be fine.