My journey to become worthy to enter Zion.
I’m going to categorize my life history here.
Then I rushed to what appeared to be a great opening, or door. I knocked and the door opened, and the man who stood there was the Prophet Joseph Smith. He looked at me a little reprovingly, and the first words he said: ‘Joseph, you are late.’ Yet I took confidence and [replied]:
“‘Yes, but I am clean—I am clean!’
So, I have felt mostly in tune with things spiritual, but I did have one strange experience this week. My wife struggles with a condition called trigeminal neuralgia. She developed it after a second bout with shingles. I remember when it first developed. Wow, talk about a difficult time. She was in so much pain she basically closed off the world including me and the kids. This condition started about 10 years ago. Over the last few weeks, she has been expressing that the condition has been “firing.” Firing is her term for it because it relates to how it feels. Sharp bursts of electrical shocks in her face.
I turned to my comp and said, there is someone prepared here. It’s either this house on the corner 50-69 or the house with the red-head sitting on the porch. Choose. He chose the red-head . Wow was she prepared. It was so cool.
Let me expound. It was between 1 AM and 2 AM. It is 25 degrees outside. He was barefoot, in a t-shirt, and outside his wide-open bedroom window. He was stuck outside our locked house. I snowed 2 inches the night before. I asked him to climb back in. He couldn’t. He asked to be let in the front door. I walked out the front door. He was stuck standing on his tiptoes on top of the hose reel while clinging to his widow seal, which again was too high for him to climb through. As I let him in, I asked what he was thinking. Why did he do that? He said he was thirsty and wanted to get snow to eat for water
I have a broken pelvis from a bike accident when I was in my early 20’s. I have increasingly been less and less active over the last five years as a result of increase pain and lack of mobility with that leg. After consulting with a few doctors, I have determined I need total hip replacement. Not a big deal these days. But I need to lose some weight and get myself healthier to do this.
This is the lady we were never able to teach long ago. 3 months ago. Anyhow, she’s interesting. She couldn’t have children and drank a lot, smoked a lot, and did a lot of cocaine. One day she prayed to God and told him if she could have a child, she would quit all that stuff. 2 weeks later she was pregnant. We happened to come by the first time just after she had the baby. Now she is a lot more comfortable with it. This is a very good time for her to get baptized.
So, a few things. I didn’t write about it, but I remember the baptism at Rockaway Beach. It was the only baptism I went to at the beach. I remember there being a dozen missionaries there and the beach was loaded with hundreds of people if not more, all in their swimming attire. After the person was baptized, everyone on the beach started clapping. Yes, we did have pagers. I had one. I thought I was cool beans.
Self-righteous what? Where are you? [You’re on a mission] Things [that] remind us of what we need to do to be blessed [are not self-righteous.] Some missionaries are prideful, and they call those who try to do their best self-righteous. […] I’ve noticed Nephi in my reading was so humble. He didn’t want to be that way to his brothers. But God commanded him and he followed. They thought he was self-righteous.
It was my son’s birthday last weekend. We gave him an MP3 player for his birthday. He would rather have had a phone, but we haven’t gone that far yet. When his sister hit that age, we did buy a flip phone, then a Gabb phone. But she had a constant need and was super responsible. My son doesn’t do much that would require it. When we do, it will likely be as dumb as a brick.
Well, this is not going to make me look very good in some people’s eyes. But it is what happened. I’m not going to make any excuses. I remember a big focus of my mission being that we felt inspired that if the church was to grow in New York […]
