1/20/2014 Ever the Poet

Your message again was inspired as ever! 

This last week we were so blessed in so many ways that I was beginning to realize just how much I am like any other Nephite that fell into the pride cycle. What I mean is that we were so blessed this last week because we had new investigators:  an orthodox priest that wants to become a Mormon; Nicholai just trying to decide on a place of baptism and testifying of the truth of the church every day; and Volodia soon to be baptized as well. We are so blessed! 

And often that blessed state leads to laziness, satisfaction, and like the banana story you sent me, we stop getting ripe or we ripen so much that we rot. As I was thinking about it, I wrote a poem to express a little bit just what I felt inside and what I was battling with:

In hunger or famine with mouths to feed,

The Breadwinner will diligently strive,

To obtain the need and bring the feed

That mouths might be satisfied.

He'll work in the trenches and do the deeds

No matter how mucked with dirt - 

From morning till night with all his might

To riches from rags convert.

Yes, He is diligent, courageous, and true - 

A laborer worthy of hire.

But when famines subside and blessings abide

Where goes our hero's desire? 

Will he work just as hard - and just as long

As then when blessings were few?

Does diligence persist when blessings exist

To prove him persistently true?

Or does laziness creep and start to claim

The Heart, Mind, and Might of the man:
"Satisfactions replete! Why back to my feet?

Have I not worked hard enough with my hand?"

He'll let one hour go, then days will slip by

As time marches ever on, -

And soon he will find, with no effort of mind,

Famine again starts to dawn.

Thus endurance and diligence are needed the same

In want as well as in worry:

For the One having all there is to have   

Continues His Work and His Glory.

Love you. 

Hi Mom!

Sorry that I don't have much time this week to write you, but I sent dad a letter that talks a little bit about just what I felt and experienced this week. It was such a blessed week and I just love this work so much! I just...am washed over with gratitude that allows me to work even harder. We need ever more you prayers and fasts because we cannot do this work on our own. The Lord is merciful and just requires that we do our best. Then He takes care of the rest. One of our new investigators this week that we found after a really rough night of being denied again and again is now progressing pretty well, but also sharing the Gospel with all around him. He loves the church and wants to meet every day with us and just...he's incredible! Dima after the 3rd day of knowing us had shared the Gospel with his mom, grandma, friend, the doctor of his grandma, and other wonderful friends of his. On top of that, Nicholai, again bore testimony that the church is true and that here in the Church he finds peace unlike anywhere else. We do all that we can and let the Lord do the rest. There is one benefit, as President Lochhead often says, of our message when it's all said and done: It's really true. :) I love you mom! You are a woman among women! Here's an exerpt from Jesus the Christ that reminded me of you:

To every son the mother ought to e preeminently the woman of women; she is the one woman in the world to whom the son owes his earthly existence; and though the title "Mother" belongs to every woman who has earned the honors of maternity, yet to no child is there more than one woman whom by natural right he can address by that title of respectful acknowledgement. When, in the last dread scenes of His mortal experience, Christ hung in dying agony upon the cross, He looked down upon the weeping Mary, His mother, and cmmended her to the care of the beloved apostle John, with the words: "Woman, behold thy son!" Can it be thought that in this supreme moment, our Lord's concern for the mother from whom He was about to be separated by death was associated with any emotion other than that of honor, tenderness, and love.

Love you mom!

Elder Claypool